Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: August 16, 2014

Here is my shot at pop’s sports exploits. Please add anything else that you know or that I have left out or anything like that.

You do have to remember that pop’s father, Grandpa Sam, did not like sports. The reason for it was, it would take away from his violin and he felt that pop had real talent in music, which, incidentally, he did. He did feel, though, that it was OK for pop to play tennis, although he never gave pop tennis lessons or anything like that. Pop had to learn on his own. On the other hand, pop was extremely well coordinated and completely fearless.

As a young boy, he loved baseball, a real no-no to Grandpa Sam. If you hit the end of your finger with a ball, it could compromise your violin playing, similarly with basketball, although basketball was not such a big deal in those days. Consequently, in his grade and middle school years, pop would sneak off and play sports, mainly baseball, with the other kids, or touch football (another huge no-no, of course) and then come in and hide in the closet until he would be puffed out and then pull out his violin. He did play tennis whenever he could, but that was always pick up. He had a whip in his arm and so his serve was extremely fast. I can remember when I was in high school. He no longer played, but he still had the fastest serve that I played against in those years.

He really got into sports in a big way when he came down to Marshfield High School in his sophomore year. The coach was Fred Osborne, the same Osborne who eventually moved to Corvallis and after whom the swimming pool complex here is named. He was an excellent coach. Pop turned out for football. Grandpa Sam was in Washington and Uncle Cliff encouraged him to go out for football. He was a little small but very fast and extremely fast. He started out on the last string and Uncle Cliff told Coach Osborne to look at him because he is good. Uncle Cliff had been on the so called mythical team championship at Marshfield and so the coach looked at him. But the first game, he was on the second string and by the second game he was on the first string.

Years later, at a reunion, Coach Osborne came down to Marshfield and he was in a wheel chair and he looked at pop and grabbed his ear and said, my old speedster, my old speedster, what has happened to you. Being obviously to getting hurt though was not good. In those days, the game was different than today, rougher in many ways, they had the flying wedge were about five guys would lock arms on the kick off and the guy with the ball would come up behind them. That guy was usually pop. The only way to break it was to throw a block into the leader of the wedge, which often resulted in a concussion or a broken neck of the blocker. Pop himself took hard hits on his knees. Later in life, that and the fact that he would slit his knees to get rid of the water on the knees when he was working effectively destroyed his knees. I will finish this later.

One time Brother Bob, a friend, Mike Whitty, and I decided to go camping and back pack into the Coos River Woods. It is dense and one can easily get lost. Mom was worried, but pop had a secret weapon. He drove us out to where we would hike in and then handed me the biggest water melon that I have ever seen, either before or since. You cannot believe how big that was. He said maybe we would enjoy it and then agreed to come back in three days. Well, we started hiking in, but that water melon was pretty much a downer. We passed it back and forth and then came to a creek after a mile and pitched camp.

You simply cannot hike into the hinterlands with a watermelon. So, we made a fire and later that evening, an old farmer and his son and grandson came by. He was the owner of the farm where we were camped. Mike Whitty knew the son and we got to talking and he had been a fan of pop. The year was 1950. He had seen the mythical state champions play, but said pop was the best half back that Marshfield had ever had. He and Fred Owens were the stars of the team and they remained friends the rest of their lives. Pop must have played basketball, but he never talked about it so he must not have been too outstanding. In track, though, he was excellent. For a number of years he held the County record for the 100 yard dash at 10.6 seconds. A few years later it was beaten, but he did the dashes and was excellent at that.

During the summer, he and his friend, Moon Chan, played tennis together and they won a number of tournaments. In his senior year, he was in Marcus. I do not believe that Marcus had a football team, at least he never talked about it, at least not to me. They did take the league where they played in basketball and he and the center, a big tall fellow whose feet were so big they could not find shoes for him, and they were the stars of that team and for that he got a letter. He played tennis for Marcus. I do not know how the team did, but he won all his matches. Then he graduated.

He continued to play tennis for fun, never in any tournaments after that. I remember when Don Megale was a freshman or a sophomore, he took second in the state tournament and he came out to our house to talk about it and pop said, well, let’s see how well you did, and they went over to Mingus Park and pop beat him that day. By the time Don was a senior, though, pop could not even beat the second man on Marshfield’s team, he was a fine athlete named Ron Runge, so age was creeping up on him. Also, his knees were starting to hurt. The folks did host the Coos County Badminton Championship that year in 1948 and pop won that quite handily. I remember one of the athletes who took second and Don Megale who won the doubles with his partner came out one evening and the trophies were all there and they looked at them and said, “that one is John’s”.

When I was in the second and third grade, there were several leagues of semi-pro baseball and pop organized a team sponsored by Pacific Fruit and Produce. They actually won that league, pop hit several home runs. He played third base because there was a lot of action there. I remember their pitcher very well, Red Costello, an Italian fellow from back East. Mom liked his wife, Anna, very much. They had no children, but they would take care of Red’s nephew, a little boy named Frankie Spalding who, like so many kids of that era from back East, knew a lot about baseball. Red was an excellent pitcher. He had a fast ball that you could not see and a curve that he could throw around a building. The thing is, though, after each inning, he had to have a glass of red wine. By the end of the seventh inning, he would be unable to pitch any more. By the sixth inning, he was getting to be a little wild, so he had to be taken out, Red Jordan who played second base would come in. He was not a bad pitcher either. Nowadays you would call him a closer, and he would close out the game. The city of North Bend in the last year had a pitcher who was under contract with the New York Yankees. He played one more year with North Bend and then disappeared. He was good, not as good as Red Costello, but then he did not nip on red wine between innings. Red did not nip on red wine, either, he drank the whole glass. At any rate, pop’s team won their league a couple years in a row and then the team disbanded.

