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By Charlie McCandless Daily Times Staff Sports writers aren’t supposed to have favorite teams. But we all do. Take the case of the Waltham, Mass., Moose Lodge. While I realized any team could win the Connie Mack World Series last week, secretly I hoped it would be Waltham. Maybe it was because Waltham was the first team I contacted for a pre-series story, catching Man ager George Viens at home the Saturday before the series. Viens went to great lengths to play down his series team’s power. They were good de fensive players, Viens said, but didn’t hit well. In fact, other teams in the Waltham league hit better. So the Cinderella syndrome started. Viens nurtured the underdog feel ing throughout the series and the tac tic was bought. This was Waltham’s first trip to the World Series since 1981 so nobody in the area had seen the Mooses before. The other teams all had sent a team to the series within the past five years. Unfamiliarity helps breed the un derdog feeling. As the series wore on, it became apparent that Waltham was meant to win. After getting knocked out of the winner's bracket by Flint, which was a blessing in disguise as it kept that underdog feeling going, the Mooses displayed an incredible amount of luck, drawing two byes in the later rounds. The draw forced the stepsisters, Joliet, Ill, and Long Beach, Calif., to fight it out twice for the right to go to the ball while the Cinderella team already was there. “Waltham doesn’t have a chance,” some fans laughed. “It is a joke hav ing that team in the World Series title game. Can’t the baseball of ficials see that? They should have made Waltham play first.” But the officials didn't, playing fair and letting each team draw for the bye as each squad had a pass in a previous round. ‘Waltham barely beat Farm ington,” some fans would say. Even plate umpire for the Farmington-Waltham game John Reigar said if Duane Ward had warmed up 10 more minutes, Waltham couldn’t have touched him. But Ward didn’t, Waltham did. The fans changed their tune after the final game. The contest was over by 10 p.m. our time which meant it was just before midnight Waltham time. The ball was over by midnight so Cinderella Waltham’s carraige didn’t turn back into a pumpkin. Waltham can’t be the underdog next year. Champions never are so it leaves Farmington with Puerto Rico and maybe some other new face for the underdog fans to root for. It’s not being on top that counts, it’s the journey there. Now let's take a look at the field ing of the Farmington Connie Mack team. A proposal I heard during the CMWS was that the Farmington Amateur Baseball Congresss take the high school team, add a few pick ups and use that as the series host. Maybe the team would win some games. Don’t buy that plan. Jack Weather ford, longtime baseball fan and local league official said the reason the Farmington group switched from American Legion ball to Connie Mack was to get more people into the program. The fan plan would deny more kids of participation. The summer program shouldn’t be just to prep one team for the World Series but to teach kids to play baseball and have fun doing it. Win ning a World Series game may be important but it isn’t important enough to throw kids’ summers down the drain to get it. A look at the microfilm of the old Farmington Times-Hustler about 1920 shows the old town team baseball games were quite played up. In one game, in which Durango beat Farmington 6-5, three cartoons were placed within the story. The correspondent wanted the fans to know that a Farmington player had problems handling a hard-hit grounder. The drawing of a baseball player jumping off a burning ocean liner, getting the attention and the sympathy of a denizen of the deep. The caption: “The liner was too hot to handle.” The artwork is similar to that Sports Illustrated uses with some of its features but goes into more de tail, with little asides, much as some political cartoons do. Sometimes the cartoons were more interesting than the story.
Newspaper Details
Farmington Daily Times
Farmington, New Mexico, US
Thu, Aug 27, 1981
Page 20
Full Page
Clipped by
Jim M.
NM, USA 19 Jul 2026
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