The Boys of Bacone: 1967 National Champion Bacone College Warriors

Bacone College in its early years when its name was Bacone Indian College. (Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society)

 

Although the 1967 Bacone Warriors had a track record of incredible success, winning 42 regular-season games and losing only two, the odds were stacked against this small school in Muskogee, Oklahoma, formed in 1880 to educate American Indian students, from making much of a splash at the National Junior College Baseball tournament.1 Actually, the odds were stacked against the team even physically reaching the tournament in Grand Junction, Colorado. Toward the end of the regular season, Bacone’s president told baseball coach Enos Semore that bus trips were expensive and the school didn’t have the money to transport the team to the tournament.2

Resourceful, Semore organized a group of parents and volunteers with station wagons to caravan the players to the tournament.

“We drove my parents’ ’63 Fury,” right-handed pitcher Gerry Pirtle recalled about making the trip from Muskogee to Grand Junction. “That was really something, you know. All these other teams like Miami Dade had these big buses, and here’s this little team from Oklahoma come in driving all their cars.”3

Even with Semore’s coordinating his team’s arrival at the tournament, both through the volunteer station wagons and by guiding the team to such a lopsided won-lost record to earn an invitation to play at the tournament, the Warriors weren’t expected to do much. Their best player, Jim Dunegan, who led the team in home runs and RBIs and possessed an 11-0 pitching record with four no-hitters, signed with the Chicago Cubs the week before the tournament.4 No longer an amateur, he was ineligible to play. George Brooks, the team’s best pitcher, suffered an arm injury and couldn’t pitch.5 In the last game of the regular season, catcher Bob Hudspeth separated his shoulder. He too would miss the tournament.6

An extremely confident outlook for a team from a small school. Bacone’s enrollment in 1967 was around 500, and its baseball facilities were spartan if not barebones.

“[The field] was kind of like a pasture that they threw a fence up around and drug some bleachers in,” Colson said with a laugh. Pirtle compared the playing field to a Little League park with no lighting, no locker room (players dressed in their dorm rooms for games), and certainly no practice facility other than the field itself. First baseman Travis Washington remembered a barbed-wire fence in the outfield and no dugout, just a bench. Players chipped in to maintain the field, raking the mound and painting the foul lines before games. Sometimes, the team would play or practice at a park in downtown Muskogee that high-school and American Legion teams also used. Consistent with the modest facilities, the school couldn’t offer players loads of equipment.

“We didn’t have a lot of stuff,” Colson said. “I had one glove. One pair of shoes with a hole in the toe. And I think pitchers got jackets.”

The small size and the limited resources contrasted with some of their competition in the tournament. Miami-Dade (Florida) Community College, the favorite to win, had an enrollment of over 23,000 students with more freshmen than the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the University of South Florida combined.7 Future big leaguer Kurt Bevacqua, who spent 15 seasons in the major leagues, was on its roster. The defending champion Nassau Community College of Long Island, New York, boasted a booming campus on 135 acres.8

Despite the disparity, Bacone racked up the wins under Coach Semore, who created a culture of personal best. Colson remembered a doubleheader during the regular season when the sophomore team won the first game, but the freshman team dropped the second. After the team returned to campus, Semore trotted the freshmen out to the field to run.

“I cannot stand mediocrity,” Semore said.9

Said Colson: “He got our attention because we only lost three games that year.”

Though stern and demanding, Semore got along well with his players.

“We respected him,” Colson said. “And still do. And he knew the game. I mean, he knew the game.”

Talent and good coaching resulted in Bacone being nearly unstoppable in 1967.

“We played everybody that would play us,” Colson said. “OU and Oklahoma State would not play us. You know, what do you have to win? I think we would have beat them. I know for sure we could have played with them. We played Tulsa University, which was good at the time. And [Oral Roberts University], played them a couple of times. They didn’t beat us. That was, I guess, the biggest school we played. All the others were junior colleges. We played Cameron, we played all the ones in the state. Missouri. Some in Kansas.”

The talent was balanced.

“We had speed. And we certainly had power, and we had good pitching,” Colson said. He pointed to his roommate and teammate since Little League days in Gould, Oklahoma, Travis Washington, as one example of the team’s talent. Selected to the All-American team, Washington hit .383 and socked 13 home runs.10 Washington attributed his strong hitting to growing up on a farm in southwest Oklahoma and mucking hay as early as seven years old.

“I’d throw it up on the truck. I’d unload it,” Washington said. “I didn’t know it at the time, [but I was] strengthening forearms. That was the key. That’s where hitting was, was in your forearms and wrist.”

While not performing farm chores as a child, Washington would get an old hoe handle, toss rocks in the air, and hit them with the handle.

“Just rock after rock I’d hit,” Washington said. “I didn’t know it at the time, but what you’re doing is coordinating your hand/eye.”

