Bob Rea and his wife enjoy Glacier National Park. (Photo courtesy Rea)
He’s the strikeout king of Snakelum Point.
Go back five decades and the man you wanted on the mound, if you were a Coupeville High School baseball coach, was Bob Rea.
A three-sport star for the Wolves (he quarterbacked the football team and played forward for the basketball squad), his biggest moments came on the diamond.
Drop a baseball in Rea’s hand and the lefty who grew up skipping rocks on Whidbey Island beaches was deadly.
He tossed a no-hitter against Tolt, and went on to play varsity ball for four years at Western Washington University, but the CHS Class of ’65 grad made his reputation one afternoon chopping down Loggers.
“Darrington was a logging town and the boys from the area were physically strong because of how they were raised,” Rea said. “Coupeville boys … more of the beach crowd.
“We always knew, whichever sport, we were going to have work hard to beat the Loggers.”
Rea and the Wolves were in Darrington for a league duel during his junior year, when the game turned into a marathon of endurance and whiffs.
By the time it was over, 16 innings later, Rea had set 27 (or is it 26?) Loggers down swinging and Coupeville escaped with a 2-1 win which still resonates 50+ years later.
While the score-book from that game is long gone, it lives on in the memories of then-Wolf coach Bob Barker, who credits Rea with 27 K’s, and the former hurler, who’s justifiably proud of his day, regardless of the stats.
“As the game wore on it became almost comical. Which pitcher was going to give in first?,” Rea said. “Fortunately for me, a lot of batters never hit the ball.
“I think my total was actually 26 … but legends grow.”
27 or 26, it remains widely accepted as the best one-game performance in CHS pitching history, and one highly unlikely to be duplicated in modern times.
“In today’s world of youth athletics, you would never see one pitcher go 16 innings, much less two,” Rea said. “When the game was over I know our team was proud to have outlasted the tough guys from Darrington.
“One thing I do remember is that my arm never hurt during nor after the game,” he added. “I contribute that to either my strict diet and exercise regimen … or lots of rock throwing on the beach.”
To this day, Rea praises his counterpart on the mound as one of his tougher rivals.
“I remember the opposing pitcher was Brian Mount, a senior, and an all-everything athlete from Darrington,” Rea said. “We played Darrington in football, basketball and baseball, so we got to know the athletes pretty well.
“There were family names that kept appearing year after year,” he added. “Mount was one, along with Boyd and Green. All offspring were good athletes.”
Equally memorable was the ball-field the game was played on.
“We played on an all-dirt (sand and gravel) field and it was very dusty,” Rea said. “Left field included the town railroad tracks and any ball hit to the tracks was fair game … you got as many bases as you could touch.
“I can still see Ray Harvey, our left fielder, looking both ways before he stepped out on the tracks to recover a well-hit ball.”
With three solid years behind him, Rea was denied his swan song when he broke his leg in practice as a senior.
“I managed the team in a cast that year,” he said. “We won the league even without my input. Kind of a hollow victory for me, personally, but great for the coaches and the team.”
While he had some personal success at Western, the school’s program, which had been on a three-year streak of appearing in the NAIA World Series prior to his arrival, hit a rough stretch.
“I started some games, relieved some, was only marginally successful,” Rea said. “I enjoyed traveling and playing, but the team was not very competitive.
“In the four years I was there we had at least three different coaches. Not a lot of continuity.”
After Western, Rea went into teaching, spending two decades as a PE instructor in Seattle. He also picked up a summer job to help make ends meet, and that turned into a lifetime pursuit.
His brother purchased a bowling center in Issaquah, and Rea went to work there as an instructor. He’s now celebrating his 40th anniversary as a bowling teacher.
Taking a leave of absence from school teaching in 1990, he created a program called Port-A-Bowl USA, which brought schools and bowling centers together in an “educational partnership.”
The program, which is now a nationally-funded program known as In-School Bowling, has taken him around the world and allowed him to teach the sport in 16 foreign countries.
When he looks back on his high school glory days, Rea sees a young man who got by largely on natural talent. If he could change one thing, it would be to tell his younger self to listen to advice when offered.
“As far as high school sports goes, the only sport where I received much coaching was in basketball,” he said. “Being a better than average athlete and young, I don’t know if someone tried to coach me much at that time I would have been very open to their suggestions.
“I thought I knew it all,” Rea added with a chuckle. “Soooo wrong in soooo many ways, ‘grasshopper’.”
Still, he’s content, with his athletic legacy and where life has taken him since high school.
“I am married to a wonderful woman, 48 years and counting; have two great kids and a couple of grand-kids to spoil,” Rea said. “I go back to Snakelum Point with my grand-kids and we walk on the same beach that I grew up on.
“Fish, clam, beach-comb and enjoy what nature provides by way of a beautiful backdrop.
“Life is good.”
