Palisades’ Haubert, Smeland team up
That ’70s Show: Loss by loss, unique, transformative era in game starts inevitable fade
PALMER TWP. — Shortly after Ben Haubert of Palisades captured the PIAA District 11 Class 2A wrestling title at 172 pounds Sunday, he gave a major assist to his teammate and the only other Pirate to make regionals — Mason Smeland, who finished second at 152.
“I train with that kid every single day. He’s my practice partner,” Haubert said. “He is the most athletic kid I’ve ever met. You might not think he’s the best wrestler or anything like that, but that kid’s athleticism is insane. That kid never gets tired ... and that’s what pushes me in the room every single day is having that kid for my practice partner.
“I may be able to beat up on him in the room when it comes to actually wrestling, but by the end of the practice, he’s getting into my legs and he’s taking me down because he’s just the most conditioned wrestler that I’ve ever met. And it’s just training me to be a really good wrestler too.”
Haubert relied on that conditioning to outlast Saucon Valley’s Jake Jones in the finals with a takedown in overtime for a 3-1 decision.
“Eventually I was going to get [a takedown],” Haubert said. “Eventually, I’m going to get one no matter who the kid is. So I’m glad I got it and he went down a little bit faster than I thought he was going to. But, I mean, it was a great match overall.”
Not as great as Smeland’s in the semifinals against Northern Lehigh’s Trevor Amorim, who was leading Smeland by a point and riding when he appeared to get too sloppy and pinned himself in the third period.
“He just got caught flat on his back, so I was just in position to get up over his legs and pin him,” Smeland said. “I’ve never had a defensive pin before and it definitely felt good.”
Smeland was forced to wrestle
again in the true second-place bracket after falling to Notre Dame-Green Pond’s Joey LaPenna in the finals because he hadn’t faced the winner of the consolation finals, Jim Thorpe’s Gabe Heaney, in the winners’ bracket.
Smeland won a 9-2 decision over Heaney to earn a spot in the Class 2A Southeast Regional next Saturday at Central Dauphin East.
Speed overcomes strength for Compton
Pen Argyl sophomore Aiden Comp
ton was the younger and lighter of the heavyweight finalists. But never did he feel overmatched against Jim Thorpe senior Derek Hunter.
That much was evident by the end, when Compton won gold with a 3-2 decision.
“He’s bigger than me for sure,” Compton said. “I’m still a little kid, I’m just 15. Going into it, I knew I was faster than him and I just wanted to push the pace the best I could. I knew if I pushed the pace that eventually I’d either score or I’d counter off him, and that’s what I did.”
Then there’s Compton’s support
group.
“Winning that, that meant a lot to me,” he said. My head coach [Jason Grim] is like my second dad and [assistant coach Brady Mutton], I wrestle him every day and he’s like a big brother. They made me who I am today and they continue to make me a better wrestler.
“In my opinion, I have the best heavyweight coaches in the whole Lehigh Valley.”
The affection engulfs Clint Hurdle’s voice as he appraises the list of those recently gone — childhood idols who became teammates and opponents, teammates and opponents who became acquaintances, acquaintances who became dear friends.
The 1970s memories surface fast for the man who has spent his entire adult life in baseball, as player and manager. Bob Watson, whom he first met while serving as a batboy for the Class A Cocoa Astros. Claudell Washington: “We used to just laugh.” Bob Gibson, as nice off the field as he was menacing on it. The distinctive way Joe Morgan pumped his elbow at bat: “I watched him as a kid. I used to try to re-create the chicken wing for hitting.”
All are members of a list disquieting in its length — those from the ranks of 1970s baseball rosters who have died in the last year alone.
The list: Perhaps it’s no longer than any other list of those who were dying at other moments in baseball’s history. But against the last year’s backdrop — of pandemic-inflected grief, of baseball withering and coming back smaller, of a truncated season and crowdless stands — it feels unremitting. Just part of it:
Watson. Washington. Gibson. Morgan. Al Kaline. Lou Brock. Don Sutton. Hank Aaron. Dick Allen. Jay Johnstone. Phil Niekro. Tom Seaver. Biff Pocoroba. Lindy McDaniel. Billy Conigliaro. Tommy Lasorda. And now, three weeks ago, from COVID19 complications: Grant Jackson, who won the final Major League Baseball game of the decade as the 1979 Pirates took the World Series.
