30 years later, McNary baseball celebrates with pride
Celts vividly recall the semi-final victory that got them to the 1992 title game
On June 6 of 1992, the McNary Celtics captured the Valley League’s second straight OSAA State Baseball Title—defeating Pendleton 7-4 on that Saturday afternoon at Portland’s Civic Stadium. It followed a state championship for South Salem the previous season. But there is a lot more to the story that has never been fully explained.
What many of the McNary players focused on during the 30th year celebration of their feat was not the title game, but the semi-final matchup a few days earlier in Medford, where the Celts clawed back from certain defeat to thump North Medford, 12-4. It was a game that many Celtic fans consider to be the biggest comeback in Oregon prep baseball history.
In that contest, McNary showed its team-oriented resilience, rallying from a 4-0 deficit in the final inning against Major League-draftee Bob Wolcott.
Wolcott—a second round pick of the Seattle Mariners—and a hurler who made it to “the show” in just three minor league seasons—had handcuffed the normally productive McNary offense for six full innings, striking out nine along the way. Things were looking bleak.
“We were dead in the water,” first team all-state shortstop Kasey Flicker remembers dismally.
But in the top of the seventh, Wolcott walked McNary first baseman Brian Peerenboom—and North Medford’s legendary coach Jim McAbee decided to remove his ace from the game.
McNary’s 85-year-old Hall of Fame Coach Vic Backlund recalls that the decision to remove Wolcott from the game was on the pitcher himself.
“The deal he had with the coach was that if he got tired, they would take him out,” recalls Backlund.
“Wolcott got tired, told the coach, and the coach thought they could hold the four-run lead.”
It turned out to be a major mistake.
McNary proceeded to send 17 batters to the plate in that last inning, methodically chipping away at the Black Tornado advantage. Counting Wolcott, a total of four North Medford pitchers were called upon in the frame. They combined to produce nine walks, while yielding six Celtic base hits. When Zack Zeek dropped a fly ball into left field as the ninth batter of the inning, McNary took its first lead at 5-4.
But they weren’t done.
The Celtics nearly batted around twice in the seventh, taking approximately an hour of time to do so. Flicker’s deep fly out finally ended the rally, but not before the Celtics had the 12-4 advantage. North Medford had nothing left in the tank and went down in order in the bottom of seventh to preserve the Celts’ final margin of victory. By the way, McNary had scored nine of their runs with two outs.
Backlund admits he made what could have been a major coaching mistake earlier in that key inning.
“A pitch skipped away from the catcher a short distance, and I sent Paul Wecker home from third with us down 4 to 3. But they made a great play and Paul was out. That made it two down and we had to keep it going one batter at a time.”
Note to McNary parents at that point: whew!
But the question remains—why has so much weight been put on that semi-final victory at North Medford High?
Celtics all-league second baseman Tony Gray, who recorded two hits and three RBIs during the seventh-inning rally, said the reason for the historical emphasis was “we never stopped believing, even in that inning, that we could win.”
Echoed Flicker: “We overcame the beast! We felt all year we had a great senior-led squad. And we did.”
Coach Backlund concurs with the assessment of two of his top players when it comes to the 1992 Celts baseball team and the test they faced in the semis.
“The ‘92 team had the best speed of any squad I ever coached-from one to nine in the line-up.”
And that speed is what the Celtic coaching staff took advantage of all year. McNary stole an amazing 129 bases during the thirty-game season. That translates into an impressive 4.3 steals on average per game.
“We routinely stole bases,” said Backlund matter-of-factly. “watching other teams crumble as they tried to stop our running game was so much fun.”
The North Medford semi-final game for McNary was much like the Soviet semi-final game for the American hockey team in the 1980 Olympic games at Lake Placid. The semis were emotionally overwhelming, while the championship game was almost an after-thought.
“We scored early against Pendleton,” said Backlund.
Seven runs in the first three innings to be exact, while the Buckaroos were held scoreless until the bottom of the third.
“We knew we scored ten runs a game (on average), and could explode at any minute,” reminisces Gray.
In the end, the Celts were simply too confident and too much in charge at Civic Stadium, providing Vic Backlund with his second state 4A title trophy at McNary.
Now rapidly approaching the age of 50, the Celtic players collectively gathered at the house of long-time team booster Clint Holland on a hot summer July evening to celebrate and look back on their monumental feat.
For many of the players, the hair on top is thinning, while the midsection is not-so-thin. But the memories of a youthful victory embedded deep in each player after years of Little League, middle school and high school baseball do much to help them all ignore the subtle changes in their appearance. And that is how athletes remain forever young.
Congratulations to the 1992 McNary Celtics baseball team.