Sunday, April 26, 2009

On Septemer 3, 1939 fifteen teenaged ballplayers, wearing baggy pinstripe uniforms with "Omaha No. 1" embroidered across their chests, stood alone atop the American Legion baseball pyramid.  As the newly-crowned champions of the American Legion World Series, they were the sole survivors from among the more than 30,000 teams and 500,000 ballplayers who competed that year for Legion baseball's top prize.  Today, seventy years, later the McDevitts still stand alone -- as the only Nebraska American Legion team ever to have won the coveted national championship. 

The McDevitts' journey to the national championship began with fourteen straight regular season wins, including a 2-1 win over Alamito's and a 4-1 win over their bitter rivals, the South Omaha Red Tops.  That rivalry probably had its origins in the fact that these were the two best teams in Omaha, but it was also fueled by the fact that one of the McDevitts' best pitchers, Sam Russo, was a Red Top defector who transferred from Omaha South to St. Joe's High School so that he could play on the McDevitts with fourteen ballplayers from Creighton Prep.  The level of passion surrounding the game during that era is not to be underestimated and is evidenced by the fact that more than 10,000 fans gathered late that summer at Fontenelle Park in North Omaha to see the McDevitts and the Red Tops battle for the state championship -- the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game in Nebraska at that time.    

Following a two-game sweep of the Red Tops in the best-of-three series, the State Champion McDevitts, now 20-0 and coached by Prep's Maurice H. ("Skip") Palrang, traveled by train to Aberdeen, South Dakota to compete in a single elimination American Legion Regional Tournament -- one of eight such regional tournaments across the country that represented the first level of national competition among champions from the various states.  The Nebraska champs opened regional tournament play by defeating the 20-1 host team, Aberdeen, by a score of 7-4, and the next day defeated Grand Forks, North Dakota, 8-3, to claim the Regional Championship.   Winning the Regional advanced the team to the single-elimination Western Sectionals in Stockton, California where they competed against regional championship teams from Topeka, Kansas and Los Angeles for the right to play the Eastern Section champs for the national championship of American Legion baseball. 

Two years earlier, the national championship dreams of the 1937 McDevitts team had come crashing down in the Western Sectional Tournament with a painful eleven-inning loss in New Orleans.  That loss left them just one win short of playing Eastern Sectional Champion Eastland, Massachusetts in the World Series that would have been played in Omaha had they won. Now, in 1939, following a 9-4 opening game win over Topeka, the young ballplayers from Omaha had squandered an early 4-0 lead against the undefeated Los Angeles team and found themselves once more far from home and battling for survival in extra innings of the Western Section finals with their hopes of reaching the World Series again hanging by a thread.  

After the California team had tied the score at four in the bottom of the sixth, the two undefeated ballclubs battled through six more scoreless innings.  The Omahans came to bat in the top of the 13th inning with the score still knotted, 4-4.  Bud Blessie reached base with a single, and Jiggs Conway did the same.  After the hitters were advanced to second and third, Tony Nocita was given an intentional walk to load the bases. With the bases full of McDevitts and one out, the coach of the Los Angeles team went to the mound and took the ball from starting pitcher Frank Bruno, who was beginning to tire after 12 1/3 innings.  In from the bullpen strode a big, tall righthander named Paul Soderberg. 

As he watched Soderberg throwing sizzling fastballs during his warm up, Palrang muttered aloud in the dugout, "we've got this game won now."  The next hitter for the McDevitts was first baseman Francis "Link" Lynam.  "Link was a good fastball hitter," recalls catcher Sam Buda, a retired dentist who still lives in Omaha and is, along with Lynam and Russo, one  of only three surviving members of the team.  "That pitcher was a real big kid -- maybe 6'5"," recalls Buda.  "When Palrang saw him warming up, throwing those fastballs, he knew that Lynam could hit him."  Lynam dug in against the imposing reliever and worked a full count before driving a fastball into right center that scored Blessie and Conway to give the McDevitts  a 6-4 lead.   "I was just hoping to draw a walk," muses Lynam seventy years later. 

Lynam, the father of current Papillion LaVista South varsity head coach Bill Lynam and Papillion LaVista reserve coach Jim Lynam, recalls that the entire Omaha community was pulling for the Prep team.  The play-by-play action was transmitted from California by telegraph to Omaha radio station KOWH where an announcer relayed the action to anxious listeners. "During the game my dad was so nervous he sent for the St. Pat's parish priest to come over and walk around the block saying the Rosary while the whole family was glued to the radio," recalls Lynam with a chuckle. 

