1966 LINFIELD BASEBALL TEAM PHOTOS from the TOM ROHLFFS PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVES

1966 LINFIELD BASEBALL TEAM PHOTOS from the TOM ROHLFFS PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVES.

Tom Rohlffs says the color photos posted here are related to Linfield playing in the 1966 NAIA District 2 tournament and 1966 NAIA Areas 1 regional playoff tournament, both held in Medford, Oregon. (However, a couple of the color photos are when some of the team flew from Missouri back to PDX/Portland International Airport.)

 

After winning both those, Linfield advanced to the 1966 NAIA national baseball championship tourney in St. Joseph (a.k.a. St. Joe). St. Joe is about 55 miles from Kansas City, Missouri. The black & white photos are from Missouri.

 

Tom Rohlffs was a member of the 1966 Linfield national baseball championship team.

Linfield Athletics Hall of Fame -- NAIA National Champions 1966/Linfield College, McMinnville, Ore.

• The 1966 Linfield “Wildcats” baseball team, coached by Roy Helser, won the 1966 NAIA World Series title by beating the “Flyers” of Lewis (Romeoville, Illinois), 15-4, the night of Friday, June 10, 1966, in St. Joseph, Mo., at Phil Welch Stadium.

Not even favored to win their own Northwest Conference, the 1966 Linfield baseball team overachieved all the way to the NAIA national baseball championship. Coach Roy Helser's Wildcats were a loose and confident bunch that played with the joy of six-year-olds. Del Coursey was Helser’s assistant coach.

The Wildcats barely qualified for the NAIA World Series as the eighth seed, then surprised everyone by winning all four of their games to claim the title. Linfield won tournament games over Guilford of Greensboro, North Carolina (4-2), Lewis of Romeoville, Illinois (8-2) and Southern University of Baton Rouge, Louisiana (11-4) to advance to the championship game.

The Wildcats prevailed 15-4 over Lewis in the championship game to finish the season with a 26-9 record and the first national title in school history.

Getting to the national tournament was no easy task. The Wildcats won eight of their last 10 Northwest Conference games to claim the league title, then advanced to the NAIA District 2 playoffs at Jackson County Stadium in Medford, Oregon, where they beat Southern Oregon of Ashland, Oregon, twice, 6-0 and 11-5, and upended Eastern Washington of Cheney, Washington, 3-2.

Linfield then faced Westmont of Montecito, California, (near Santa Barbara) in the NAIA Areas 1 regional playoff tournament (in Medford) and split the first two games of a three-game series. In the deciding game, the Wildcats pulled off an exciting 5-4 victory to earn their trip to nationals.

Linfield had all the makings of a championship team. They had outstanding pitching from Stu Young, Frank Bake, Wayne Petersen and John Hart, who got credit for the victory in the championship game. They had a potent offense with hitters Alan Wells, Barry Stenlund, Frank Molek and Jay Gustafson, who led the team with a .426 average. And the Wildcats had great defense, led by shortstop John Lee.

Also making contributions to that memorable season were Jay Bandonis, Steve Collette, Gary Cox, Bob Daggett, Terry Durham, Art Larrance, Val Lewis, Rocky Reed, Tom Rohlffs, and Dennis Schweitzer.

What made the Wildcats' upset at the World Series all the more sweet was the fact that Linfield, then with an enrollment of 1,150, was beating teams with enrollments in excess of 10,000.

Young was named the outstanding player of the area and national tournament, while Gustafson, Molek and Lee were voted to the all-tournament team.

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COACH ROY HELSER, LINFIELD BASEBALL< 1966

Roy Helser, Linfield head baseball coach, led his 1966 Wildcat team to district and regional playoff victories in Medford, Oregon – where this photo was taken in team’s Tik-Tok motel parking lot – before advancing to the 1966 NAIA national baseball championship tournament in St. Joseph, Missouri (a.k.a. St. Joe) where is won the national title. (Photo courtesy of 1966 team member Tom Rohlffs, who says the car in the background in a 1959 Chrysler Imperial four-door sedan.)

McMINNVILLE SHAKEY’S PIZZA PARLOR VAN and its connection to LINFIELD ATHLETICS

In the 1960s and 1970s or so, Linfield men’s basketball “Eastern Swing” trips (to play the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho) and Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, were usually in a van from McMinnville’s Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. Del Coursey, a Linfield grad and an assistant baseball coach on the 1966 Linfield NAIA national championship baseball team, and his wife, Dixie, owned/operated Shakey’s (on 99W where Izzy’s was). Some called him “Pizza Del.” In this 1966 photo posing with the van is Linfield 1969 grad Tom Rohlffs, among those who rode in the van as a member of Linfield men’s basketball teams (coached by Ted Wilson) and baseball teams (coached by Roy Helser.)