ASHLAND, Ky. – It was a brotherly battle – maybe the only good reason for this game to be played – between Holy Family boys basketball teams from 1973 and 1981.
Call it the Bradley Bowl.
With Bill and Joe Bradley on opposite teams, the two Fighting Irish teams laced them up one more time in a simulated game.
Neither team was that memorable during their own season, but this game had some of its own Twilight Zone twists. For instance, Bill Bradley the player in 1973 was going against Bill Bradley the coach in 1981.
“Boys, make sure we shut down No. 12,” coach Bradley told his 81 Irish, referencing his number instead of himself. “I know what that guy is like and he’s a killer.”
“You mean Keller, coach?” Tom Adkins asked, referring to 73’s Miles Keller, the leading scorer.
“No, pay attention!” coach Bradley said. “I’m talking about the skinny guard. He’s money for them.”
It was that kind of weird night.
Once the game started, all bets were off. With a nicely played second quarter, the 81 Irish outlasted the 73 Irish, 67-63. David Selby, who collected 21 points and 12 rebounds, scored the last four points after the 73 Irish had pulled within 65-63 on a driving basket from Mike Stewart with 1:21 remaining.
Selby’s last basket came with 51 seconds to play but neither team scored the rest of the way.
As for the Bradley battle, it was a pretty good one. Joe outscored his big brother, 17-15 and also had five assists. Bill made all seven of his free throws and had four assists as well.
“Kudos to Joe,” said Bill Bradley the player after the game. “He got after us pretty good. Of course, it looked like he had the refs in his back pocket. I think he got about 10 fouls tonight.”
“Great effort from Joe tonight. He was clearly the best Bradley on the floor,” added Bill Bradley the coach. “He learned a lot from watching me over the years.”
Neither team played great but did enough to keep it interesting. A decisive second quarter when the 81 Irish held a 20-12 advantage proved to be the difference. Their biggest lead was 11 points but the game was tightly played.
Miles Keller scored 21 points with seven rebounds and Stewart collected 12 points and five rebounds.
John Sweeney joined Joe Bradley and Selby in double figures with 10 points.
“Nothing to write home about in this game,” said 73 coach Bill Carroll. “I hope you can find some of my better Holy Family teams for me to fantasy coach in the future.”
A matchup between 1967 and 1980 Holy Family teams is next on the docket.
Real life
Holy Family’s 1981 team finished 12-18 in coach Bill Bradley’s inaugural season. They did have some moment, including taking Ashland to overtime before losing 71-69 in the district tournament.
Holy Family’s 1973 team finished 13-17 and averaged only 49.3 points per game but allowed only 54 as coach Bill Carroll squeezed everything he could out of them. Fairview eliminated the Irish in the district.
When the 2020 Kentucky high school basketball season abruptly ended without putting down one dribble in the Sweet Sixteen, my heart ached for those 16 schools who had fought so valiantly to earn a place among the state’s elite. They were denied the opportunity to play out their dreams on the Rupp Arena floor because of the coronavirus that paralyzed the world.
It was heartbreaking for each of the regional champions but maybe especially so for the Ashland Tomcats, who had been perfect to that point. They were all dressed up with a 33-0 record and no place to go.
The Tomcats displayed a throwback kind of teamwork that had everybody wanting to watch them play and comparing them to some of the best in Ashland history.
But how would they do against the best of the best?
Sweet 16 games for the 2020 State Tournament were played through computer simulation and stories written using my sportswriter background to “report” the outcomes.
You’ll have to read Tomcat Tales to find out what happened at the Sweet 16 and many more games!
No high school in Kentucky has the tradition of the Ashland Tomcats. They have won 33 regional championships, four state championships, been runner-up four times and a national champion. They were the first team in Kentucky to 2,000 victories – hitting that milestone during the 2020 season. They have more wins than any team in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Tomcat Tales will take readers to 1928 when the Tomcats ruled the state. They have battles with the 1961 Tomcats that won the state championship and even the 2020 Tomcats that were striving to match the record. Every regional champion since 1953 is represented at least once, along with a lot of other years.
Tomcat Tales lets your imagination run wild. Go back in time with me to honor some of the greatest basketball players and coaches to ever walk the streets of Ashland, Kentucky.
It may even make for a perfect dream ending.
