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By David Driver
The Route 42 corridor that runs south-north through Rockingham County is the past, present, and future of a fertile baseball legacy. One could make the case that this stretch that includes Bridgewater, Dayton, Linville, and Broadway is home to the richest rural baseball landscape in the state – so let us try to prove just that. First, let us start with the schools that dot Route 42, starting at the southern end. Bridgewater College: The Eagles have won the Old Dominion Athletic Conference title 14 times, the most of any school. According to baseballreference.com, BC has had three players taken in the Major League Baseball draft: Andy Moore by the Red Sox in 1992; Buck Gordon by the Cubs three years later; and Robbi Moose by the Braves in 2000. Another BC player, Luray native Ben Huffman, was a catcher who played in the majors in 1937 and appeared in 76 games for the St. Louis Browns. His teammate was future Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby. Huffman never played in the majors again, ending his pro career in 1950 in the Northern League with Superior. Curt Kendall, the current BC athletic director, won 775 games in 34 seasons as the head coach of the Eagles before stepping down after the 2019 season. He played for BC and in the Rockingham County Baseball League. Turner Ashby High: The public school opened in Dayton in 1956 and won its first state baseball title in 1971. The Knights have won six more since then, and the seven Virginia crowns is among the most of any school in the state for baseball. TA has produced three Major Leaguers: Alan Knicely, Brian Bocock, and Brenan Hanifee, who made his MLB debut last season with Detroit. Two other TA alums made it to Triple-A as pitchers: Jimmy Hamilton and Ian Ostlund. All five of the players appeared in the RCBL before or after their pro career. The new TA opened north of Bridgewater, along Rt. 42, in 1989. Harrisonburg High: The old high school sits just off Rt. 42, and two Blue Streaks who went there played for Auburn in the tough SEC: Chris Hart and Leatherman. Hart reached the Double-A level in the Oakland system while Leatherman played in the minors for the Pirates. Old HHS was also the home field for American Legion Post 27, which advanced several times to the state tournament. Former Post 27 players include Doug Ehlers, a star quarterback for the Blue Streaks and the son of the late JMU athletic director Dean; Larry Sheets, who played in the majors for the Orioles, Tigers and Mariners; Doug Erbaugh, a TA grad who led the University of Virginia staff in appearances with 16 in 1981; and pitcher Hal Walck, a Waynesboro High and ODU product who played in the minors for the Cubs in 1983-84. Walck played for Geneva in the New York-Penn League in 1983 and another player there that year was Dave Martinez, the current Nationals’ manager. Erbaugh grew up less than a mile east of Route 42 near Dayton. Eastern Mennonite University: Another school in the city limits, and just off 42, EMU does not have the baseball pedigree as rival Bridgewater. The Royals have reached the ODAC title game just once, in 1983. But EMU has ties to two former Major Leaguers. Sheets played hoops at the school and was an assistant coach baseball coach for the Royals in 1982. Two years later he made his MLB debut with the Orioles, and the left-handed slugger was the Baltimore MVP in 1987 when he hit a career-high 31 homers. Erik Kratz, who played four years at EMU, was a catcher in the majors from 2010-20. He played in the Valley League for Harrisonburg and Waynesboro and in the RCBL for Broadway. Broadway High: The new school opened in 1998 and is less than one mile east of Route 42. One of the top baseball players at the old high school, just west of 42, was Tommie Martz, who played in the minors from 1960-68 with the Pirates and Yankees. He spent part of three seasons at Triple-A in the New York system: 1966 with Toledo and then 1967 and 1968 at Syracuse. He had a career average of .302 in the minors and returned to the Valley to star in the RCBL. Another player with Broadway ties is Chase DeLauter, the former JMU slugger who was the RCBL MVP in 2020 while playing for the Bruins. He reached Double-A in the Cleveland system last year and is one of the top prospects in the minors going into the 2024 season. Other institutions aid the Route 42 mystique, settled in between the farms that dot the corridor. That includes the RCBL, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year. Among current teams, Bridgewater and Broadway play their home games just a long foul ball from Route 42. The Reds won the RCBL every season from 1988 to 1995. The last title for Bridgewater was in 2022. A few miles west of Rt. 42, the Clover Hill Bucks have been a fixture in the RCBL for decades while Montezuma is another stronghold in western Rockingham County. The most recent title for Clover Hill was in 2019 while Montezuma captured its only crown in 2006. Further north, former member Linville won three straight RCBL titles from 1979-81 and the Patriots had several players with pro experience. Broadway won the first RCBL title, in 1924, downing Fordwick three games to one. While Harrisonburg is not rural, Route 42 runs past the present home of the James Madison University Dukes. The school has sent 14 players to the Major Leagues and two of them broke in last year: pitchers Nick Robertson with the Dodgers and Kevin