I saw recently where Gene Shell passed away.
Last Thursday to be precise.
I was saddened by the news but knew he was in his 90's.
Guerin Emig, sports columnist with the Tulsa World, wrote a nice article on Shell a few years back that chronicled a group of his players who still had weekly dinners at the coaches house.
Remembering their days as one of his players. Remembering the good times. The good teams.
And that's where I'll begin my blog post.
Remembering the good times. Good teams. As a fan.
Gene Shell was born in Tulsa and attended Tulsa Webster High School.
My alma mater.
Shell was a three-sport star in football, basketball and baseball.
He was named Oklahoma All-State in baseball his senior year.
Afterwards, Shell ended up at Tulsa Webster as its baseball coach.
Shell's Warriors would win three state baseball championships.
His 1961 & 62' teams won in back-to-back fashion.
In five years Gene Shell's Tulsa Webster Warriors baseball teams were 87-8.
Bob Stoops would've been proud!
I don't know if you can classify Shell's Tulsa Webster teams into a category.
After all, I was born in 1962.
And its' not like you can find anything about those teams now other than word of mouth and memories.
But I heard the stories about the legends.
The Calmus brothers.
Myrle in 1959 would later play at Oklahoma State and sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers (I'm not sure Myrle pitched for Shell but his younger brother did...).
And Rich starred on those Gene Shell Webster baseball teams in 61' & 62'.
As pitchers.
Carl Morton?
Yep.
Pitcher.
Steve Rogers?
Later at the University of Tulsa?
Pitcher.
So I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Gene Shell's baseball teams emphasized pitching.
And why not.
Good pitching beats good hitting. Right?
After Tulsa Webster, Shell ended up at Edison and Claremore High Schools.
And guess what?
He won another state baseball championship.
Which caught the eye of the sharpies over at 11th and Harvard.
So Gene Shell became the head baseball coach at the University of Tulsa in 1966.
And this is where my story begins.
Growing up in the 1960's in Tulsa, I was focused on what all young boys were back then: sports.
But not necessarily the local kind, at first.
You see there was this fledgling NFL team in Dallas called the Cowboys.
And in Tulsa, you got all the Cowboys games every Sunday regardless of time zone, conference opponent or holiday.
So I was a Dallas Cowboys fan from the beginning. Before they were "America's Team" they were "Next Year's Champions."
Next.
I watched a lot of Major League Baseball.
The obvious choice was the St. Louis Cardinals since they were the parent club of the Tulsa Oilers, the Cardinals Triple-A farm club in Tulsa.
And the Cardinals won the 1967 World Series and were runner-ups the next year in 1968.
And a lot of those players came up through Tulsa on their way to the big leagues: Mike Shannon, Steve Carlton, Dal Maxvill and Ted Simmons.
So, I went to a lot of Tulsa Oiler games at old Oiler Park at 15th and Yale.
And hung out with guys like Satchel Paige who was an Oiler coach!
Satchel Paige used to sit in an old metal, folding chair in front of a card table and hold meet-and-greets with Oilers fans at the entrance to Oiler Park.
He teased me about my initials for a name the first time I introduced myself.
Until he glanced over and saw my dad...G.W. Hail, Sr.
He quickly changed his teasing to my position of choice: catcher.
I told him I wanted to be like Johnny Bench because the catcher was in charge and the only player who could see the other eight players.
He went on about wearing all that equipment and that protective cup...in 100-degree Oklahoma heat!
Said he never had to wear no protective cup because nobody could ever hit his fastball hard enough to worry about it!
Besides, he said the catcher wasn't in charge. The pitcher was in charge!
After that first visit, every time he’d see me he’d say, “Hello, G.W. Hail, J-U-N-I-O-R! How’s that Johnny Bench dude doin’?“
Can you even imagine being blessed with Satchel Paige memories as an 11-year old kid! Oh, to have had an iPhone and social media in 1973!
Back to my dad. In addition to my name, he’s responsible for my Johnny Bench fascination.
He spent the summer of 1970 in Tampa, Florida, working and then after work at Al Lopez Field, spring training home to the Cincinnati Reds.
In addition to the black and white photos of Casey Stengel in a New York Mets cap and Stan Musial, with his wife and daughter, he sent home weekly black and white photographs of emerging Reds stars like Pete Rose, Binger, Oklahoma catcher Johnny Bench and rookie manager Sparky Anderson.