Theirs were the names etched on the Topps cards. The names that crackled from plastic, fruit-colored transistor radios. The names that shouted from the pages of Baseball Digest and hometown newspapers at a moment in the game’s history that can seem like yesterday but, propelled by the past year’s losses, is starting its inexorable fade.
“I like to say, ‘Hey, I grew up in the greatest era of baseball,” ’ Gary Matthews, who played in the big leagues from 1972 to 1987, is saying one recent day. He’s just back from the funeral of his friend, Henry Aaron, in Atlanta — one of the most towering baseball losses of the last year.
Pete Rose, one of the decade’s most storied players, agrees. “You wanna know the truth? I faced 19 Hall of Fame pitchers in the 1970s and 1980s,” he says.
“I don’t know if guys today are facing 19 Hall of Fame pitchers.”
In the 1970s, baseball opened up and let its hair down. It was an era of the downright idiosyncratic — incandescent uniforms and orange baseballs and orange-striped catcher’s mitts and synthetic fields, Reggie! bars and stick-on Stargell stars and mustache upon carefully cultivated mustache.
It was an era of substantive change, too. The designated hitter took root. The reserve clause ended, free agency began and the players’ union found its voice, setting the table for the high salaries of today. The number of players of color grew as they finally stepped into a full-on spotlight, albeit one still pocked with ugly obstacles.
And though games unfolded in some of the most impersonal stadiums ever, baseball was still — perhaps for a final time — being played at human scale.
“If you stuck a DVD in of a game from the 1970s, I think a 15-year-old would be very surprised,” says Cait Murphy, who chronicled one early 20th-century season in “Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History.”
The players of the 1970s, too, felt more accessible. They’d come home and manage a supermarket or open a beer distributor or sell insurance. For many, this second career wasn’t a choice; baseball’s pay then created a standard of living very different from today’s.
“The younger people who are into this era, they kind of marvel at how MLB players from the ’70s, they look like they could have been your math teacher or the guy working down at the auto-parts shop,” says Dan Epstein, author of “Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s.”
ACROSS 1 “Pow!” 5 Cave
mammal 8 Farmer’s
place 12 Videostreaming site 13 Lawyers’
org. 14 Grenoble
girlfriend 15 “Frozen”
snowman 16 Disinfect 18 Actress Isabel of “The Jeffersons” 20 Ravi’s
instrument 21 “— Little
Teapot” 22 Zero-star
review 23 Bitten by a
bee 26 Tapas bar
drink 30 Football
filler 31 YMCA class 32 Massachusetts cape 33 “Evil Ways”
band 36 Trademark 38 Raggedy
doll 39 Calendar
abbr. 40 Vermont ski
town
43 Holy place 47 Deli
purchase 49 Saab
model 50 Level
51 — Paulo 52 Really
pesters 53 Do in 54 French Mrs. 55 “— chic!”
DOWN
1 “— on
first?” 2 Luau dance 3 Arkin or
Alda 4 Breakfast
bread
5 Iraqi port
city
6 “That’s not
— idea” 7 Sunbather’s
goal 8 Going
together 9 Send
forth 10 Minnelli of
“Cabaret” 11 Lusty look 17 “This —
outrage!” 19 Texter’s
“Wow!” 22 Standard 23 Airline to
Sweden 24 — Maria (coffee liqueur) 25 Coffee
vessel 26 Hot tub 27 Sony rival 28 Charged bit 29 Toss in 31 MSNBC
rival 34 Garish 35 From the
top 36 Chignon 37 Take back 39 Sierra
Nevada lake 40 Bygone
fliers 41 Shadow 42 Draft status 43 Swindle 44 Rip 45 Desire 46 Rolling
stone’s lack 48 Doctrine
IF FEBRUARY 23 IS YOUR BIRTHDAY:
Maintain a low profile and don’t make any major changes in your love life or finances as the next four to five weeks unfold. Wait until late June or early July to make tough financial and career decisions, since you may be wiser than usual about securing material gains. Your business sense may desert you in August, so put major expenditures on the back burner. You sparkle in social settings during late September.