When I was in the fifth and sixth grades, he organized a softball team, again sponsored by Pacific Fruit. Frankie Spalking was there. Red Costello and a fellow called Peny Pennington pitched. This time, Red only lasted a couple of Innings. They lost a few games at the start and then somebody found this guy who was wonderful. I have never seen a faster pitcher for softball than he was. His name was Harv. He was big and tall, never said much, looked pretty tough, but in reality was pretty much a pushover. So, the first year, they squeaked by and won the league, but did not qualify for the state playoffs. The next year, though, Harv was there the whole time. Frankie Spalding came, Red Costello watched, Bob, Frankie and I played. It was fun. They did not lose a game. Pop again played third base and was an excellent fielder. They were ranked number one in the state. In the state playoffs, they had to face Roseburg, a good team that they had beaten before but just barely. Well, things were going well, and then the umpire made a call that a fellow was safe when everybody could see that he was out, and so they all ganged up on the umpire, screaming and shouting and waving their arms, and the fellow who was on first base just walked quietly down to second, and then to third and then on home and the umpire gave him the score. That was totally disputed. Pop said, the game had to stop, we were having a rhubarb, pop loved rhubarbs, but the umpire stood firm, the team lost and all came home.

By the end of 1949, grandpa was no longer able to participate in violent type sports activities. Bob and I were really disappointed in that because he had played against the best athletes from Marshfield High School and North Bend’s outstanding athlete had been on his softball team. Just when we were ready to compete, he was not able to. His knees were giving him trouble and given the way he treated them, it is no wonder. He thought he was indestructible and so did we. But he could still play golf and when the other golfers came out to play at our place, they would play for a nickel or a time a hole. He always ended up winning about a quarter, he made sure that he did not win more than that. It used to irk Bob and me to see that he would throw a hole. We could always tell when he did that. The two best golfers from the country club down there were Dick Hanen and Sonny Brown at the time, Dick being the best. He could beat them on our course, which irked them no end. Of course, in those rules on our course, you could only use one club and for him that would be a three iron. The others tried everything else, but nobody could take take him.

Croquet was another thing. In the real rules, if you hit a ball, you get two shots so you would gently put your opponent out of position and then take your own shot. Well, his technique was to blast the ball out of the park which meant that they were never in contention again so the rule there was changed and you only got one shot by Guenther rules. Volleyball was another thing that he could compete in, but really, he was at his best with horse shoes. He was the best horse shoer player that I ever saw with my own eyes. He threw over 50% ringers. The Perrys all liked to play horse shoes, too, especially, old Mr. Perry, but as he got older, his sons, grandsons, and sons in law all beat him and that got his goat. But when he teamed up with pop, he could win and that really made him feel good. Still, he also aged and he got so he could not throw the shoe the whole distance. I can still see him with a shoe in his hand, walking up toward the opposite pet and his sons, sons in law and grandsons all screaming at him, Get back there, Pappy (the a pronounced as the a in cat), that is against the rules, you have to throw from the other peg, get back there, Pappy, Pappy, stop. And he would ignore them, walk half way to the peg and throw his shoe. It was poorly thrown, but pop would come back with a double ringer and keep them in the game, usually winning, much to his glee and the disgust of his sons, grandsons, and sons in law. But even that ended. By 1950, athletics for him was over. It is amazing how short a time span that was.

On the other hand, he was an amazingly good coach. He had an eye for seeing just what a person did that was wrong and how to correct it. He could take just awful material and mold it into a good and competitive team. He also had a mind like an elephant, too. He remembered what those people did that was both right and wrong and helped them. I always liked to forget about things after a game was over, but he would go over my strong and weak points in tennis and he was always right. The stories about his coaching are legion. The story that this boy told at his funeral where his pants split and pop told him to go swirl his bottom around in a mud puddle so nobody would notice was one. Another one was when the Coolen boy first was adopted and came over from Italy. He had just arrived, had never seen a basketball before, and knew no English, and pop of course put him into the game. He grabbed the ball and ran around and nobody could catch him much to the frustration of the referee. Then there was the time that it was touch and go who would win the B championship, Saint Monica’s School or Bunkerhill School. So, he had the boys buy special tennis shoes and then he had the gym floor at the armory waxed so that the Bunkerhill boys could not stand up on it. The coach, Tony Korieva was furious, but Bunkerhill lost.

Then another time when I was an 8th grader, we were at some kind of a function at the North Bend Air Port and an ex player of his game up. He was a big, strong fellow, later served time in prison for assault and battery and was eventually killed in a car accident by the graveyard out by Millington. He was about six four, 240 pounds and he was suddenly very threatening. Pop tried to make light of it, but this guy was not taking any of it. I was sitting there watching, wondering how pop would handle it. The fellow finally charged him, pop turned his back, crouched and put up his hands to protect himself. Well, the fellow sort of leapt and pop by accident grabbed his head, pulled him over his shoulder and slammed him on the ground on his back. It really took the wind out of him. The kid got up, all smiles, and asked, How did you do that? Well, said pop nonchalantly, I know a little judo. Of course, he knew no judo at all, but that is what he said. The kid had a good sense of humor, actually, though, and he took it all very well, and they remained friends.

In the end, so many of his athletes, myself included, all said that the last time they really had fun playing sports was when they played under him in grade school. After that, sports were just work. A couple of his football players played at all levels including pro football, but they all said the same thing. Sports under him was fun and under other coaches it was work. That should have not been a surprise. When he was growing up, sports were the only thing that gave him pleasure. His growing up had been rotten, but sports was fun and he was good at them. But by the time he hit forty, it was all over for him competitively, but he could still make it fun for others and he did.