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One great thing about my job of 42 years at The Daily Independent was the chance encounters with the celebrity world.
For me, it was the sports celebrity world.
The list goes on and on of sports heroes that I’ve been able to interview – Muhammad Ali, Pete Rose, and Michael Jordan, to name a few.
And, oh yes, Mickey Mantle.
The story of my five-minute interview with The Mick is much better than the interview itself.
Mantle, the baseball idol of the 1950s and 1960s, is a name that everybody knows.
It was back in 1989, long after Mantle had retired from baseball as one of its all-time home run leaders. The Mick didn’t just hit home runs, he hit them out of sight. His legend was unprecedented.
While browsing through a magazine at work one day, I began reading an article about the Mickey Mantle-Whitey Ford Fantasy Camp in Fort Lauderdale. At the bottom of the article, there was a number to call. It had a 606 area code and a 474 exchange. That said one thing to me — Grayson, Ky.
The curious reporter in me made the call to the number and on the other line was Wanda Greer, who was the camp director. Dave Carter, who produced the “Ashland’s Field of Dreams” documentary and many outstanding others, was the one who started the fantasy camp many years ago before anyone else was doing it. Dave has always been ahead of the curve. Now about all of them do it. But for several years, it was only the Yankees.
I set up an interview with Wanda and she asked if I’d like to speak with Whitey and Mickey.
Well, uh, absolutely, I told her.
So the wheels were put in motion. She actually gave me Ford’s number and I called him about a day later. We spoke for 15 of 20 minutes about the camp, about Mickey and about Wanda. It was a good interview but The Mick would be what could turn the article from good to great, at least in my estimation.
Wanda said Mickey would be a little harder. She wasn’t going to share his number, which was understandable. And, besides that, Mickey was always on the go, flying here and there, doing autograph signings or whatever. He was Mickey Mantle and that was job enough.
Wanda took my home phone number – these were the days before cell phones — and told me when Mickey was available she’d give me a call.
That was good enough for me. So I waited.
One Sunday night, my wife, then 5-year-old son, 2-year-old daughter and I were at church. My wife wasn’t feeling well, so she told me she was taking the kids and going home. We’d driven separately, so that would be fine.
On the way home from church, my wife drove by the Oakview Elementary playground and Stephen, being an energetic 5-year-old, begged her to stop.
“No,” she said, “if we were anywhere right now, it would be in church. The only reason we’re going home is because Mommy doesn’t feel good.”
So that was that. Stephen wasn’t happy about it but understood as much as 5-year-olds understand these things.
Well, lo and behold, when Beth arrived home she got a phone call and Wanda Greer was on the other end. She asked for me and Beth told her I was at church. She told Beth that if there was any way possible, could she have me at the phone in 15 minutes because Mickey Mantle was going to be calling.
Mickey Mantle!
My wife knew I was working on the story and didn’t want me to miss the opportunity. She hurried back to church, with Stephen and Sally in tow, and told someone in the back of the church, in our sound room, to let me know.
He came down the side aisle – I was sitting near the front – and told me. I jumped up and walked out of church and headed for home, excited about the opportunity that awaited.
In the other car, Beth was posed with an interesting question by our 5-year-old: “Mom,” he asked, “is Mickey Mantle bigger than God?”
Wow! What a zinger. Always quick on her feet, Beth said, “Well, no, but this is different. It’s Daddy’s job. That’s why we got him out of church.”
It turned out, that wouldn’t be when the interview with The Mick happened, just a sobering and hilarious sidenote. Mantle was at an airport and didn’t have time to make the call. Wanda called me and apologized and promised that Mantle would call me at work on Saturday.
That was fine with me. I was working on a Saturday morning – the paper was afternoon back then – with the late Tony Curnutte.
Nobody was a bigger baseball fan than Tony. When I told him The Mick was calling today, he was giddy.
I told him that we needed to make sure one of us was always near the phone because I didn’t know when the call would happen. Well, naturally, The Mick called when we were both away from the desk.
Our switchboard operator at the time didn’t look for me because she thought it was a bogus call.
“Somebody saying he was Mickey Mantle called but I knew it couldn’t be him,” she said. “So I hung up on him.” “What?” I screamed. “That was Mickey Mantle!”
