Redcats baseball team reunites 45 years after championship season

Tom Page eagerly waited out in front of DeMarinis Pizza Restaurant. It was a good 10 minutes before the 7pm meet-up time. Before long, Page’s old teammates began arriving one by one. They walked slowly up the front steps of DeMarinis and Page was at the top step to greet them. He had not seen some of them since that unforgettable summer of 1963, 45 years ago, when as members of the Bay View High School baseball team they won the Milwaukee City Conference championship.

Now they would be together as a team once again.

There was Jim Bird who came from Charlotte, N.C. As the team’s left fielder, he did not make an error that season.

There was Russ “Ozzie” Odwazny, the junior third baseman, now a retired ironworker who lives in Greendale.

With each new arrival an assortment of outstretched arms waited on a handshake from their former teammate. With the handshakes came necessary reintroductions. It took the reunion’s newest arrival about a half-second to process the name associated with each handshake and then came an exuberant “Oh s—!” once they realized who it was. Then a warm embrace.

(Click photo to enlarge.)
Front: Doug Greenmeier, M. Sanders, Voltz, Bird, Cialdini, Baumgart, Daryl Greenmeier
Middle: Seelow, Gore, Ignatjevs, Odwazny, Jopolinski, Ebert, Witkowski
Back: Coach Tom Hesiak, Lustig, Cianciola, Jagmin, Bagnall, Hagen, Rodriquez, Page
~ from 1963 Bay View High School yearbook

Instantly the memories came rushing back and so did the ribbing.

“Some things never change, the ribbing never stops,” Odwazny said.

Coach Tom Hesiak, a longtime Bay View resident, was there with the championship trophy and reunited with his “kids,” as he affectingly still calls them to this day. It did not faze him that someone had recently pointed out these “kids” are now 62 and 63 years old.

Then came two stars of that championship team, cousins Darryl and Doug Greenmeier. Darryl was the pitching ace of the team, going 9-3 that year (best in the city). He was durable and at times unhittable. Doug was the speedy center fielder with the powerful bat who stole 19 bases and batted .343 (10th best in the city) and tied with Page for the City Conference lead in RBIs with 21. Both still live in Bay View.

As the group grew they gathered in a circle outside and talked. They exchanged small talk about their careers, where they lived, and their families. They went over the health of those who could not make it to the reunion.

It seemed as though everyone had arrived. They huddled around to take a team picture. However, someone was missing. Then, walking down Conway Street came pitcher Julian Rodriquez, shouting-”Do you know how I knew this was the right place? All the gray hair!”

Coach Hesiak looked at his watch. “It’s 7:05, Julian-that’s a lap around the block.”

REUNITED

Page, from Cleveland, Ohio, was in town for his 45th-year BVHS class reunion. He thought it would also be a great opportunity to have a reunion of the championship baseball team. Their City Conference championship was one of only two won by Bay View High School over the past 58 years.

(Click photo to enlarge.)
~from 1963 Bay View High School yearbook. Individuals in this photo are not identified.

When Page had called his old coach about his idea for a reunion, the response had been, “Who?! What?!”

Once inside, the team sat around a large table and Coach Hesiak ordered sausage and mushroom pizzas and pitchers of beer for the team.

After everyone settled in coach stood up.

“Now I want all of you to tell a story,” started Coach Hesiak, leading the ceremonies. “About something you did as one of my players that I didn’t know about,” he continued, followed with a brief pause. “Like having a beer after a game.”

His former players let out sarcastic sounds of shock to the fact he would even make such an accusation.

“Only if we won,” shouted back Darryl Greenmeier over the ruckus with a chuckle.

Like Page, some of the players had not seen their teammates since the summer of ‘63.

“I really haven’t seen these guys from the last game we played until getting together now,” recalled Gunnar Voltz, the team’s shortstop who was in town from the Austin, Texas area. “It really is a great experience coming back.”

Voltz earned the nickname “Hoover” for his fielding skills. According to Page, any ball hit his way was sucked up, just like a vacuum cleaner.

REDCATS OF ‘63

The 1963 Bay View Redcats baseball team was loaded with athleticism and talent even though they only had five seniors. Many players lettered in multiple sports.

Their championship was not a Cinderella story. Coaches from the conference voted them as one of two main contenders for the title going into the season, according to a Milwaukee Journal article.

However, their run was not without some drama. To win a share of the championship (they tied with Washington High School) they had to win their last four games, finishing the season with 17 wins and 7 loses.

According to the Bay View High School newspaper, this Bay View Redcat team was by far the most potent offensively in the City Conference. The team that year led the City Conference in batting average (.281), runs scored (144), hits (188), stolen bases (66; Doug Greenmeier had 19), home runs (9) and RBIs (111). The team also tied for first in doubles (21) and triples (12).

“You start looking at some of the stats and we had a damn good team,” Odwazny said.

Coach Hesiak, while an extremely gifted athlete at track, football, and especially gymnastics, did not know a lot about the game of baseball when he took the job a year before the championship season. He had never played baseball as a youth or coached a team and his only experience was a six-week course he took as a student at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Still, he knew that his team was full of talented athletes, grounded in the fundamentals of the game.

“I wasn’t teaching you fundamentals,” Hesiak told the team at the reunion. “You all had these.”

Hesiak moved away from spending time teaching fundamentals but concerned himself with making sure everyone played as a team.

“He was a macro manager not a micro manager,” recalled Page, the star catcher and winner of the team’s Outstanding Player Award that year, batting .346, ninth best in the city. “Some people want to manage the details and drive everyone crazy, but he dealt in concepts.”

“He was at least honest about it that he didn’t know that much about baseball,” recalled Darryl Greenmeier. “I’m not bragging, but I think we knew more than he did at that time, because he was kind of honest and said, ‘I don’t know that much about the game but you can help me out in that respect.’”

“I think we had a winning team because I had the players, people like Tom [Page] people like Doug [Greenmeier] and Darryl [Greenmeier],” Hesiak said. “We had a great composite of very skilled kids and the task was to get them to play as a team. I think we were able to do that through a combination of a lot of things.”

Prior to each game, “there were discussions [with the team] about who was going to play where or what our approach would be for that particular game,” Hesiak said.

“What I remember most is that it was a great bunch of guys,” Odwazny said. “Looking around and reconnecting with these guys, it brings back all these memories. It’s just great, real special.”

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