May 24, 1971: Vermont Catamounts win final game, go extinct after 79 seasons

The first years of the 1970s were turbulent ones on American college campuses. In some places the upheaval even invaded that seeming bastion of order and tradition, the baseball diamond.

The University of Vermont was a case in point. In mid-May 1971, Edward C. Andrews Jr., president of the financially troubled flagship state university, announced that the current varsity baseball season would be the school’s last, for budgetary and scheduling reasons.1

A school whose attendees ranged from 1907 World Series champion Ed Reulbach to 1967 World Series champion Jack Lamabe was packing up the bats, balls, and bases, ending 79 years as a campus institution. For most of those years, UVM2 baseball had been the biggest game in town for fans in its home city of Burlington; the Green Mountain State’s largest city hosted affiliated minor-league baseball for only one season between 1907 and 1983.3

On May 24, the UVM Catamounts4 gathered at their home ballpark, Centennial Field, to do battle one last time with Dartmouth College.5 The Catamounts mustered just two hits – only one of them solidly struck. But with walks, errors, and emotion on their side, the Vermonters pulled out a narrow victory.

The Catamounts might have been lucky not to draw Dartmouth pitcher Pete Broberg in their final game. Broberg, the only highly touted prospect on either squad, had been the Oakland Athletics’ first-round draft pick out of high school in June 1968.6 He opted to attend Dartmouth, where he continued to excel – including a start against the UVM freshman team in which he struck out 19 batters.7

On May 24, 1971, Broberg’s bright future was about to unfold. About two weeks later, the Washington Senators made him the first overall pick in the secondary phase of the June draft.8 And on June 20 he made his major-league debut, working 6⅓ innings against the Boston Red Sox in front of almost 20,000 fans at Washington’s Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.

Dartmouth’s chosen starter was no slouch either. Richard Nelson Griebel – known as Oz, a riff on 1950s TV personality Ozzie Nelson – had been a member of Dartmouth’s 1970 team, which reached the College World Series.9 Earlier in 1971, he’d pitched a four-hitter to beat Yale 4-1.10 Griebel was the only player to appear on May 24 who played professionally.11 The right-handed New Jersey native pitched in 1972 for a Rookie-level St. Louis Cardinals farm team in the Gulf Coast League, posting an 0-2 record and a 4.50 ERA in 13 appearances. When baseball didn’t pan out, Griebel made a name in business and politics, becoming a regional bank CEO and a two-time candidate for governor of Connecticut.12

The coaches of each team bear mentioning as well. One was on a roundabout path to the big leagues, while the other had already made his mark there.

Vermont’s skipper, Doug Holmquist, played four seasons of minor-league ball in the Houston Colt .45s and Detroit Tigers organizations, posting a career-best line of .317 with 16 home runs and 82 RBIs with Jamestown of the Class A New York-Penn League in 1964. The former catcher and first baseman came to UVM at age 27 in 1969. Between 1978 and 1985, he managed parts of seven seasons in the New York Yankees’ system, and he wrote his name in the big-league ledger as a Yankees coach for parts of the 1984 and 1985 seasons.

Dartmouth’s coach, Tony Lupien, was a Harvard University graduate who reached the majors for six seasons in the 1940s. He led the American League in several defensive categories as a first baseman, and even landed a Most Valuable Player vote or two during the World War II years. Lupien took over at Dartmouth in 1957 and stayed for 21 years, compiling a 313-305-3 record. His 1970 team won 21 straight games, including a victory over Iowa State in the first round of the College World Series, before bowing out at the hands of Florida State University and the eventual national champion University of Southern California.13

Only a “scattering” of fans turned out for UVM’s last game.14 The players played their final games with the “V” on their caps taped over, symbolically turning their backs on the university that had turned its back on them.15 Vermont’s five seniors – including starting pitcher George Smith, a righty from Burlington – were technically already alumni, as the school had held Commencement exercises the previous day.16

In addition to Smith, other leaders of the Vermont nine included second baseman George Minarsky and center fielder Dennis Robinson. Minarsky was a first-team postseason selection to the All-Yankee Conference team, hitting .261 in conference games, stealing 17 bases, and striking out only 9 times. Robinson, team leader in hitting with a .366 average, was named to the all-conference second team.17 Dennis’s brother Don started beside him in right field.