Kelly with Tampa Bay. Both went to high school in Virginia. Old Memorial Stadium, which was in the same general area of the new digs, was home for decades to the Harrisonburg Turks – once a pro minor league team and then a fixture in the Valley League as a top college summer circuit. The Turks have sent a slew of former players to the majors, including 2006 World Series MVP David Eckstein; Steve Finley, who had more than 300 homers and 300 steals in the majors; Mo Vaughn, who went deep 328 times in The Show; and Billy Sample, the first JMU player to make the Major Leagues – with Texas in 1978. Harrisonburg still plays its home games just north of old Harrisonburg High, and the Turks won the league title in 2023. Thirdly, other notable baseball people spent a good deal of time on the Rt. 42 corridor in their careers. The only person born in Bridgewater to play in the majors was Bill Harman, a University of Virginia product who pitched in five games with the Phillies in 1941. Harman died in Delaware in 2007. Harman played in 1942 for Petersburg in the Virginia League but his pro career was over after the 1944 season. Futher south, in Augusta County, former RCBL and Major Leaguer Jerry May is buried just off Rt. 42 in Parnassus at Union Cemetery. A graduate of old North River High in Moscow, he played in the majors for the Pirates, Royals and Mets from 1964-73. He died in a farm accident in Augusta County in 1996. Further back in time, it was exactly 100 years ago that Rufus Heatwole played in the minor leagues, with Martinsburg, West Virginia in the Blue Ridge League. Earlier he had played for Shenandoah College in Dayton (the school moved to Winchester in 1960) and he also played for Harrisonburg in the Valley League - of which is a member of the Hall of Fame. Another product of Shenandoah College, according to baseballreference.com, when the school was in Dayton was Hank Hulvey. He was born in Mount Sidney in 1897 and is among the sacred few players to appear in just one Major League game – it was in 1923 with the Philadelphia A’s and the pitcher allowed a home run to Babe Ruth, the 230th of the stories career of the slugger. Hulvey was the starting and losing pitcher in that game, but he did have one hit in two trips to the plate. Despite a cup of coffee in The Show, Hulvey had a stellar and lengthy minor league career. He won 216 games in the minors, including 17 for Hollywood in the Pacific Coast League in 1967 – the year Ruth hit 60 homers for the Yankees. The Virginia native won a career-high 18 games in 1933 with Knoxville. Hulvey ended his pro career by going 9-4 in 15 starts with Class D Harrisonburg in the old Virginia League in 1939. Hulvey died in his hometown on April 9, 1982, and is buried at nearby Lebanon Church Cemetery. There are too many key people involved with the Turks to name in recent years. But one of them was larger than life: the late Jim Lineweaver, the long-time administrator for Harrisonburg. Bobby Wease, who played in the RCBL, has been the manager of the Turks for more than 30 years. Lineweaver, Wease and Eckstein were all members of the first Valley League Hall of Fame class in 2016. So was former Texas and Baltimore manager Johnny Oates, former TA standout Mike Bocock, and Dayton Moore, the general manager when the Royals won the World Series in 2015. Harrisonburg is also the birthplace of eight Major Leaguers: Knicely, Brian Bocock, Hanifee, Spotswood grad Daryl Irvine, former JMU pitcher Travis Harper, current Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh, pitcher Nelson Chittum, who was teammates with Ted Williams and Stan Musial, and the late Doug Neff, an infielder who played for the Washington Senators in 1914-15. He once had three hits in a game, on June 28, 1915, for Washington as ace pitcher Walter Johnson pitched a shutout in a 2-0 win over the Philadelphia A's. In 33 games in the majors, it was one just two times that Neff ever had more than one hit in a game. After his career, Neff was an educator and clergy. In 1927 he arrived in Orange to be the Rector at St. Thomas Episcopal church, according to newspaper accounts. Neff, a University of Virginia product, died at the age of 40 in 1932 in mysterious circumstances after he was lost at sea on a freighter from Norfolk to New York, according to newspaper accounts at the time. Starting with Neff, Harrisonburg natives played in the majors in these decades: the 1910s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. And several of those players have roots in rural Rockingham County near Route 42. Other contenders for best rural baseball tradition in the state? Pulaski and Martinsville are small cities in southwest Virginia that were home for decades to minor-league baseball teams. They were part of the storied Appalachian League, which no longer exists as a pro circuit. Pulaski native Ed Goodson played with several Hall of Famers with the Giants, Braves and Dodgers in the 1970s while Martinsville is the birthplace of the father-son duo of Randy Hundley and Todd Hundley. The father was an All-Star catcher with the Cubs in 1969 while the son was a two-time All-Star with the Mets in 1990s. Brooklyn-born Lou Whitaker, a borderline Hall of Famer with the Tigers, went to Martinsville High. But Pulaski (population of about 9,000) and Martinsville (about 14,000) have larger populations than Dayton, Bridgewater, and Broadway combined. So for now we will call the Rt. 42 stretch through Rockingham County the heart of rural baseball in Virginia. #30
