This story originally ran in the June 6, 1984, edition of the Tribune
How does this look for openers?
Lewis-Clark State College — the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics baseball champion for 1984!
That accomplishment was made possible Tuesday night when the Warriors, with a history of overall excellence but an inability to win the big one, took out their past frustrations on Azusa Pacific College, bouncing the Californians 15-2 in the two- hour rain-delayed NAIA World Series finals.
“The monkey is off our back,” said LCSC Coach Ed Cheff. “We’ve come so close so many years. You can’t believe how sad it was in the dugout last year where there a lot of tears.”
The biggest baseball crowd in Lewiston history — estimated at 4,674 — jammed Harris Field to over-capacity at the start, and at the end the wildly enthusiastic LCSC partisans, most of whom had come back after the delay, were not disappointed as the Warriors caged the Cougars with an 19-hit attack that included four hits by Rick Pegram and a second inning homer by Keith Peterson, which set the tone for a night that saw a heavy rain shower delay the action.
It is apparently the first ever national championship for any Lewiston-Clarkston Valley athletic team and could not have come at a better time or before a more appreciative crowd, which swelled the week’s count to a record 33,613 spectators.
No longer will some Warrior players have those long off-seasons to play back the near misses of three second-place finishes and two third-place finishes in the national tournament dating back to 1976.
For LCSC’s Cheff, whose 82 percent winning percentage mark is tops among all NAIA mentors, past or present, the triumph culminated eight seasons of near misses at the area and national level. In fact, it was the first season in the last 12 years that the Warriors won the final game of the campaign.
Appropriately, the tournament’s most valuable player was pitcher Trace Czyzewski, who spaced out 11 hits in going the route for his second Series win. Although he hit three batters, the hard-throwing right-handed sophomore from Milwaukie, Ore., weathered two storms in fine fashion.
He did this by (1) having to come back after sitting around for two hours waiting for the rain to stop with a 3-0 lead and (2) pitching his way out of some tight situations in the early innings, thanks to a blazing fast ball, an equally effective slider and some exceptional fielding by shortstop Brian Thomas and second baseman Scott Hormel.
“I got psyched up for this game when I heard I was drafted by San Diego,” said Czyzewski, who finished a banner year 12-1, striking out seven and walking only two. “I didn’t want to win with the help of the rain. I was hoping to throw that last pitch in the ninth inning.”
When Czyzewski, a second-team All-America selection who sat out last season with a torn cartilage in his right shoulder, got the Cougars’ John Catlett on a swinging third strike to end the game at 11:45 p.m., the crowd erupted in a loud roar as players mobbed the Warrior pitcher and Cheff was eventually given a quick ride by a few of his players.
The 52-13 Warriors, who are now the second winningest World Series team in history (23 victories in 36 tries), slowly built their lead to 3-0, scoring once in the second on Keith Peterson’s homer over the right center field fence. Thomas hit a sacrifice fly in the fourth to make it 2-0 and Pegram contributed a run-scoring single in the bottom of the fifth inning with the rain coming down in sheets. At that point, C.J. Mitchell, the plate umpire, decided that it was time to get the grounds crew out and cover up the infield. •
When the action resumed at 10:25 p.m., the Warriors continued their two-out rally with Dale Bonfield driving home the game’s fourth run with a single to left and, following a hit batter, Thomas also came through with a clutch one-base shot to left to account for two more runs, and LCSC had Azusa Pacific’s first team All-America lefty Greg Swain on the ropes at 6-0.
Jim Giacomazzi, the Azusa Pacific coach, looked back on his club’s inability to get the big hit in the early going as an early key to the lopsided loss.
“We had our chances, but LC came out ready to play,” said the Cougar coach, whose club stranded 10 runners in the first six innings. “Unfortunately for us, they hit our best pitches.”
That the Warriors did as they built the advantage to 9-0 in the seventh, thanks to Peterson’s RBI single that sent Swain to the showers, Thomas’ second double to get the second run home and a bases-loaded walk to Hormel.
The Cougs broke into the scoring column in the top of the eighth on Leland Franco’s two-out double to right following a hit batter and Rich Scheevel’s single. But all it did was stimulate the LCSC bats to bigger and better things in the bottom of the inning plus providing the fans with one of the most hilarious moments in the series.
When Allan Peterson and Pegram hit back-to-back singles, Pegram tried to stretch his into a double only to find Peterson retreating to second base. The Azusa Pacific defense, which had done well to that point, came unglued as it had couldn’t decide which LCSC runner to go after, so it did the next best thing — it went after both runners. But somehow Peterson and Pegram, who on two occasions wound up briefly standing on the same base, managed to stay alive in their “picklement” with Pegram retreating to first and beating the throw.
When Bonfield reached on a high pop fly behind first that three Cougar players all converged on but couldn’t catch, one got the feeling that this wasn’t going to the Californians’ inning. Sure enough, Fred Quintero and Bill Stevenson spanked singles for two runs, and Kyle Brock unloaded a two-run double that resulted in four runs scoring when the relay was thrown into the LCSC dugout.
Just like that, it was 15-2, and the celebrating started in the LCSC dugout and in the stands. Rain began to fall again, but no one was feeling anything as the Warriors reigned in the rain.
