Turnaround

Denis Munden and Mike Beuke have gone through something few other baseball players at Lewiston High School have experienced — a losing season. They’re doing their best to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Munden and Beuke played regularly last year on a Lewiston team which finished 11-15 for the season. That was the first losing season Bengal coach Dwight Church has had in 20 years of coaching high school and American Legion baseball.

Lewiston did manage to finish second to Moscow in the Idaho state invitational tournament, but even the Bengals’ success in the tournament wasn’t enough to push last year’s record over the .500 mark.

But it’s been a different story this year. While this year’s team hasn’t been as overpowering as some of Church’s in the past, the Bengals were 12-5 going into Thursday night’s game with Clarkston and are already assured of a winning regular season. They have just three regular season games to play.

Munden and Beuke have had a lot to do with Lewiston’s success this year. They’ve been packing two of the hottest bats around.

Not counting Thursday night’s game, Munden is hitting .426 while Beuke is hitting .410. Munden, a first baseman, is the team’s power hitter as he has three home runs. A shortstop with good speed, Beuke has six triples and one home run.

Both players say it’s hard to explain the difference between this year’s team and last year’s.

“Everybody worked hard in practice and we had good ballplayers and Dwight (Church) kept the enthusiasm up. It’s hard to figure out what went wrong,” Beuke said.

Munden said there were some players last year who were less than enthusiastic but that most of them were on the bench by the time the state tournament started.

This year’s Lewiston team has been playing well together, both Munden and Beuke feel.

“We’re playing a lot better as a team than we were at the first of the year,” Beuke said.

Both say the seniors have tried to assume the leadership role this year. “You’ve always got to have a leader,” Beuke said. “Sometimes you have to be the one who does the yelling and sometimes you feel like an idiot doing it,” Munden added.

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Beuke was a starter last season both in high school and on the Lewis-Clark American Legion team. Munden, however, has blossomed this spring and is hitting the ball better than he ever has.

Splitting playing time last year, Munden hit only about .225 in high school, but he improved that to about .285 in Legion.

He says added experience, physical growth and some help with his batting stance have helped him. At 6-foot-2, he now weights 180-pounds and is still filling out.

Both players feel having played a summer of Legion ball has helped them this spring.

“There’s a lot more pressure in Legion ball than in high school,” Beuke said. “Once you get through that, you go into high school ball feeling a lot more confident.”

Both have strong athletic backgrounds and are three-sport high school athletes.

The son of Mr. and Mrs. Dave Beuke of 1426 8th Ave., Beuke started playing football, basketball and baseball in junior high.

This year he alternated as the starting quarterback on the football team, played guard and was the leading scorer on the basketball team.

You might say that Munden grew into LHS athletics. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Munden, 509 Airway Drive, he started watching his older brothers compete before he was put of grade school.

His oldest brother, Gary, was another three-sport athlete who played college baseball for Lower Columbia College in Longview, Wash., and for Boise State. Another older brother, Mike, was a pitcher for Lewis-Clark State College for two years.

Denis says watching his older brothers definitely was an incentive for him to compete in athletics and that it was Gary who helped him work on his stance last summer.

“I guess whatever they’ve done, I’ve done too,” he said. “But nobody ever said I had to.”

A starter as a junior at defensive end on the football team, Munden suffered a knee injury and underwent surgery. He switched to tight end and started again this year. He was also a part-time starter as a forward in basketball.

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While both Beuke and Munden are three-sport letter winners, they both agree that baseball is their best sport and the one they’ll probably stay with in college.

Beuke has talked with several smaller colleges about playing basketball and baseball and some larger ones about just baseball.

Munden says he hasn’t been contacted by any colleges yet but he would like to play for Lewis-Clark State or Boise State.

Both say they’ve always thought about playing college baseball.

“I always did,” Munden said. “I always thought if I could be as good as my brothers, I’d get an offer.”

Beuke says he’d like to help his parents out by earning a scholarship.

“I’d been hoping my years in baseball would give me a scholarship. For as much time as my parents have invested in me watching me play, baseball, I feel like I owe them something.”

This story was published in the May 4, 1979, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.