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From the RCBL Staff As the RCBL is set to begin on May 31, we sat down with Commissioner Jeremy Washington to talk about the upcoming season and the 100th Anniversary of the league. The league had been playing 28 game seasons consistently, then switched to 21 during the Covid years. Now this year the schedule is 24 games. Why the change? The league strives to play as many games as we can within a very small window. We voted for the change to help accommodate both demographics of players we have within the league…college and high school. Are there any major rule changes this year? For years we have used the MLB rule set as when our league was implemented there was only one rule set. As our league has moved toward a league using more and more college players, we felt using the NCAA rule set would be more suitable to both the umpires and the players. We look forward to the transition. Will we see a pitch clock in the RCBL? Yes. The NCAA pitch clock rule will be enforced as it is written in the NCAA rule book. Teams will NOT be required to display a pitch clock and the timing of two minutes between innings and 20 seconds between pitches will be monitored by the base umpire. I expect this to be somewhat impactful and fans should see an improvement in pace of play. Teams are now allowed to have eight out of residency players. Why the increase? As the league rosters have grown and teams use colleges from all over the state to recruit from, we feel this increase will allow teams to fill their 30-man roster with as many competitive players as possible. We still have a few ‘old guys’ that have continued to play for many years after his college or high school career ended, but what we experience more of now is players play through their 4 (or 5) years of college and then they stop playing. Reconfiguring the ‘out-of-area’ language within the bylaws should help teams fill some of those roster spots that get vacated when players decide to stop playing. Game time has been moved up 30 minutes to begin at 7pm. Why? We moved to 6:30 on the weekends and 7p through the week to help get people (fans, players, and umpires) home sooner. We expect this, in addition to quicker games [pitch clock], will help prevent the lengthy 3+ hour games that we are used to seeing in the past. People work and have other obligations, we are trying to look out for everyone while providing good, competitive [free] baseball. Another change that will be noticed this season is the switch from Pointstreak to GameChanger. What is the reasoning behind the change? Although Pointstreak provides a much better statistical package, the scoring of the game is very difficult for many users to be efficient and accurate while scoring the game. GameChanger is much easier for the scorer to be successful. Staffing the scoring system should be easier to accommodate as well as MANY ‘travel ball’ parents are familiar with Gamechanger already. The league will be providing a full access package for ALL fans for all teams. Will player and team statistics from the Pointstreak era still be available? We will still be able to access the stats from previous seasons, however, we are not able to merge the two databases into one stat package. There is a new team in the league this year, the Massanutten Mountaineers. What are the expectations of this new team? The RCBL was founded based on providing competitive baseball for our local communities to enjoy. The addition of the Massanutten Mountaineers is going to further exemplify that model. We look forward to supporting them as they develop and grow their new program. Best of luck to Mountaineers and their staff!! I expect Massanutten to work toward developing a good relationship with the local community surrounding their home field. I feel the staff of the new Massanutten organization will be successful as they strive to run a quality program. How do you see the competition shaping up in the league this season? My outlook for the season is to expect that “on any given night any team can beat any other team”. I’ve been a fan of the RCBL since 1978 and that is way it has always been. The collective AVAILABILITY of a team far outweighs the individual ABILITY of any superstar you may have on your roster. All teams within the league have excellent baseball talent, however, the teams to beat are the ones that field that talent the most often. Is there a team to beat? There have been many roster changes throughout the off season. It will be difficult to predict who will be the most competitive until each team has played a few games. Parity within the league makes for great baseball games that our local communities can enjoy. ANY close baseball game is a great baseball game. Hopefully, every game we provide for the fans is decided during the last at-bat. The league is 100 years old, an amazing feat. What kind of activities are being planned for celebrating this year? The celebration will be held in Grottoes this year and we expect to showcase ALL former players, coaches, and contributors by asking them to attend the event so we can get them out on the field to recognize their contribution to the milestone. There will be a home run derby, a legends game, as well as our normal all-star game. We are working on having fun activities for the kids as well as Grottoes fire department fried chicken. |
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