Growing up poor in southwest Oklahoma and a member of the only Native American family in the area, Washington didn’t have a supply of bats and balls to play with. He and his brothers would scavenge the town dump for discarded dolls and use the heads as balls. Or plastic lemons that once held lemon juice. To perfect his skills, Washington instructed his brothers to move closer to the plate when they pitched the dolls’ heads, plastic lemons, or balled-up socks to him.

“I might move them just 20 feet back, make them throw it real hard, and I’d try to get around on it,” Washington said.

As a Native American growing up in a White world (he is one-quarter Choctaw), Washington said, his family was looked down on. Older people called him disparaging names until he reached high school and those strong forearms clubbed home runs at a rapid clip.

“When I got to hitting that ball out, it all changed,” Washington said. “Oh, you know, I was the greatest thing that ever was but not until then.”

 

Setting high expectations, Coach Enos Semore led the Bacone Warriors in 1967. (Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society)

 

Washington was drawn to Bacone both by its stacked roster of talent and by its Native American roots, with classmates from 48 tribes representing 50 states at the school.

Before the season began, Colson and Washington were excited to learn that Van Fixico, a fellow southwestern Oklahoman with Creek Indian heritage, whom they competed against in high school and American Legion ball, was transferring to Bacone for the 1967 season. Fixico, an infielder one year older than them, began college at Southwestern Oklahoma State in Weatherford, but wanted to move to Bacone.

Semore asked Colson and Washington what they thought of Fixico and whether he should join Bacone.

“Go get him,” they said.

With that, the speedy Fixico joined the Warriors, a team with considerable depth. Semore divided the team into two teams, a sophomore team and a freshman team. Colson thought the freshmen were better than the sophomores, so even with the loss of some of their best players after the regular season, the freshmen stepped up and arrived at the national tournament ready to compete. They won their first game, 5-3, beating Phoenix College.11 (“I remember hitting a double off the wall,” Colson recalled. “I played third.”) Next, they faced Nassau and won handily, 11-1.12 Colson twisted his ankle during the game trying to steal second base.

“That night, I didn’t get any sleep,” he says. “I remember doing a lot of whirlpool on it. I think it lasted just about a week. You turn one that bad, you don’t get over it in two or three days.”

In the third game, Semore named Pirtle the starting pitcher against Miami-Dade. During the regular season, Pirtle pitched primarily in relief, but with the departure or unavailability of several sophomores, he had the opportunity to start. He took advantage, striking out 13 and helping Bacone to a 5-3 win.13 Pirtle’s catcher was Marvin Thouvenel, stepping in for the injured Hudspeth, and Thouvenel was enthusiastic about Pirtle’s performance.

“Every time I struck some[one out] – or every time I threw a pitch for a strike – he would come out of there jumping up, really excited [and] give the ball back to me. And he did that the whole game, and the fans loved it,” Pirtle said.14

“Gerald was just steady,” Colson said. “He always threw a lot of innings as a starter. Had a really good curveball.”

Washington agreed. From his vantage point playing first base, the drop in Pirtle’s curveball was outstanding, he said, comparing the ball to “rolling off this table.”

Winner of three straight games in the tournament, Bacone then faced Odessa. Bacone’s bats went quiet, and Odessa won 3-0.15

“They had a little curveball pitcher who threw curveballs 90 percent of the time, and we just couldn’t hit him,” Colson said.

After the game, three teams in the tournament had one loss apiece: Miami-Dade, Odessa, and Bacone. A coin toss between Odessa and Bacone determined which team played Miami-Dade.

Odessa won the toss. Bacone had to face Miami-Dade again. Right-hander Lloyd Kingfisher, who earned All-American honors that season and pitched a perfect game during the regular season, started for the Warriors. He shut down Miami-Dade, 4-1.16

“I pinch-hit that game,” Colson said. “I grounded out. It hurt to run.”

For the sixth and final game, Semore looked to his hobbled third baseman Colson to pitch.

“You’re all we’ve got,” Semore told Colson. “Can you do it?”

“Give me the ball,” Colson answered.

And against Odessa, Colson, the team’s third- or fourth-best pitcher, wrapped his ankle and took the mound.

“I hadn’t pitched in a while,” Colson said. “And I was one of those guys, and I try to do that with my high-school team: I don’t want to pitch them too much, but I don’t want to give them too much rest. I always remember if I had like 10 days’ rest, I come in, and I didn’t have command of my ball. I could throw hard, and it would move, but unless they swung at it, it probably wouldn’t be a strike.”

Even with his arm rested more than he preferred, Colson pitched well. Mixing his fastball with his curveball, he gave up seven hits and two walks and struck out eight. Consistent with the balanced talent working well for Bacone that season, hitters in turn pounded Odessa pitching. All but one Bacone starter had a hit as the team collected 16 hits.17 Travis Washington went 4-for-4 with three singles and a double. Center fielder Gary Ratliff had three hits, and shortstop Bob Tate was a home run shy of hitting for the cycle. Bacone scored a run in the first, then added three more in the second, and another three in the third. Meanwhile, Colson had things under control on the mound.