Those prayers were answered in the bottom of the thirteenth inning.  With future major leaguer Billy Wachtler on the mound, the McDevitts held Los Angeles scoreless in the final frame to win the Western Sectionals and realize the elusive dream that had tantalized them two years earlier in New Orleans.  

The McDevitts returned by train to Omaha where they were swarmed by a throng of well-wishers who had gathered in the very train station that has since been restored as today's Durham Museum, where the team will be inducted into the Omaha Sports Hall of Fame.  "The train station was packed -- thousands of people," remembers Lynam.  "After we finally made our way through the crowd, we were put into convertibles that formed a big parade through downtown Omaha.  It was a really big deal for everyone." 

The site of the American Legion World Series alternated each year between the home field of the Eastern Section champs and that of the Western Section champs.   In 1939, the Series was scheduled to be played at the home of the western champs, thus, the train that had just arrived from California not only returned the undefeated champs -- it also delivered to Omaha the first American Legion World Series ever to be played west of Chicago. 

The 1939 American Legion World Series was held August 31 through September 3rd at Fontenelle Park in Omaha, currently the home field of the Omaha North Vikings baseball program.  "The game probably would have been played at the old Western League ballpark at 16th & Vinton Street," observed Lynam, "but it burned down in 1936.  It was the nicest ballpark in town and held about 15,000 people."  As it turned out, bleacher seats had to be ordered from Chicago and brought in from the University of Nebraska and Creighton University to accommodate the large crowds expected to watch the Omaha team play for a national championship. 

The McDevitts' opponent for the best-of-five series was the Eastern Section champion, Berwyn, Illinois.  In the first game, the home team's victory string looked like it would be broken as the McDevitts trailed Berwyn 6-4 with two outs in the ninth, but clutch hitting by Team Captain Ray Henningsen and Billy Wachtler gave the McDevitts a 7-6 lead, and a brilliant defensive play by Walt Matejka clinched Game One of the national championship series.

The next day the McDevitts' twenty-five game win streak did finally come to an end with a 9-6 loss.  The third game was a ten-inning affair that the Omaha team won, 2-1, with Russo on the mound.  That win put the local ballclub in position to claim a national championship with a win the next day.  Russo, who now lives in Arizona, "had a very nice curve ball that moved in on the hitter," noted Buda.  "I got the job of catching Russo because it wasn't easy to handle his curve ball."  Buda's efforts behind the plate did not go unnoticed as the Omaha World Herald's account of that game notes that "Second to nobody's play was the catching of Sam Buda.  Russo's pitches, breaking out and down and sometimes towards the batter, were received neatly all day." 

A crowd of approximately 13,000 crammed into Fontenelle Park on Sunday, September 3rd, 1939 with high hopes that the local ballclub could convert the 2-1 series lead into a national championship.  Catcher George Dunn fueled those hopes by breaking open a 2-2 tie with a two-run double in the sixth inning.  The local team scored two more runs in the inning and held on for a 6-2 victory.  Bud Blessie held Berwyn to six hits while striking out six for the win.  The dramatically understated lead paragraph of the Omaha World Herald's account of the final game was succinct, yet descriptive:  "Smooth, skilled and playing with murderous calm, the Omaha McDevitts won the national championship of American Legion baseball Sunday at Fontenelle Park." 

Following their victory, the newly-crowned national champions were awarded Elgin watches and treated to another long cross-country train trip as guests of the American Legion, this time in the opposite direction.  Their destination was none other than Yankee Stadium where they would see the first two games of the 1939 Major League World Series between the New York Yankees and the Cincinnati Reds on October 4th and 5th.  The Omaha boys saw the three-time defending World Champions win both games en route to a series sweep in four games.  The team also took in a Broadway play -- "Hellzapoppin''" at the Billy Rose Arcade -- and the wonders of the 1939 New York World's Fair.  It was the second such world exposition for the ballplayers that summer as they had also experienced the Golden Gate International Exposition at Treasure Island near San Francisco while in California for the Western Sectional.  That Exposition celebrated the city's two newly-built bridges, the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge.

In Lynam's estimation, perhaps the biggest thrill of all for the team was a stop at South Bend, Indiana on the return home from New York where the players from two Catholic schools saw the Notre Dame Fighting Irish defeat Georgia Tech, 17-14. 

Buda recalls that, prior to departing on the victory celebration tour, team sponsor Frank McDevitt generously outfitted each of the boys with a new suit, shirt, tie, shoes and hat.  "He didn't want us looking like a bunch of country bums," recalls Buda with a smile.  "We wore those suits all over New York.  We had great seats at Yankee Stadium, they introduced us over the PA system, and we even caught a few glimpses of celebrities.  I remember seeing boxer Joe Louis sitting a few rows away and comedian Joe E. Brown.  None of us had ever been further from home than a trip to Lincoln.  For us to go on train trips to both coasts and see all the sights that we saw, including two World Fairs, just made a tremendous impression on us.  It was an amazing opportunity for a group of kids who had never been out in the world."