So, as I began my Little League career in the spring of 1970, the Big Red Machine, which moniker wouldn't be coined until later, was my fave team.
And, because of this photo of Johnny Bench, I would soon be a catcher. A position I would play for the next 11 years!
NOTE: This photo was taken at Al Lopez Field in 1970 at spring training. I got the autograph 18 years later in Oklahoma City at an Oklahoma Olympic Festival fundraising dinner at the Myriad Convention Center. Bench was seated a couple of tables over and was signing autographs before dinner, so I went over and had him sign this and a 1972 baseball card.
Locally, the University of Tulsa had tremendous success in football in the 1960's. Jerry Rhome and Howard Twilley set NCAA national records in 1964 with their aerial assault on the record books.
And Twilley would return in 1965 and was named All-America.
A little-known freshman team coach that year was Gene Shell.
Across town Oral Roberts was building a university that God would be proud of.
And, Oral believed the way to growing that university was to capture the hearts, minds and attention of the millions of American men who read the sports page daily.
So, Oral Roberts started a basketball program and eventually hired his man Ken Trickey as coach.
ORU ran off one of the best five year records ever. From 1969 to 1974, ORU basketball was 118-23 overall, including a NCAA Regional Final runner-up finish in 1974, and 52-0 record at home from 69' to 73'.
I attended a lot of ORU basketball games back then in the little on-campus "Igloo".
I won't call it an arena because that wouldn't be fair to arenas.
Let's just say it shared space with the school swimming complex and had a huge divider partition that separated the court from the pool.
You could literally smell the chlorine during the basketball games!
So this was my backdrop in 1969 when Gene Shell's University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane shocked the college baseball world and finished as runner-ups to perennial champion Arizona State in Omaha.
And I listened to every pitch on local Tulsa radio
It was fascinating.
Here was an alumni of my high school, coaching his team at the pinnacle of his sport and coming within one spot of winning a national championship.
So suffice to say I was a Gene Shell fan.
Soon, I would be attending all the games at Oiler Park and some at La Fortune Park across town. My mom would drop me off after school at around 3:30 p.m. and I'd spend the rest of the afternoon watching TU baseball!
No after school cartoons for me. No sir.
At the old venerable Oiler Park, I shagged right field fly balls for 10-cents a ball.
When I wasn't shagging fly balls I was sitting behind the third base dugout watching Shell coach and the Golden Hurricane play.
Occasionally, Coach Shell would notice me sitting there and reach into his bucket and toss me a baseball!
And although the usual Missouri Valley stiffs came through like Southern Illinois (they were actually very good), Creighton and Bradley, coach Shell didn't shy away from playing the big boys, too.
Annual home games at Oiler Park included Arizona State, USC, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Oklahoma State.
These were some of the best baseball teams in the country.
In fact, Bobby Winkles’ Arizona State Sun Devils and Rod Dedeaux' Trojans from Southern California won 9 of 10 College World Series titles beginning in 1965.
Enos Semore down in Norman had some solid Sooner baseball teams and Oklahoma State was pretty fair in those days too.
So Gene Shell took on all-comers.
And I got to see it all right there at Oiler Park.
Anthony Davis may be known for leading the Trojans big Thanksgiving Day comeback against Notre Dame, but he was in Tulsa in 1974, wearing a splint on his thumb, and I got his autograph on the back of my Junior Golden Hurricane Club Card!
During a period of four years beginning in 1971, future Major League players such as Fred Lynn of USC and Jackson Todd, Joe Simpson and Bob Shirley of Oklahoma all would make appearances in Tulsa playing the Golden Hurricane.
In the summer, I was the batboy for the Malone Metals.
They were Tulsa Webster's American Legion entry at La Fortune Park.
So I hung around all summer with all the Webster baseball players who also played in the summers for Malone Metals.
Guys like Ira Willis, Rick Willis, Ron Richardson, Gary Bushyhead and Steve Bowling.
Steve Bowling would graduate from Webster in 1970 and went to (where else?) the University of Tulsa and played for Gene Shell.
Bowling would set school records and lead the Golden Hurricane back to the College World Series where they finished 3rd.