Smith held Dartmouth hitless for the first three innings. UVM gathered only one hit off Griebel in the same period – a first-inning double by Dennis Robinson.18 Catcher Brendan “Beep” Foster collected the Catamounts’ other hit in the fifth on a sky-high pop fly that Dartmouth’s infielders lost in the sun and allowed to fall. Griebel’s mound replacement, Bill Saumsiegle, picked Foster off first base.19 Griebel and Saumsiegle worked three shutout innings apiece.

The Ivy League visitors finally solved Smith for hits – and runs – in the fourth. First baseman Russ Adams and left fielder Frank Mannarino led off with hard-hit singles. Third baseman Craig Conklin’s single was mishandled by left fielder Phil Natowich, allowing Adams to score. Dartmouth right fielder Wayne Young collected his team’s fourth straight hit; when Don Robinson overran the ball in right field, two more runs scored for a 3-0 Dartmouth advantage. Smith settled down from there, ending the inning with no further damage and allowing only two more hits the rest of the way.20

A third Dartmouth pitcher, senior John Prado, inherited the 3-0 lead in the seventh. He began by walking Dennis Robinson, who was forced at second base on a grounder. Prado walked Don Robinson and first baseman Vic Zollo to load the bases, then walked left fielder Natowich to hand UVM its first run.21

Catcher Foster laced a sharp grounder to third that bounced off Conklin’s glove and into foul ground. Two more runs scored on the error. Shortstop Dom Serino drove a fly ball to right field that, by one account, was Vermont’s hardest-hit ball of the afternoon. Serino’s sacrifice fly brought Natowich home and gave Vermont an unlikely 4-3 lead without benefit of a hit.22

Smith took command from there. He yielded a hit in the eighth and a walk in the ninth, but no sustained threat developed. With two down in the ninth, Dennis Robinson put away an easy fly ball to center field, sending the Catamounts into history as 4-3 victors.23 The team won its final four games to finish with an even 13-13 record. Dartmouth ended the year 18-13.24

Lupien sounded a somber note after the game: “I feel like a pallbearer at a wake. … It’s the start of a trend. All it takes is one big school to drop the sport and others will follow. I hate to see it happen and I feel terrible that we will no longer be able to play Vermont.”25

As it turned out, the Catamounts’ disappearance was temporary – but their return, when it came, was not permanent. The university restored the varsity baseball program in 1978,26 then cut it again for budget reasons in 2009.27 As of spring 2022, baseball existed at UVM only as a club team.28 Dartmouth continued to field a varsity program as of 2022.29

Holmquist, who oversaw the last days of UVM’s original baseball program, died of a heart attack at age 46 in 1988.30 Lupien died in 2004; he was Holmquist’s senior by about 24 years, but outlived him by 16.

The end of Oz Griebel’s story is also worth recounting here, as it illustrates how much baseball means to people who love the sport. An avid runner and hiker, Griebel died in July 2020 after he was struck by a car while jogging.31 His obituary summarized his lifelong connection to baseball: “His fastball would not have broken the speed limit in any state but that made him perfectly suited to throw batting practice to the numerous little league teams he coached after retiring from the game. He lived for pitching duels, despised the designated hitter, and would sign an email in the offseason with the number of days until pitchers and catchers.”32

Acknowledgments

This game was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team, and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of college games, but the May 25, 1971, edition of the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press published a box score.

Image of 1985 TCMA Columbus Clippers card #25 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 “UVM Dropping Baseball at End of This Season,” Brattleboro (Vermont) Reformer, May 13, 1971: 12. The university’s spring academic schedule forced the baseball team to shoehorn its season into a limited amount of time. The 1971 Catamounts scheduled 18 games in 18 days, including four doubleheaders. According to news reports, baseball was the only spring sport to be cut, though all areas of the school’s athletic department had to slash costs.

2 Although Vermont is typically abbreviated as VT for postal purposes, the university is colloquially known as UVM from the Latin phrase Universitas Viridis Montis, or “University of the Green Mountains.” “UVM Facts,” University of Vermont website, accessed April 29, 2022.

3 In 1955 the city hosted the Burlington A’s, a Kansas City Athletics affiliate in the Class C Provincial League. The team played home games at UVM’s Centennial Field. While the Burlington team drew solid fan support, the league folded after the season.

4 A catamount is another name for an Eastern cougar or mountain lion. The large cats were officially declared extinct in Vermont in 2018, many decades after the last official sighting, although some state residents claim to have seen them more recently. Maleeha Syed, “Vermonters Reminisce on Encounters With Catamounts, Declared Extinct Two Years Ago This Month,” Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, January 24, 2020. Accessed April 29, 2022.