I quickly called Wanda back and told her what had happened. She didn’t know if The Mick would call back but told me to sit right by my desk. I’m sure she had to do some explaining but whatever she said worked.
I told Tony what was happening. He begged me to let him answer the phone so he could say he talked to Mickey Mantle. I agreed.
Ringggggggggg! Ringggggggggg!
Tony, in his most proper and professional voice, cleared his throat and then answered: “Sports, Tony Curnutte.”
The countenance on his face dropped immediately. In subdued tones he said “Yes, uh, I guess. Hang on a minute.”
“It’s not The Mick, it’s The Rick,” he said. Rick Greene, a sportswriter for us at the time, wanted to know if I wanted him to cover an American Legion game in the park that afternoon.
“Get him off the phone!” I said.
We both sat quietly. Tony stared at the phone, poised like a cat getting ready to pounce on a mouse.
Ringgggggg! Ringggggggggg!
Tony answered again in professional voice. “Just a minute,” he said firm and proper. This time it was The Mick. He successfully transferred the call to me and on the other line was none other than Mickey Mantle.
The first thing he said to me, in his thick Oklahoma drawl, was:
“You sure are a hard guy to get a hold of.”
We both laughed. I was as professional as I could be and we had a brief interview that was cut off when I asked him about Pete Rose and gambling.
“I’m not here to talk about that,” he said.
Good enough. I mean, it was Mickey Mantle.
I hung up the phone and the journey had ended. After plugging in Mantle’s quotes in the story, the job was done. The feature ran the following day and Wanda, being so classy, was kind enough to get me an autographed Mickey Mantle baseball. It had “To Mark, best wishes, Mickey Mantle” on it and it still sits today in my memorabilia case at home.
Autographed baseballs that are personalized are worth less on the open market than those that just have the name. But I liked that it was personalized and wouldn’t sell it anyway.
To me, it serves as a reminder of a story worth telling.
The baseball sat for decades nestled in the corner of the closet in the home of Kent Lauer’s mother in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
It hadn’t moved in more than 40 years, from the time that Lauer put it there after getting it in a promotion with the Sioux Falls Packers baseball team in 1969 when he was 12 years old.
“I’ve always known about the ball and I knew that my mom kept it at my house in Sioux Falls,” Lauer said. “My mom was one of those people who didn’t throw away anything. So I knew it was there. On one of my trips back home, I knew that ball was in the closet. I grabbed it.”
Don Gullett holds a 1969 autographed baseball from his only minor league team.
Lauer became the owner of the baseball 48 years ago. Anybody who caught a foul ball could exchange it for one autographed by the Packers’ players.
Lauer said he didn’t go to many Packers’ games, but he went enough to know there were more chances for foul balls on the outside of the stadium than the inside.
“I didn’t know about the promotion,” he said. “I got there and found out about it. I positioned myself out there rather than trying to catch one in the stands.”
Sure enough Lauer was able to collect one of the foul balls that lifted outside the stadium and he returned it for the autographed ball, which was a Little League ball signed by all the players on the Packers’ team, including Don Gullett.
After gathering the baseball from his mother’s closest, its home for nearly five decades, Lauer took it to his home in Reno, Nevada. The baseball has been sitting on Lauer’s nightstand for several years.
A letter to Don Gullett from a fan he never met.
He pondered what to do with the ball – keep it or send it to Gullett? – and eventually decided Gullett’s home should be the final destination.
“It was probably the first team ball he ever signed,” Lauer said.
Gullett couldn’t remember the first baseball he signed, so it may have been that as well. “It’s definitely the first team ball,” he said. “I really appreciate getting it.”
The 18-year-old arrived in Sioux Falls almost immediately after the Cincinnati Reds made him their No. 1 selection in the 1969 June Amateur Draft. Gullett’s high school season at McKell had ended only a few weeks before in a 1-0 loss to Ashland in the regional semifinals in Morehead.
Now he was pitching in professional baseball. Gullett was getting paid to play.
Don Gullett admires signatures of teammates from 1969.
Professional scouts were visiting in Greenup County before Gullett was old enough to drive. He was also recruited by dozens of major colleges wanting him to play basketball and football.
Where Gullett was selected in the baseball draft would decide his future. If the Reds, or someone else, hadn’t taken him with a high pick, Gullett said he might have taken a different route.
