5.8.07 Nineteen sixty-one
This entry was posted on 5/7/2007 2:09 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
This has been a remarkable year for the Lynx by any standard. Individual records were set by Robert Flanagan with twelve wins and Richard Hurd with thirty-eight consecutive games reaching base, usually more than once. Hurd was also named hitter of the week for all of Division III and, along with first baseman Daniel Vanaman and pitchers Chris Catalanotto, Andy Holt, and Flanagan (twice), he was a SCAC player of the week. Building on the 2006 season, in which Rhodes was named the most improved DIII team in the nation, the Lynx won a record thirty-six games this year and are nationally ranked. The only suspense now is whether the team will receive a bid to the NCAA DIII championship.
All this brings to mind the 2007 team's sole peer in national excellence: the 1961 Lynx of Southwestern at Memphis. Based on research in the Rhodes archive and a sneak peek at an article by pitcher/outfielder Charles Killinger '64 that's coming out in Rhodes magazine, here's what I have learned about that team, which was admitted last fall into the Rhodes College Athletic Hall of Fame, the only team ever to be so honored.
By 1961 baseball already was a long tradition at Rhodes--indeed, it was the college's first sport, started in 1879 when the school was still called Southwestern Presbyterian University and its campus was in Clarksville, Tennessee. Despite occasional long-ago victories against Vanderbilt, Alabama, and Ole Miss, however, winning baseball was not a tradition. Five years after moving to Memphis, Southwestern actually dropped the sport from 1930 to 1948.
The team assembled by Coach Woody Johnson in 1961 included a number of returning baseball players as well as several fine athletes from the football and basketball teams. After running off a 14-0 winning streak, including an 8-5 defeat of nationally ranked Arkansas State, the team finished the regular season 19-5--good enough to secure an invitation to the Mideast college championship on the DePauw University campus in Greencastle, Indiana. The Lynx made it to the Mideast finals and defeated Ball State 5-3 to win the region, thereby qualifying for the national college championship. In the pre-Division I-II-III era, the NCAA's college championship was roughly the equivalent of the modern Division III championship.
Fortunately or unfortunately, none of the other regions managed to organize tournaments in 1961, which meant that the Lynx were the only team that could plausibly claim to be the national champion. It's not clear that the NCAA agreed--the only plaque that the Rhodes archive has even a photo of says we're the Mideast champion--but no other team in the country made it even that far.
The 1961 team was led by senior cocaptain and second baseman Billy Landers, whose .476 batting average is still the record for a Rhodes player. (He also stole thirty-eight bases in the first twenty-two games of the season.) Landers and shortstop Buddy McAfee both signed professional contracts, Landers with the Cardinals and McAfee with the Houston Colt 45s, as the Astros were then called. The team's leading pitcher was Bob Moseley, who beat Arkansas State for his eighth win of the season and then picked up wins nine and ten in consecutive-day victories against Mississippi College. Other standout players include cocaptain Robert Echols, catcher Jerry Manley, first baseman David Miles, pitcher Larry Thomas, and outfielders Lou Johnson, Tommy Johnson, and Pat Burke.
P.S. You can now connect to http:seriousplaythebook.com from www.d3sports.com/dailydose/ and also from www.rhodes.edu/athletics and www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball.
All this brings to mind the 2007 team's sole peer in national excellence: the 1961 Lynx of Southwestern at Memphis. Based on research in the Rhodes archive and a sneak peek at an article by pitcher/outfielder Charles Killinger '64 that's coming out in Rhodes magazine, here's what I have learned about that team, which was admitted last fall into the Rhodes College Athletic Hall of Fame, the only team ever to be so honored.
By 1961 baseball already was a long tradition at Rhodes--indeed, it was the college's first sport, started in 1879 when the school was still called Southwestern Presbyterian University and its campus was in Clarksville, Tennessee. Despite occasional long-ago victories against Vanderbilt, Alabama, and Ole Miss, however, winning baseball was not a tradition. Five years after moving to Memphis, Southwestern actually dropped the sport from 1930 to 1948.
The team assembled by Coach Woody Johnson in 1961 included a number of returning baseball players as well as several fine athletes from the football and basketball teams. After running off a 14-0 winning streak, including an 8-5 defeat of nationally ranked Arkansas State, the team finished the regular season 19-5--good enough to secure an invitation to the Mideast college championship on the DePauw University campus in Greencastle, Indiana. The Lynx made it to the Mideast finals and defeated Ball State 5-3 to win the region, thereby qualifying for the national college championship. In the pre-Division I-II-III era, the NCAA's college championship was roughly the equivalent of the modern Division III championship.
Fortunately or unfortunately, none of the other regions managed to organize tournaments in 1961, which meant that the Lynx were the only team that could plausibly claim to be the national champion. It's not clear that the NCAA agreed--the only plaque that the Rhodes archive has even a photo of says we're the Mideast champion--but no other team in the country made it even that far.
The 1961 team was led by senior cocaptain and second baseman Billy Landers, whose .476 batting average is still the record for a Rhodes player. (He also stole thirty-eight bases in the first twenty-two games of the season.) Landers and shortstop Buddy McAfee both signed professional contracts, Landers with the Cardinals and McAfee with the Houston Colt 45s, as the Astros were then called. The team's leading pitcher was Bob Moseley, who beat Arkansas State for his eighth win of the season and then picked up wins nine and ten in consecutive-day victories against Mississippi College. Other standout players include cocaptain Robert Echols, catcher Jerry Manley, first baseman David Miles, pitcher Larry Thomas, and outfielders Lou Johnson, Tommy Johnson, and Pat Burke.
P.S. You can now connect to http:seriousplaythebook.com from www.d3sports.com/dailydose/ and also from www.rhodes.edu/athletics and www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball.