Last Updated: Sunday, August 13, 2006 5:03 PM CDT
Blasts from the Past -- Windy
By Ken Pazdernik - Daily News Staff - ken.pazdernik@lee.net
If you grew up on the South side of Rhinelander in the 60's you knew you could always go down to “the field” and find a baseball game. The field was where we learned the nuances of baseball, .400 was a great batting average but 4.00 was not a great Earned Run Average.
The younger kids always looked up to the older ones when we needed baseball advice and the older kids looked up to Allan Prosser and David Kickbush because they had the most home runs ever recorded at “the field”. The south siders believed “the field” was their mini Field of Dreams because baseball could be played all day, every day, weather and family vacations permitting.
Little did we know that lurking in another part of town was Windy. Rumors were beginning to surface about a kid who had superhuman baseball talent and he had yet to reach his twelfth birthday. We seldom ventured to the other side of town and at that time kids were separated between the majors and the minors, which meant that the kids who made the majors played at the Junior High field while the rest of us played at the old fairgrounds field. In theory, all the good players made the majors and all the crappy players played in the minors. Of course, parents and politics often times managed to confuse who belonged in which league so in some respects the talent pool wasn't much different in either league. I guess some things never change. When it came to Windy no amount of politics could keep him out of the majors.
In the pre-political correctness era of the 60's nine, ten, eleven and twelve year olds all played in the same league. Dominating players like Windy and Bill Karnosky a few years later expedited the move to separate leagues by more specific age groups. On several occasions when nine and ten year olds found out that they had to bat against Windy they either started crying or instantly developed a stomach ache and had to go home. Their chances of hitting the ball against Windy were pretty much the same whether they were in the batter's box or at home watching TV.
Every kid in the majors breathed a sigh of relief when Windy turned 13 because they knew he would be off to Babe Ruth League where he could terrorize the 14 and 15 year olds with his assortment of pitches. It was about that time when we learned that Windy had a “name” and was actually a really nice guy if you were not batting against him.
By the time we got to high school Jim Windorff was already a legend and one of the few players who had such a great swing that the other players would stop and watch him hit during batting practice. One day he nearly single handedly ended practice by hitting eight straight balls about 350 feet into the woods. Don't forget that Windy did that with a wooden bat!
While we were in awe of Jim, he was never in awe of himself. While we wanted him to be the next Sandy Koufax or Ken Boyer, he was thinking more along the lines of being the next Eric Clapton. Still, we will never forget Windy's picture perfect swing.
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E-mail Ken Pazdernik, Daily News Business Manager, at ken.pazdernik@lee.net.
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