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Show END SEASON IN BLAZE OF GLORY CSU Thunderbirds Place Third In National Tournament The Number Three baseball team In the National Junior College Col-lege ranks returned to Cedar City Monday after four days of participation In the NJCAA National Na-tional Tournament at Grand Junction, Colorado. The College of Southern Utah Thunderbirds picked up two wins then suffered losses to the first and second place teams In the nation to finish up In third place, winning a large trophy for the school nC mU Individual tro phea for t"h tem member. For Coach Cleo Petty and his T-Birds It closed the most iuc-cessful iuc-cessful baseball season In the history of the school. The tournament tour-nament was also the final competition com-petition in the Junior college ranks. The T-Birds, the most determined, deter-mined, the most colorful and by far the most talented overall, the school has ever produced, brought a host of laurels during the season. In pre-conference play they picked up a pair of victories over Weber College, ranked as one of the top college teams tn the state. Then they went on to win for the second successive year the Intermountaln Collegiate Athletic Conference Crown In a playoff series against Boise Junior Jun-ior Colege in Cedar City. Then moving Into the national competition the Thunderbirds provided some of the most exciting excit-ing and certainly the best brand of baseball this community has ever seen when they defeated the the defending national champs, Phoenix Junior College, here In a best two of three game series to' win the right to enter the National Na-tional tournament at Grand Junction. At Grand unction the T-Birds! won approval of the fans at the national meet with their fine ability and alert play. Defensive-1 ly the CSU crew was rated as one of, if not the top, club in the eight-team tournament. They opened on Memorial Day against Thornton Junior College of Harvey, 111. Left-hander Steve Cahoon got his squad off to a sound start hurling an Impressive Impres-sive three-hitter against the eastern east-ern club as the T-Birds pounded out an 8 to 0 victory. The game was stopped In eight Innings under a tournament ruling of an eight point margin after seven Innings of play. I In that contest, John Paez led! the way at the plate with two hits in three trips including a triple. He also scored three runs. Reed Backus, outstanding first sacker for CSU, continued his ability to hit with runers on, collected col-lected two runs batted in. In the second round of play the Thunderbirds moved Into the semi-finals of the national tournament tour-nament with a 6 to 1 victory over the Long Island Aggies. Cal Hair was on the mound for the victory. He threw six and 23 Innings. Tom Edwards relieved1 in the seventh and Kent Smith came on in the ninth to finish It out. CSU got oft to a good start scoring two runs In the (Continued on Pago Ssrtn) Thunderdirds Place In National Tournament (Continued from Front Pag) bottom of the first inning. An error and a walk put runners on ' ahead of Cahoon and he singled to drive in both tallies. In the fifth the T-Birds picked up ano-ther ano-ther run on an error and Paez's second triple of the tournament Three runs were added in the eighth on a walk given up to Son Sudbury and a pinch hit single sin-gle by Burdell Smith to drive in two of the three. The single run was scored by Long Island when Norman Johnson John-son stole home after a triple. Greenberg was the leading hitter hit-ter of the day with three hits in three official trips, includng a double. I The first Thunderbird loss came in action Saturday night under the lights, in. the semi-final round of play. Wilmington, N. C, the eventual tournament champions handed the CSU crew a 9 to 0 setback in seven innings in-nings of play. The hard httlng southerners beited out 13 hits oif pitchers Cahoon, Kent Smith and Lawrence Law-rence Gallegoes. The tournament tourna-ment champions put their hits together in their scoring spree, pushing in four runs in the second se-cond inning, three in the fourth and adding two for Insurance in the top of the seventh. The T-Birds collected only four hits against the 1963 champions and aner playing 17 innings of errorless ball, came up with five errors which contributed to the scoring for the Wilmington crew. El Lemon of Wilmington was on the mound all the way. Sunday evening in their effort to get back into the championship champion-ship race the Thunderbirds were matched against Manatee, Fla., winners of the consolation bracket. brack-et. Manatee suffered its first loss of the tournament in the opening op-ening round of the strong Wilmington, Wil-mington, N. C, crew. Tom Edwards took the mound for the T-Birds and pitched an excellent game through six innings in-nings of play. Manatee was limited to only five hits through those innings but came up with hits together to push in runs. In the first frame a double and a single produced the first tally of the game for Mantee and they put two hits together again In the third to take a 2 to 0 lead. The Thunderbird continued their strong defense play scoring scor-ing three double plays and Paez took one seven feet high climbing climb-ing the right field wall to get to it to save a home run. The T-Birds put men on bases but couldn't push them in. Twice in the early innings they had two men on but lctt them, and in the fifth frame they loaded the bases and failed to score. Failure to score at that point seemed to be the turning point of the game. Three errors following fol-lowing In the field and a h't allowed al-lowed two more runs to score and tne Florida club took a 4 to 0 margin. Son Sudbury came in to relieve Edwards to finsh up in the final game for CSU. Outstanding defensive play, good steady pitching were re-ponsible re-ponsible for taking the T-Birds to third place in the national event. The normally hard hitting T-Birds took somewhat of a slump at the bat, but it must be remembered that they were facing some of the toughest pitchers pit-chers in the nation. Members of the Thunderbird crew who were greeted by an enthusiastic student body upon their return Monday were: Pitchers: Steve Cahoon, Cal Hair, Kent Smith, Tom Edwards, Lawrence Gallegos and Son Sud-; bury . Catchers: Ray Greenberg, Harry Har-ry Manning. First base: Reed Backus. Second base: Dennis Slack and John Yeates. Third base: Roger Halladay and Sudbury. Shortstop: Gordon Loveless. Outfielders: John Paez, Burdell Smith, Richard Yocum. Don Roberts a member of the squad throughout tie year was not with the team at Grand Junction, owing to a date at the alter in Salt Lake City. Although not available at this writing It is understood that at least threp of thi ThunriprhirHa were being considered for all-tournament all-tournament honors to be picked by major league scouts in attendance. at-tendance. Under consideration were Cahoon, Backus and Paez. |