The old adage that pitching and defense win championships couldn’t ring more true for the 1973 Oconto Falls High School baseball team.
The Panthers (16-1) used their defensive prowess to run off eight straight postseason victories while allowing just 10 runs en route to the program’s first state baseball championship.
Forty years after the team’s remarkable run, players and coaches still recall many memories quite fondly. However, some details have faded over the years.
“Memory-wise it feels like yesterday, but body-wise it feels like 40 years ago,” said Doug Meyer, who was the team’s ace pitcher as a senior.
“I can look at their pictures and it was just like it was yesterday,” then-assistant coach Mike Kaczmarek Sr. said.
The players grew up together, Meyer said, and became a close-knit group that became accustomed to success.
“From the time we were younger, we had a good team all the time,” said Chuck Grady, who was the starting shortstop that year as a junior. “In ’74, we came back and won the American Legion state championship with pretty much that same team. To be honest, we expected to win. That’s how we played the game. No one knew how to talk about losing.”
According to Kaczmarek, the team consisted of a great mix of players, including underclassmen as major contributors.
“Everybody had the love for it,” said Meyer, who finished 10-0 on the mound. “Everybody had the attitude they wanted to win.”
Head coach Fred Peterson preached defense to his players, and the guys listened.
Oconto Falls surrendered just 29 runs in 17 games (1.71 per game) for the season. The team’s only loss was to Pulaski, which plated five runs in the regular season finale.
“We had such tremendous pitching, we were in every game,” Grady said. “Good pitching and good defense goes a long ways in baseball.”
Offensively, Oconto Falls didn’t light up the scoreboard with crooked numbers, but players came through in clutch situations.
“I wouldn’t say we were a great hitting team. People just got the job done,” Meyer said.
Oconto Falls won the conference title in 1973 with an 8-1 record. However, the Panthers rebounded from the Pulaski loss and beat Bonduel, Shawano, Luxemburg, Kewaunee and Pulaski to advance to the state tournament.
Once Oconto Falls got to state in Wausau, the Panthers were a small fish in a big pond. Since the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) baseball tournament consisted of just one division, Oconto Falls had to play larger schools.
“The biggest thing I remember from the state tournament is those big schools looked at us like we didn’t belong there,” Kaczmarek said. “It was the kind of attitude like, ‘We’re here and we’re just going to kick your backside.’ That was probably one of the first times that a small school went in and did that in a tournament.”
In the state quarterfinals, Oconto Falls held Kenosha Tremper at bay and scored a 3-0 victory. Meyer pitched a complete game gem, surrendering just two hits.
Oconto Falls and Eau Claire Memorial played a tournament record-setting game in the semifinals. With the score knotted at 1-1 and two outs in the bottom of the 13th or 14th inning (Meyer can’t remember for sure), Memorial had the potential winning run on second base. The Old Abes got a hit to center field, but Lawrence Mayer fielded the ball and threw a strike to catcher Rick Brown, who applied the tag.
“At that point I had thought the game was over,” Meyer said. “I had walked outside and was inside the walkway back to the bus and everybody started cheering. I’m running back and here’s Rick Brown walking away from home plate and Lawrence Mayer had just thrown the guy out at home. … It was a play I remember that I never saw.”
The marathon game eventually ended as Oconto Falls tallied four runs in the top of the 16th inning and beat Memorial, 5-1.
The game is still the longest in WIAA tournament play, by three innings. Memorial hitters went to the plate a tournament-record 57 times; Oconto Falls logged 53 at-bats. Eau Claire stranded a record 15 runners on base and walked 12 times. Memorial pitchers struck out 19 Oconto Falls hitters.
Individually, Tom Reim is still tied in the WIAA tournament record books for most at-bats in a game with eight. Mayer is tied for third with seven. Reim and Mayer had 14 and 13 at-bats, respectively, in the tournament, which rank in the top three all time.
For the tournament, Oconto Falls finished with 100 plate appearances, which is third all time, and left 27 runners on base. The Panthers played a tournament-record 30 innings in their three games.
“We played 16 innings and we came back the next day for the championship,” Grady said. “It was a long night.”
Meyer was back on the mound in the championship game against Madison East. The Purgolders took a 1-0 lead before Oconto Falls scored twice on base-loaded walks to go up 2-1. In the seventh inning, Madison East got a lead-off single, but Meyer picked the runner off first base. Meyer then calmly struck out the final two hitters as Oconto Falls had captured its first state title.
“People were running all around, jumping up and down and picking each other up,” said Meyer, who threw two complete games at state. “They put me on their shoulders and carried me around a little bit.”
The victory capped what was a phenomenal season for the Panthers. Oconto Falls won its second title in 1978, but it’s the first championship that exemplifies the magic of a great postseason run.
“It was a good dream,” Meyer said. “Everybody wanted it and it got answered — that was nice. The town itself, what a supportive crew we had there. All the way to Wausau, there was a large number of people coming to those games. It was a big, big thing for Oconto Falls.”
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