1962 Baseball Team

From 7-3-14

In my 17 years as head baseball coach @ NCHS, we had a lot of outstanding talent, especially our pitchers, Haskel Johnson, Larry Parnell, Richard Moore, Larry Wagner, Tony & Grant White, & Randy Quintrell. They were all instrumental in helping Newton Co. build a baseball program with a record of 158 wins & 60 losses--5 Region Championships, 2 State Finalists & were in the playoffs 10 of 17 years. The two standout pitchers not mentioned, Stanley Edwards & Doug Bledsoe, set records that will always be near the top in the record book.

Stanley Edwards was way beyond his years with pitching knowledge. (When a player knows more about his position than his coach, you leave him alone!). In the 1962 season Stan had a perfect 10-0 pitching record. He had pitched an outstanding 4-hitter over the Crisp Co. team. In order not to take a chance on hurting his arm, we thought we might get 3 or 4 innings out of another pitcher & bring Stan in for the balance of the game. We fell behind West Rome in the 1st inning & finished the season with an undefeated Stan Edwards. He finished his H.S. Career with 15 wins & 1 defeat! In 1963 the Rams were talented again with Terry Smith, Terry Rutledge, Ronnie Lynch, & Denny Dobbs leading the way.

The backbone of the team was the pitching of Doug Bledsoe. Bledsoe took up where Edwards left off! He led the Rams to the state semi-finals, where he lost the only game of his career, to East Rome, 2-1. He finished the season with a 7-1 pitching record. With the momentum built in the previous 2 seasons, the 1964 baseball season began with high expectations. With Terry Smith, Billy Shepherd, Jack Gibbs & Tim Christian, big things were expected. But the real burden of how far that this team could go was in the hands of pitcher Bledsoe, & the steady catcher Tim Hopkins. Again, the experienced Bledsoe led the way to the state tournament. After a late night 2-0 win over Wayne Co. (that took 2 extra innings), we were faced with a similar situation that we had faced in 1962. We had a pitcher with a 9-0 record who was tired from a 9-inning game the night before. We lost in the state finals to Headland HS, 7-4. Doug Bledsoe finished his career with a school record of 16 wins & only 1 loss.

And 50 years later, an "old" coach still thinks he did right by protecting young pitchers' future careers, but State Championships are mighty hard to come by!