“I got a little tired in the seventh, and they got a couple of hits off me,” Colson said. “But I was able to finish it up.”

He threw a complete game. Bacone won, 10-4, and captured the National Junior College Championship. The team that cobbled together its ride to the tournament completed its trip by raising the championship trophy in Grand Junction – and by tossing Enos Semore into their motel’s swimming pool.

“Going back to the motel, the first thing we were going to do is throw the coach in the pool,” Colson said. “He’s about six-five. And then he was 30-something years old and probably weighed about 240. He was bigger than anybody on the team. But we got him in there. It took the team to get him in there.”

Years later, in a gathering at Semore’s home to celebrate his 91st birthday, Colson asked Semore, “Coach, we were good, and we always thought we were going to win, but when you look at it on paper, how did we beat Miami-Dade?”

“Nobody thought we would win,” Colson said. “They thought we were good because Bacone had been [to the national tournament] before. But what they didn’t know: We were even better this time.”

The champions returned to Muskogee and a hometown enthusiastic about the team’s accomplishments. Citizens gathered to throw a parade for the Warriors.

“They was waitin’ on us,” Washington said. “Big parade and all that. They took us downtown on floats and such as that. Floats on the back of trailers.”

The well-earned celebration included Muskogee Mayor Jim Egan, who summed up the success: “Bacone’s baseball team is a credit to the college and to Muskogee. I believed that from the season’s first game that they had in mind to win the national championship.”18 Which is exactly what the boys from Bacone did.19

An Oklahoma native, DOUG WEDGE has written three baseball history books, Pinnacle on the Mound: Cy Young Award Winners Talk Baseball, Baseball in Alabama: Tales of Hardball in the Heart of Dixie, and The Cy Young Catcher (co-author Charlie O’Brien). He lives in Oklahoma City.

 

Notes

1 “Bacone Nine Will Start NJCO Tourney Friday,” Muskogee Sunday Phoenix, May 21, 1967; https://www.bacone.edu/about/. To learn more about Bacone, both its past and present, visit its website at https://www.bacone.edu/. The site says Bacone College, “formerly the Indian University, was founded in 1880 to educate American Indian students. Today, Bacone College is transforming into a tribal college.” (Accessed November 30, 2022).

2 Author interview with Loyd Colson, February 8, 2020. All direct quotations from Loyd Colson come from this interview.

3 Author interview with Gerry Pirtle, May 26, 2022.

4 “Bacone Begins NJUCO Title Bid,” Muskogee Daily Phoenix, May 26, 1967: 13.

5 “Bacone Begins NJUCO Title Bid.”

6 “Bacone Begins NJUCO Title Bid.”

7 https://www.mdc.edu/about/history.aspx.

8 https://www.ncc.edu/aboutncc/fastfacts.shtml.

9 Colson interview.

10 “Bacone Begins NJUCO Title Bid”; Interview with Travis Washington (June 11, 2022). All direct quotations from Travis Washington come from this interview.

11 “Bacone Faces New Yorkers After Beating Phoenix 5-3,” Muskogee Daily Phoenix, May 27, 1967.

12 “Bacone Dumps Nassau, 11-1 at Tournament,” Muskogee Daily Phoenix, May 29, 1967.

13 “Bacone Whips Miami, 5-3,” Tulsa Daily World, May 31, 1967.

14 Pirtle interview.

15 “Warriors Dump Odessa, Texas, 10-4 in World Series Finale,” Muskogee Daily Phoenix, June 2, 1967: 10.

16 . https://jucogj.org/documents/2018/3/7/Scores_by_World_Series.pdf. (Accessed December 14, 2022).

17 “Warriors Dump Odessa, Texas.”

18 Bobby Branan, “National Champions Get Royal Welcome on Return Home, unidentified newspaper clipping from 1967 team scrapbook shown to author.

19 After guiding Bacone to the National Junior College Baseball Championship, Enos Semore was the baseball coach at the University of Oklahoma from 1968 to 1989, winning 851 games and leading the Sooners to five consecutive College World Series appearances (1972-76). Loyd Colson played seven years of professional baseball and pitched for the New York Yankees in 1970 before embarking on careers in insurance, real estate, and coaching baseball. Gerry Pirtle played 14 years of professional baseball, including 19 games as a Montreal Expo in 1978. In 1989 he played in the Senior Professional Baseball Association, pitching for the St. Petersburg Pelicans and Orlando Juice. Travis Washington was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the first round of the January 1967 draft. He worked for several years as a police dispatcher in southeastern Oklahoma.