On top by staying on ball

Tigers ballplayers’ return to MU brings back memories of 1958

Ray Uriarte is 72 but looks as if he could step on the baseball diamond today and lead the nationally ranked University of Missouri baseball team just as he did in the 1950s.

Ray lettered three years as the Tigers third baseman, leading MU to second place in the College World Series in 1958, a season in which he set a .610 on-base percentage, a record that still stands, and was named the first-team All-America third baseman.

Ray was the team captain in 1958 and was still the team captain earlier this month when he gathered his old teammates in Columbia to watch Mizzou take three straight from Texas A&M and to relive one of Mizzou’s most memorable baseball seasons.

All but two of the living lettermen on the 1958 squad were there. They enjoyed a tour of the campus that some had not seen since 1958, swapped great stories about Coach Hi Simmons and received beautiful scrapbooks put together by Ray and Ruth, his wife of 48 baseball seasons, containing newspaper stories covering each game during the 22-7 season.

The team was introduced before the Saturday game in Taylor Stadium, a slightly different facility than the old wooden grandstand on Maryland Avenue with its outfield snow fence. Stankowski Athletic Field now occupies the spot where the 1958 Tigers prepped for their trip to Omaha.

The 1958 club won the Big Eight with a 12-3 season, setting a record of 313 hits that stood until 1974.

Getting to Omaha was a bit simpler in 1958. The Tigers had only to beat the North Central Conference champion Iowa State Teachers College - now the University of Northern Iowa - in a best-of-three playoff to advance. The Tigers won 11-7 and 13-3.

The trip to Omaha was Missouri’s third in seven years. The 1952 club had finished second, and the 1954 team had won the national title, coming through the losers’ bracket to beat Rollins University 4-1 and earn Missouri its only College World Series crown. MU teams would return for three straight years from 1962-64, finishing second again in 1964. Forty-one years have passed since Mizzou’s last appearance in the College World Series.

The 1958 Tigers were involved in one of the truly great series finals. They had won four straight, beating Western Michigan twice by 3-1 scores, clipping Holy Cross 4-1, then hammering Colorado State 11-2. MU was the only unbeaten team when it met Southern California in the finals, needing only one victory in the double-elimination tournament.

John O’Donoghue, a sophomore from Kansas City who was only 18, started for Mizzou and was up against Bill Thom, the ace of the Trojan staff. They were both brilliant, battling to a scoreless tie after eight innings. O’Donoghue had allowed only four hits and fanned eight. Then Southern Cal struck for seven runs in the top of the ninth to win 7-0.

The following day, Bud Harbin started and, with MU leading 4-0, the Trojans struck for seven runs again in the fourth. MU tied it in the eighth, and both O’Donoghue and Thom came out of the bullpen to each pitch four-plus innings in relief. The Trojans won 8-7 in the 12th inning on a soft single.

Ron Fairly and Don Buford, both of whom went on to enjoy long major league careers, led Southern Cal at the plate. One of the Trojan pitchers was Pat Gillick, general manager of the 1992-95 World Series champion Toronto Blue Jays and the man who built strong teams at both Baltimore and Seattle.

O’Donoghue survived the trauma of double defeat to sign two years later with the Kansas City Athletics. The left-hander spent nine years in the majors and another 12 years as a minor league pitching coach. He is retired in Sarasota, Fla.

The second big leaguer on the 1958 club was Sonny Siebert, the first baseman who went on to a 12-year pitching career in the majors. Like O’Donoghue, he returned to coach for 15 years in both the major and minor leagues, retiring from the game in 1998.

Pro baseball lured catcher Hank Kuhlman first, but it was in the National Football League that he made his career. He signed with the baseball Cardinals first but would spend two stints with the football Cards as a coach. His baseball career ended after four seasons, but his coaching career was 40 years in length. He joined Dan Devine at Missouri, then went with Devine to Green Bay and Notre Dame. He later worked with the Chicago Bears, Tampa Bay, Indianapolis Colts and Birmingham in the USFL as well as his two stops with the football Cardinals. He had 24 years in the NFL.

Pro baseball lured others. Pitchers Bob Cooper and Ernie Nevers and outfielders Bob Meyers and Gary Starr had their chances, but it was life after the game that gave the 1958 Tigers great satisfaction. Education was a major benefactor.

Catcher Roger Brodbeck served 16 years as superintendent of schools at Hancock in St. Louis; Jim Delbert has retired after 31 years in the Columbia Public School system, 26 of those years as principal at Lee and Shepard elementaries; Bud Harbin, like Siebert a basketball Tiger as well as a baseballer, spent 45 years in education in high school and college from California to Ohio, where he retired.

Outfielder Bob Meyer returned to MU as an assistant football coach for Al Onofrio, then had a lengthy career as a coach and administrator in the St. Louis area, retiring in 2003.

Shortstop Ralph Hochgrebe, All-American in 1959, left MU with a bachelor’s in education but wound up as an executive in a metal stamping plant, retiring in 1999. Catcher Al Lafoon retired in 2000 after 39 years as a civil engineer with the Missouri Department of Transportation.

Second baseman Paul Stehm, who still holds the team record of four stolen bases in a single game, retired recently after 35 years as an insurance executive in Cape Girardeau. Nevers, who pitched a no-hitter for the Tigers in 1957, once owned the Minnesota Fillies in a pro basketball league. Today he’s a mortgage broker in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Pitcher Bob Cooper retired in 1986 to enjoy tennis and golf after a career as an industrial engineer; outfielder Gene Grossman, who also left MU with a degree in education, is enjoying an ongoing career as a metal sculpture; Doug Gulic, who won two complete games in Omaha, followed his accounting degree for three decades, retiring in 1998; infielder Steve Lewis is also retired in Florida.

Outfielder/pitcher Bob Haas was a sophomore who went on to play football in the 1960 Orange Bowl, the only Tiger to do a CWS/Bowl double. He recently retired after a lengthy career with General Motors.

Two members of the 1958 have died in recent years. Outfielder Bo Toft was a second team All-America in 1958 who signed with the Chicago White Sox en route to a career as a lawyer. Catcher Larry Luecke became a successful businessman in Warrenton.

And what of Uriarte?

He spent 40 years in the construction business in Missouri, Alabama and Kansas, playing many years of semi-pro ball, coaching kids and keeping in touch with the 1958 Tigers. In fact, he’s still coaching a 14-under team in Overland Park, Kan.

Coach Simmons once called Ray "the best lead-off hitter I ever coached." He’s still leading off, still the hard-driving third baseman who sandwiched two years as a paratrooper between varsity years at Mizzou to lead the Tigers to Omaha in 1958 and to a great reunion in 2005.

And Simmons? That’s another story for another day.