Others on that 1971 team included slugger Jerry Tabb, pitcher Cliff Butcher and Steve Rogers.
In fact as late as 1977, Bowling and Tabb held every single individual career batting record at the University of Tulsa except one: home runs and that record was held by Ed Stephenson.
Bowling, Butcher, Tabb, Dean Graumann, Phil Honeycutt, Les Rogers, Steve Rogers and Mike Sember would all be named All-Americans.
All would have Major League Baseball careers.
By high school, my attention was pulled toward my own career in football and baseball.
I was a three-year varsity letterman in football and baseball and would up on the 1980 Tulsa World All-City Baseball Team second team.
Although I had always dreamed of playing for Gene Shell, he never called.
I did play on back-to-back Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle Oklahoma State baseball champions as a 15 and 16-year old that drew the attention of Enos Semore and Gary Ward.
But not seriously.
I knew my Sooner career was over before my official recruiting visit to Norman ever started.
Tulsa scout Troy Miles took myself and former teammates Mike Robinson, Scott Logsdon and Kelly Bell to OU to see the Kansas game in 1979.
We were to meet Coach Semore, receive a tour of the facilities and watch the Sooners cream the Jayhawks.
I sensed trouble when Donnie Graham, a Sooner outfielder, greeted us at the old baseball office trailer located behind the end zone of Owen Field instead of Coach Semore.
Later during the tour of the Bud Wilkinson Center, I asked Graham where Coach Semore was and he replied, "Oh, he's duck hunting today!
Someone from OSU called during the summer of 1978 of my Mickey Mantle State Championship run. They asked to speak to me and my dad said "I wasn't ready."
He was probably right.
I'd meet Gary Ward later during my senior year of high school and he was pleasant and said he could always use a good "left-handed hitter in Stillwater."
He was just being nice.
He had Mickey Tettleton and soon Robbie Wine as catchers in Stillwater.
So, resigned to the fact my baseball career was not in Norman or Stillwater I started looking at the University of Tulsa.
And just about the time I graduated high school in May of 1980, the rocket scientists at the University of Tulsa decided to end the baseball program in favor of some women's sports.
So suddenly after 15 seasons of excellence, Gene Shell's career was over at the University of Tulsa.
Gene Shell would compile a 444-165 overall record during his career at Tulsa.
I played a half season with the Mid-Continent American Legion team at La Fortune Park and then quit.
It was my second season with them and it wasn't my high school team because we didn't have enough players interested so I was sent to the Central Braves team.
Of course, Central had their own catcher and I was forced into center field.
And, center field for an American Legion team in Tulsa wasn't too shabby, and allowed me to show scouts versatility at another position, but it wasn't where my heart was that summer.
But before I quit, Baker University had sent Rob Daugherty, a Cherokee Indian from Jay, Oklahoma and its Native Affairs guy, to Tulsa to scout me.
Based upon Rob's report, Coach Keith Hackett put together a pretty impressive financial aid package and I soon found myself in Baldwin City, Kansas playing NAIA Division II baseball for the Baker University Wildcats.
By spring break I was the starting catcher against Arkansas in Fayetteville playing against my former teammate Mike Robinson.
I hit one home run.
Lettered on the Heart of American Conference Runner-Ups and then called it a day and headed to Norman where I graduated in three years with a Journalism Degree in Advertising.
Pretty salty Intramural football, basketball and softball player too.
I regret I never got to play baseball for Gene Shell at the University of Tulsa.
It was a dream.
But I'll never forget the memories he left behind with me during those radio calls from Omaha and watching those teams at Oiler Park and shagging those baseballs down that right field foul line.
Coach Shell wrote a book called "Bottom of The Ninth" that outlined his coaching philosophy and tips for kids who wanted to be the best baseball player they could be.
Kids like me.
In his book, he featured the "Prayer of a Game Guy" which ends with this:
"When in the falling dust I get the final bell, I ask for no banners or complimentary stones.
I'd only like to know that in time gone by, You'll feel that I've been a Good Game Guy.
Amen."
Gene Shell.
A true Warrior and legendary Golden Hurricane.
A Good Game Guy.
In 1981-82, my sophomore year at OU which was my first, you couldn't pay anyone to attend an Oklahoma basketball game.