5 Dartmouth sports teams are informally known as the Big Green. They were also sometimes referred to as the Indians between the 1920s and the 1970s, when the college officially distanced itself from that nickname. According to the school, neither name has ever been officially adopted by a college governing body. In the absence of an officially approved nickname, this story simply refers to the Dartmouth College team as “Dartmouth” throughout. “The ‘Big Green’ Nickname,” Dartmouth College athletics website, accessed April 29, 2022.

6 In June 1968 Broberg was drafted second overall, behind only Tim Foli (drafted by the New York Mets) and ahead of future big-leaguers Thurman Munson (fourth pick, New York Yankees), Bobby Valentine (fifth, Los Angeles Dodgers), Greg Luzinski (11th pick, Philadelphia Phillies), and Gary Matthews (17th pick, San Francisco Giants).

7 Don Fillion, “Broberg Will Sign with Brewers in June,” Burlington Free Press, May 28, 1971: 29. According to Broberg’s SABR biography, his father, Gus, had been an All-American basketball player at Dartmouth, and had also turned down an offer from the New York Yankees.

8 Players drafted behind Broberg in June 1971 included future major leaguers Burt Hooton, Steve Rogers, Ron Hodges, and Dane Iorg.

9 Another member of the 1970 Dartmouth team, pitcher Chuck Seelbach, played for the Detroit Tigers between 1971 and 1974. Seelbach spent most of the 1971 season with the Triple-A Toledo Mud Hens. He pitched five games with Detroit that season, making his major-league debut on June 29 – only nine days after his former teammate Broberg.

10 Charlie Spencer, “The Senator Says,” Rutland (Vermont) Herald, April 22, 1971: 13.

11 According to Baseball-Reference, three other Dartmouth players of that time period went on to minor-league careers – Charles Janes (1972-73), James Metzler (1973-74), and David Highmark (1973) – but none are listed in the box score as appearing against Vermont on May 24. Also according to Baseball-Reference, no University of Vermont players appeared in pro ball between David Lapointe (1969-1970) and Jeff Greene (1981).

12 Zach Murdock, “Politician Known for ‘Spirited Energy,’” Hartford Courant, July 30, 2020: A1.

13 Charlie Bevis, “Tony Lupien,” SABR Biography Project. Accessed online April 29, 2022.

14 Mike Rosenberg, “Cats Dump Dartmouth in Final Baseball Bow,” Rutland Herald, May 25, 1971: 13.

15 Dave Morse, “It Seems Appropriate the Cats Closed at 13-13,” Rutland Herald, May 25, 1971: 13.

16 Rosenberg.

17 “Minarsky Only UVM Player on All-Star Team,” Burlington Free Press, May 28, 1971: 29.

18 One newspaper account of the game called the hit a single; another said it “took a Vermont bounce” and turned into a double.

19 Rosenberg; Don Fillion, “UVM Ends Season, Program with 4-3 Victory Over Indians,” Burlington Free Press, May 25, 1971: 16.

20 Rosenberg; Fillion, “UVM Ends Season, Program with 4-3 Victory Over Indians.” Box scores and game accounts do not specify whether Don Robinson’s outfield misplay on Young’s hit was scored as an error.

21 Rosenberg; Fillion.

22 Rosenberg; Fillion.

23 United Press International, “UVM Upsets Dartmouth in Final,” Brattleboro (Vermont) Reformer, May 25, 1971: 8. This story does not name the Dartmouth player who hit the game-ending fly ball.

24 Morse.

25 Fillion, “UVM Ends Season, Program with 4-3 Victory Over Indians.”

26 Steve Reiter, “UVM Baseball Team Tuning Up,” Rutland Herald, February 12, 1978: 2, 4.

27 Hayley Rosen, “10 Years Later, No Sign of D1 Baseball Coming Back to UVM,” Vermont Cynic, October 24, 2019. Accessed online May 4, 2022. The Vermont Cynic is UVM’s student newspaper. According to this story, the UVM athletic department was forced to make $1 million in budget cuts as a result of economic recession in 2008-2009.

28 Website of the UVM club baseball team, accessed May 4, 2022.

29 Official site of Dartmouth College varsity athletics, accessed May 4, 2022.

30 “Doug Holmquist Dies,” Bradenton (Florida) Herald, March 1, 1988: D5. Holmquist had also coached at the University of Central Florida.

31 Murdock.

32 “R. Nelson Griebel” (obituary), Hartford Courant, August 12, 2020: B6.