Innocent people died. College campuses across the nation shut down. Critics assailed the President and his White House advisors. Protesters marched. Daily life became a volatile ball of confusion.
America in the Age of Coronavirus COVID-19? No. America in the wake of the Kent State Massacre.
Exactly 50 years ago today, May 4, 1970, shortly after noon, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed Kent State University students who were protesting the American bombing of neutral Cambodia during the Vietnam War. According to reliable estimates, troops fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine, paralyzing one victim from the waist down.
I first heard the news just before dinner when I returned to my Colby College fraternity house, Tau Delta Phi, after baseball. I was a sophomore third baseman. I joined fellow Tau Delts who had packed the small den of our housemother, Ma Homestead, to watch the news. Given the mass shootings that have occurred in our country this century, describing Kent State now as a massacre is hyperbole. And the four deaths are miniscule compared to the 68,276 Americans who had died from COVID-19 as of Sunday night.
But soldiers shooting at students shocked us to our national core. As a result, four million college kids staged a national strike, effectively closing an estimated 450 colleges and universities and ramping up the anti-war pressure on President Richard Nixon and his administration. Elements of the U.S. Army’s 82 Airborne Division occupied the basement of the Executive Office Building next door to the White House to protect the president. Nixon still fled to the security of Camp David.
Baseball offered temporary relief from that national migraine. College officials had discussed whether to cancel our doubleheader with Springfield but finally decided on a single nine-inning game. So, on Saturday, May 9, while 100,000 anti-war protesters marched on Washington, we played ball 600 miles north on Coombs Field on the Colby campus in Waterville, Maine.
Springfield was not a natural rival like in-state foes Bowdoin, Bates and the University of Maine, but the pairing of these traditionally strong programs was intriguing, if only for the men who coached them. Archie Allen, who had played outfield for the Chiefs in the mid-1930s, became head coach in 1948 and retired in 1978 with a 454-257-7 record and multiple New England championships. He was the national coach of the year in 1969. Allen died in 2006 at 93. The baseball field at Springfield is named for him.
Our coach, John Winkin, was also a college baseball legend. He played at Duke as a 5-foot-6-inch center fielder in the late 1930s and starting in 1954 coached 45 years at Colby, Maine and Husson. He was the national coach of the year at Colby in 1965 and took Maine to the College World Series six times. His record was 1,043-706-16 when he retired after suffering a stroke in 2007. He is in 11 Halls of Fame. He died in 2014 at 94.
Wink, as generations of players called him, by nature was conservative and buttoned up. He had served as an officer aboard a destroyer in the Pacific for 56 months during World War II. When he issued commands, he expected his players to follow them.
Springfield was 14-2 when it came to town, its losses to Boston College and Holy Cross. We were struggling to get back to .500 after a rocky start in April. Kent State was still on our minds that perfect early-spring afternoon, and we wore black arm bands in memory of the four slain students. Before we took the field, our captain, Walt Brower, read a statement to the large crowd gathered on the berm behind the first-base line. Wink could have stopped us, but he didn’t.
“I think Wink was not totally happy,” Mike McGlynn told me from his home in South Weymouth, Mass., when we reminisced on Friday. A fellow sophomore, he played left field.
Springfield scored a run in the first inning and another in the seventh for a 2-0 lead. Seniors George Dixon, the best pitcher in Springfield history with a 5-0 mark in 1970 and 20-2 career record to that point, and Gary Hobbs, a four-game winner for us so far that spring, dueled on the mound.
We put runners on base but left them there. Things looked bleak until the bottom of the eighth when right fielder Don Snyder, another sophomore, singled and McGlynn smashed a two-run homer to left. But the Chiefs broke the tie in the top of the ninth with an unearned run thanks to two errors.
I led off the bottom of the ninth and singled over the second baseman’s head. Outfielder-pitcher Al Glass, another sophomore, followed with a home run into the trees in left for the stunning 4-3 victory. On the last day of a week that helped define the Vietnam Era of American history, we had beaten the best college baseball team in New England. We roughed up Dixon for 11 hits, nine by sophomores. Snyder and McGlynn each had three, I had two and Glass the big one.
“That was the best win we had that year,” Brower said Sunday when I got him at home in Birmingham, Ala.
Allen was gracious in defeat.
“I remember him coming into our locker room and congratulating us,” McGlynn said.
We finished the 1970 season with a 10-11 record. Springfield went to the Division II College World Series and finished fourth in the nation. The Chiefs got their payback in 1971. They were 5-0 and we were 4-0 when we traveled to Springfield for a doubleheader. The Chiefs swept, 5-1 and 3-0. Springfield pitcher Willie Boynton, a Skowhegan, Maine, kid, struck out 20 in the nine-inning opener.
Dixon, an All-America, signed a pro contract with the Minnesota Twins upon graduation but after one season in the New York Penn League turned to a career in education. Springfield catcher Kurt Aschermann played in 1971, signed with the Cubs organization and played in the minors. After baseball he worked as a fund-raiser for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. When I met him about 35 years later, he refused to believe Colby had beaten Springfield until I mailed him a copy of the newspaper story. He has served as a Springfield trustee.
Brower graduated that spring, returned home to New Jersey, taught high school for a few years, sold high end audio equipment, joined his wife as a corporate training consultant, edited training material, divorced, became a softball umpire and 12 years ago moved to the Birmingham, where he edits medical articles.
McGlynn played another two years, graduated, returned home to South Weymouth, Mass., enlisted in the National Guard, worked for Coca Cola for 20 years, joined the Peace Corps at 40, worked in financial services for close to 20 years and retired about 10 years ago. He still resides in South Weymouth.
Snyder played one more season, graduated and became a writer and author. He lives in Maine.
Glass played two more years and after Colby spent 35 years in the shoe industry. He died in his sleep in 2010 in New Jersey. He was 60.
I played one more season and then began preparing for what became a 41-year newspaper career in Rhode Island, followed by five-plus years of writing sports commentary for The Public’s Radio. When I think of the anti-war crisis we played through in 1970 and the COVID-19 crisis we are living through in 2020, I just shake my head at the coincidence and wonder what’s next.