Jason McFadyen, back in his homer-hittin’ CHS baseball days. (Photos courtesy the Carmen McFadyen Archives)
The end of the road for the ’91 Wolf baseball squad.
What a difference 25 years makes.
In the gap that exists between this year’s Coupeville High School baseball squad winning a league title and the last Wolf diamond squad to do so, technology has exploded, countries have fallen (and risen), the Cold War ended and baseball players started looking like they were wearing pajamas.
But fashion trends aside (modern-day players need to pull their pants up and start showing their socks again, and that’s my rant for the day…), how do these two squads compare?
Well, from looking at score-books, the ’91 squad was a heck of a lot more dominant, for sure. At least in terms of inflicting beat-downs.
Record-wise, they’re kind of similar.
Playing in the six-team Northwest B Conference at the time, the old school Wolves went 9-1 in league play, losing only to Darrington in their finale.
By comparison, today’s squad, competing in a four-team 1A Olympic League, sits at 7-1 with one game left.
But the ’91 squad won 12 of 13 at one point, slicing through opponents on their way to finishing 13-6 after a remarkably tough playoff loss (more on that in a bit).
The current squad is 10-9 and guaranteed at least three more games, two in the playoffs, so they can tie the win total, but have already lost more games and haven’t been able to put together a streak to match the ’91ers.
What really sets the two teams apart is their offense.
While today’s team has outscored opponents 106-90, the ’91 team bopped foes to a 145-79 tune, and that’s skewed a bit by the 16 runs they gave up in their playoff loss.
The modern-day Wolves have poked out a fair amount of singles, but their big blows have been limited to doubles and an occasional triple.
In ’91, Coupeville hit the long-ball, and they hit it regularly.
As I deciphered the book and newspaper clippings from the time, I found at least four Wolves — Brad Haslam, Jason McFadyen, Matt Cross and Frank Marti — who went yard that season.
After being shut-out twice by Sequim on Opening Day, Coupeville only scored fewer than four runs in a game once the remainder of the year.
Along the way, they carved up Grace Academy for 16 runs, La Conner for 14 and 13, Winlock for 13, Sultan and Concrete for 12 apiece and Friday Harbor, Concrete and Orcas for nine in separate games.
In those 10 league games (two each against Darrington, Friday Harbor, La Conner, Orcas and Concrete) they outscored their foes by an 84-25 count.
So, through 19 games, the ’91 squad averaged 7.63 runs per game (while giving up 4.16), while the ’16 team sits at 5.58/4.74.
The two teams also differ in their pitching styles.
Senior CJ Smith is the epitome of calm, cool and collected as the staff ace this year.
The ’91 team featured some Marti and a lot of Haslam, who was a raging inferno on the hill, a scary, scary giant who flung a no-hitter and topped double digits in strikeouts in more than two-thirds of his starts.
Where this year’s team would like to differ the most from the ’91 squad, though, is in playoff success.
Back then, the Wolves were primed to make a long run, only to fall a strike short.
Coupeville opened the regional playoffs at Marysville, playing a Winlock team which carried a 9-9 mark into the game, but had won its final six games.
The Wolves, getting a big day at the plate from seniors McFadyen and Chris Frey, who combined for seven hits, charged out to a 13-6 lead heading into the seventh and final inning.
Faced with the possibility they would be playing a second game in the same day if they won the opener, Coupeville’s coaches had juggled their pitching staff to deal with inning restrictions then in force.
That kept Haslam off the mound until the team fell apart in the seventh, and, by the time he took the ball, things were getting out of control.
Having surrendered four runs thanks to a run of errors (the Wolves had nine miscues on the day), CHS clung to a 13-11 lead with two outs and two strikes.
Not yet in a flow, Haslam missed on a pitch and Winlock took advantage, hammering a two-run single up the middle to send the game to extra innings.
Once there, the Wolves bats utterly deserted them for one of the few times in their miracle run, and they fell 16-13 in 10 innings.
The loss, while painful in the moment, capped one of the most successful school years for boys sports in the 116-year history of the school.
McFadyen had quarterbacked the Wolf football team to a 9-0 mark, a league title and a home state playoff game, then moved to the basketball court and sparked CHS to the tri-district playoffs.
Talked into joining baseball at the last second, he made it three-for-three that spring, then departed along with Frey, Marti and hot-hitting Brian Barr.
As we look back at ’91, there’s also one semi-tenuous connection between the two programs.
Jon Crimmins, who was a varsity bench player as a sophomore in ’91, is now a dad, and his son Aiden, plays for the Wolf JV in 2016.
And why do I bring that up?
Because it gives me the chance to recount this story from the ’91 playoff game.
The elder Crimmins and his teammates were all given per diem money for food when they went to regionals, but he and fellow sophomore Keith Currier opted to spend most of their money on baseball cards.
“We sat around the hotel room and opened packs of cards all day. That was my playoff payoff!,” Jon Crimmins said with a laugh.