“I would have entertained playing college football,” he said. “My physical stature may have kept me from playing basketball.”
He was not only a good athlete, but a good student. The options were endless. The Reds took out the mystery by taking him with the 14th overall selection in the first round.
“They sent a bunch of us to Florida for mini-camp for a week to 10 days,” he said. “Then we flew out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”
Gullett roomed with four others who stayed together in a house owned by one of the Packer boosters. One of his roommate-teammates was Steve Miller of Huntington.
“A bunch of us stayed in the house together,” he said. “We had a good time.”
Gullett was away from home for the first time. It was a long way from Lynn, Kentucky. The bus rides were long and cold, he said. “On one trip to Duluth we were playing and the stadium was by the lake. The fog was settling in over the water and coming toward the stadium. It was glistening ice crystals falling on the ground. I’d never seen anything like that.”
The longest trip McKell made in high school was from South Shore to Morehead. Now he was making much longer bus rides almost daily but it wouldn’t be for long.
The Reds invited Gullett to the big-league camp in 1970, but he wasn’t expected to make the club.
An autographed ball from 1969.
“I stayed off campus in the minor league players’ hotel and drove over to the major league training facility,” Gullett said. “The (minor league) guys were saying, ‘You don’t really think you’re going to make it do you?’ I said, ‘I do. Why would I be down here wasting my time?’’’
Even though Gullett’s blazing fastball was raising eyebrows throughout the Grapefruit League, it still didn’t seem likely he’d be going north with the Reds.
“Pitching coach Larry Shepard told me two days before camp was over, ‘No way we can take you.’ Then I got the word I was going. I got the opportunity and I made the most of it. I had that type of confidence.”
Gullett married high school sweetheart Cathy Holcomb on Jan. 24, 1970 and they moved into an apartment in northern Kentucky once he had made the Reds’ roster later that spring.
“That’s a lot of change,” he said. “Being married, moving into an apartment and pitching for the Reds. I had to get used to a lot of new things.”
One thing that never changed was his ability to throw a baseball hard.
Gullett pitched out of the bullpen and appeared in 44 games as a rookie in 1970 when he pitched in Crosley Field and the first year of Riverfront Stadium. He made two starts but was mostly used in middle and long relief. Gullett was 5-2 with a 2.42 ERA but was even better in the postseason.
He pitched 10 1/3 innings and allowed only one run in the National League playoffs against the Pirates and the World Series against the Orioles. He saved two of the three wins over the Pirates in the NL Championship Series.
The Reds moved him into the rotation the following year and he went 16-6 – leading the NL with a .727 winning percentage – with a 2.65 ERA. He remained the ace of the staff until departing the Reds for the New York Yankees after the 1976 World Series.
Only stop in minors
Gullett’s stop in Sioux Falls for the Short-A season in 1969 was his only time in the minor leagues. The next spring he made the Reds and took off on a star-crossed career that ended far too soon.
Gullett won 109 games and four World Series rings in a career that was cut short by a shoulder injury while pitching for the Reds and the New York Yankees.
He is the only man to pitch the opening game in successive World Series for two different teams.
Lauer did some research on the left-hander who leads the conversation of the greatest athletes in northeastern Kentucky history. He knew about the 72 points scored in a single football game at Wurtland (“The football thing stood out in my mind,” he said) and how his pitching career came to a premature end, that he was a pitching coach for the Reds and that he had retired to his family farm in Kentucky.
“I knew he had a good career,” Lauer said. “I knew his signature was on the ball and I thought ‘Maybe he’d like to have that ball.’ It would have to have much more meaning and value to him and his family than it could ever have for me.”
Lauer said he went back and forth trying to decide if he was going to seek out Gullett to send him the baseball. “I finally decided, I’m going to send it to him.”
A Google search directed him to stories about Gullett in The Daily Independent so he contacted the newspaper for help. “I came across a column on the website and knew that’s how I was going to get him the ball.”
Lauer, who is 63, said the youth league fields in the area were clustered near the Sioux Falls Packers Stadium. The town still has an independent American Association baseball team – the Sioux Falls Canaries – and play in the same stadium. It was built in 1964, five years before Gullett, who turned 66 in January, made his professional debut there.
The stadium underwent major renovations in the late 1990s and has a seating capacity of 4,462 fans with a walkway splitting two levels of seating for the ultimate baseball-watching experience.
Lauer wanted Gullett to have the baseball because of the career he ended up fashioning in the major leagues.
Of the 25-man roster for the 1969 Sioux Falls Packers, five played in the majors and another player managed for three years.
Gullett looked at the roster on an iPhone and rattled off name after name after name. He smiled as he called them out, “Carl Barnes, shortstop; Glenn Bisbing, catcher. Kent Burdick, Nardi Contreras from Tampa (Florida) and and Jimmy Hoff, he was a great baseball man who worked in the Reds’ minor league system for years.”
Since learning about the autographed ball, Gullett said he began thinking a lot about his first professional team. “I was thinking about that team the other day,” he said. “I have a lot of fond memories.”
And at least one scary one.
Gullett made the Northern League All-Star Game and was flying there with Burdick and manager Jimmy Snyder on a flight to Winnipeg, Canada.
“I had a good year and made the Northern League All-Star team,” he said. “I don’t recall getting into the game. But the plane ride we had – it was a single-engine plane that I called the Knucklehead Express. I’ve never told anybody but that gave me something of a scare.”
Others who made it
The best known of the group, besides Gullett, was left-handed pitcher Ross Grimsley, who fashioned an 11-year major league career including a three-year stint with the Reds from 1971 to 1973. He won 124 and lost 99, fashioning a 3.81 earned run average.
“We (the Reds) traded him to Baltimore and he had a real good career,” Gullett said. “Once he learned to throw the changeup he was tough to hit. He won a lot of games.”
Gene Locklear played five seasons in the major leagues and finished with a .274 career batting average with nine home runs. He played for the Reds, Padres and Yankees.
Two other pitchers, Contreras and Mike Johnson, had “cups of coffee” careers. Contreras played eight games with the White Sox in 1980 and Johnson pitched in 18 games for the Padres in 1974.
Greg Riddoch, a player on the ’69 Packers, never made it as a player in the big leagues but managed the San Diego Padres from 1990 to 1992. He had a 16-year coaching career in professional baseball. “Riddoch was a good baseball man,” Gullett said.
Gullett was the most famous alum of the Northern League of 1969. He was 109-50 with a 3.11 earned run average and 921 strikeouts in a nine-year career. He was on four consecutive World Series champions – 1975 and 1976 with the Reds and 1977 and 1978 with the Yankees (although pitching in only eight games in ’78 because of the shoulder injury).
Packers in ‘69
Grimsley and Gullett were the aces of the Sioux Falls Packers, who finished 45-25 and 1½ games out of first place behind the Duloth-Superior Dukes (White Sox).
Grimsley was 9-4 with a 2.80 ERA and 97 strikeouts and Gullett went 7-2 with a 1.96 ERA and 87 strikeouts. Gullett pitched two shutouts and averaged 10 strikeouts a game.
Locklear hit .303 with seven home runs and 28 RBI while Thomas Dittmar (.282, 10 HR, 37 RBI) and Burdick (.228, 10 HR, 40 RBI) provided some pop, too. The Packers blasted 49 home runs as a team. Players ranged in age from 17 to 25.
The rest of the league included the St. Cloud Rox (Twins), Huron Cubs (Cubs), Aberdeen Pheasants (Orioles) and Winnipeg Goldeyes (Royals).
There were a few other players who made it to the major leagues from the 1969 Northern League, but none nearly as significantly as Gullett, whose shoulder injury at 27 cut short a career that looked destined for Cooperstown.
“I could have made the Hall of Fame,” he said.
For one season, though, he was a Packer, just not one in Green Bay.
Now he has an autographed team ball to remember it.
The Tomcats displayed a throwback kind of teamwork that had everybody wanting to watch them play and comparing them to some of the best in Ashland history.
Sweet 16 games for the 2020 State Tournament were played through computer simulation and stories written using my sportswriter background to “report” the outcomes.
No high school in Kentucky has the tradition of the Ashland Tomcats. They have won 33 regional championships, four state championships, been runner-up four times and a national champion. They were the first team in Kentucky to 2,000 victories – hitting that milestone during the 2020 season. They have more wins than any team in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
MARK MY WORDS 2 