As it turns out, events beyond the realm of baseball soon caused those same boys to see much more of the world than they had probably ever imagined they would.  While the American Legion World Series games were being played in Omaha in late August and early September of 1939, Hitler's war machine was marching into Poland.  The sixteen and seventeen year old baseball players were young men of nineteen and twenty when the United States entered World War II in 1941, and most served in the military at some point during the war.  George Dunn, whose two-run double was the big hit of the championship-clinching game, was wounded three times in World War II and the Korean War.  Star pitcher and hitter, Billy Wachtler lost an older brother, Elmer, in combat, remembered by many as one of the best sandlot players ever to come out of Omaha.  Dr. Buda had an older brother killed in France and another wounded in Germany. 

Following the war, some pursued careers in baseball -- including Wachtler, who made it to the major leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals.  "Billy hurt his shoulder diving into a foxhole in the war," recalls Buda.  "He went up to the big club after the war.  They gave him a chance, but he never could throw as well after the injury as he did before."  Russo was another who had "major league stuff" but injured his throwing arm from overuse and was unable to realize his full potential.  "There was a famous big league umpire who called some of the games in our World Series -- a big, dramatic guy named Quigley," remembers Buda.  "As I was catching Russo, he leaned over to me and said, 'that kid is going to be a big leaguer someday with that curve ball.'  But Russo hurt his arm, and that was the end of it.  But Sam did get his picture taken with Marlene Dietrich in Europe during the war," chuckled Buda.

Several of the McDevitts went on to have very successful careers in endeavors outside of baseball, including Buda and Frank Mancuso, who were both dentists -- Buda for fifty years. Jack Larkin served two terms in the Nebraska legislature, John Bendekovic was on the faculty of Ohio State University, Henningsen worked for IBM, and defensive standout Walt Matejka switched sides and became a prosecutor for the City of Omaha.  Link Lynam became a pharmacist. His Lynam Drug in Papillion sponsored Midget (Junior Legion) teams in the seventies and eighties that won state championships with sons Jim (1975) and Mike ('81 and '82) on the rosters. Oldest son Mark also won a Midget Championship in the mid-60's playing for Markel Ford (Prep).  Lynam and his wife Margaret, the parents of five sons and two daughters, will celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary in September.  

In the years that have followed the McDevitts' historic accomplishment, eleven Nebraska Legion teams have reached the American Legion World Series.  Two teams (1985 and 2001) have finished third, and one (1965) finished as National Runner Up.  The 1994 team had three players who were related to members of the McDevitts:  Mike Koltz, grandson of Sam Buda, Brian Blessie, grandson of Bud Blessie and Tony Manganaro, nephew of Tony Nocita.  The coach of the 1994 team, Bill Olson, and his son Gregg, a member of the 3rd place 1985 team, will be inducted into the Omaha Sports Hall of Fame alongside the McDevitts. 

On Wednesday, nearly seventy-years after their national championship season, Buda, Lynam and Russo, along with survivors and family members of the deceased players and coaches of the 1939 McDevitts, will enjoy the warm glow of the spotlight once again.  Despite the passage of time, the legacy of the McDevitts lives on in the hearts of those who continue to be inspired by their skill and their "murderous calm" in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. 

Read More about the McDevitts:

 Omaha World Article from 1989 - 50th Anniversary of National Championship

 Article about the McDevitts written by John D. Markey, son of team member Dick Markey

Roster of the 1939 Omaha McDevitts:

Skip Palrang, Head Coach (later became football coach at Creighton University and had a long and distinguished coaching career at Boys Town)

Bob Miller, Assistant Coach

Sam Russo, pitcher
Bill Wachtler, center field, pitcher, 1st team all-state (played for St. Louis Cardinals)
Frank Mancuso, right field
Ray Henningsen, second base, 1st team all-state, All-City four years in a row - never struck out once in his high school career
Walt Matejka, third base
Clarence "Bud" Blessie, pitcher, 1st team all-state
George Dunn, catcher, 1st team all-state
Anthony Nocita, shortstop
Sam Buda, catcher (played football and baseball for Creighton University)
Francis ("Link") Lynam, first base
Jack ("Jiggs") Conway, left field
Jack Larkin, left field
Dick Markey, left field
Dick Hanna, pitcher (played for Omaha Cards)
John Bendekovic, catcher

Blase Cupich, batboy
 

Other Nebraska teams to have competed in the American Legion World Series: