Baseball in Helmville

During the post-WWII years and into the late 1950s almost every town in Montana had a sandlot baseball team.

Baseball was in its heyday with Mantle, Ford, Ted Williams and others all playing, in those days. Even the smallest towns fielded teams, and the larger cities had a number of them.

As small as the town is, Helmville had its own baseball nine. All over the nation, young men who had won the war returned with an exuberance and sense of community they didn't have before they were sent overseas. And they played baseball.

The Helmville diamond was located at the grandstand where the Labor Day rodeo is held now. The grounds had a rodeo arena during the 1920s and 30s, before the war took all the cowboys away. It fell into disrepair and was eventually hauled off and burned.

The men practiced once or twice a week. The diamond was only a quarter-mile from our house and a half-mile from town, so my little colleagues and I never missed a session. We all had dreams of someday playing on the team, plus hitting a game-winning home run to become a local hero for a few days. Those were healthy dreams in the innocent years before Nixon and cynicism happened to us.

The local team had only the basic equipment, but the men were patient when we tried on the catcher's gear and borrowed their gloves to play catch while they were hitting. There were only two rules: don't hit rocks with the team's good bats, and never take any of the new baseballs out of the box. They were for games only - and precious.

Even the meager selection of gear was impressive to us. The box of a dozen new baseballs was a treasure to be admired only. We kids used a ball which had soaked in an irrigation ditch for a month and was harder than marble. It hurt our hands when we managed to hit it with the old bats we used.

The games were on Sunday afternoons. Our Helmville team had jerseys and caps donated by the HIGHLANDER brewery. One year they went to the state tournament and were in the final round when the officials discovered that Helmville was using a fellow who had pitched professional baseball. Helmville was using a ringer. So they kicked our team out of the competition, but there were no hard feelings. They knew the risk.

The pitcher was a big fellow, and of course a hero of the entire community. We kids held him in awe and he was patient with us.

That was in the mid to late 1950s, and in 1980, while at a funeral, I was walking to the car after the cemetery ceremony, when my wife introduced me to a big, handsome man. When she told me his name, I knew immediately that it was him - my hero from over twenty-five years past.

The experience was exciting, even at an older age when idols tend to decay like the rest of us. He didn't disappoint me by being a common sort; he was just as regal then as when I was ten years old.

I told him the story as I remembered it, and he added some things I didn't know. He told me that he had played for a number of baseball teams, but Helmville's was the only one that started drinking beer before the games began. Having been raised around that behavior, I thought it was the way of the baseball world.

The players aged, and due to the hiatus in procreation because of the war, there weren't enough replacements to fill the voids as players gave up the sport. We kids were too young. Adult baseball vanished in Helmville and happened in most small rural communities

About that time a couple bought a large property in the valley. They were old, Kentucky racehorse money, and brought some families of ranch personnel with them. With the new arrivals, we kids had enough to field a baseball team of our own.

Accustomed to doing things right, the new owners purchased gloves, catcher's equipment, bats, caps, and complete professional style uniforms, with the socks, jersey, shirt, hat, pants, and the rest. We were probably the only youth team in Montana rigged out like the pros.

I think we played three games, losing all of them. The ages on our team went from about seven to thirteen years old, so the teams from larger schools held a big advantage by having older players of roughly the same age.

But getting beat by twelve or fifteen runs didn't bother us. With uniforms, new bats and new gloves, we didn't need a victory to be a baseball team. We looked the part, and that was enough.

Both we and our parents knew that a baseball victory was impossible. I think now, that with a loss being a foregone conclusion, we didn't suffer undue pressure to win. We were asked only to play hard and be gentlemen on the field. We did that.

Every game was a loss for the team, but a success for the players – like youth sports should be.

Then came Nixon and others.