© by Ray Sanchez 05.29.16
The El Paso Softball Hall of Fame held its induction banquet this month – and it brought back many fine memories for me.
It seemed like everybody in El Paso was playing softball in El Paso following World War II. Teams popped up all over town. Companies began sponsoring teams.
Even members of the El Paso media got into the act. I was asked to form and coach a team of them. I was in my 20s, but I loved sports and agreed. I scrounged around and came up with a surprisingly fine group of players in the 1950s. Not all of them worked at the newspapers or on radio but they were all connected in some way, including advertising.
MY MEMORY is a little sketchy but I do remember the mainstays on the team: They included Bill Hooten (son of the El Paso Times editor then) at third base, Baltazar Alvarez at shortstop, Hawley Richeson at second base, Lucky Leverett at first base, Oscar Barragan at catcher, John McFall, John Bailey and me in the outfield. Some of us alternated pitching.
We even had a member of a Juarez newspaper. He would fill in at times. His last name, believe it or not, was Campanella. No, not Roy, the great Brooklyn catcher, but the name was eerily the same. He would fill in anywhere, even catcher. We got kidded a lot about it but he was a good player. Good for us, anyway.
THERE WERE only six or seven public high schools in El Paso in the 1950s and we were pretty much in demand. We would play against coaches from some of the high schools as fund raisers for booster clubs. The kids and parents at the schools would come out to cheer for their coaches.
And they had plenty to cheer about. We called ourselves “The Scribes” and we usually got trounced.
I remember one game at Burges High School in particular. We were playing the coaches in an open field with no fences. Art Ranew, the basketball coach, came up to bat. He was a tall, strong guy with a reputation as a longball hitter.
I was playing left field and moved way back. He still hit the ball over my head.
But what fun it all was.
MEANWHILE, some of the better teams in the City were getting so seriously competitive they were 
getting sponsors and real softball attire and importing players.
One went so far as to lure Paul Lopez, one of the country’s greatest softball pitchers, from Phoenix. They called him “Hoss.” He was 6 feet 4 and first came to El Paso in 1948. The next year, he led Deal Motor Company to the World ISC Tournament where he won a 20-inning 1-0 game but not the title.
He left El Paso to pitch for a team in New York but returned to El Paso in 1954 and made it his home.
LUCKY EL PASO. By 1960, El Paso had formed a powerful aggregation of players sponsored by Jack Dautrich, an El Paso realtor. The team had another import, Dude Ausmus from Tulsa. He was one of the best hitters in the country.
With Lopez, Ken Wycoff and Clayton Dugger as pitchers and a complement of local players that included
Jack Palmore at catcher, Charlie Smith at first base, future mayor Bert Williams at second base, Wendell Holt at third base, Johnny Huerta at shortstop and Dude Ausmus, Hutch Hutcheson, Al Mena and Jesse Martinez as outfielders and Bobby Nunez as utility player, darn if they didn’t go up to Canada and win the International Softball Congress World Tournament in 1961.
And won again in 1962, with only a few changes. Gene Stogner was at third base along with Wendell Holt while James Crouch was in the outfield with Dude Ausmus and Jesse Martinez.
Clyde Hooten managed the 1961 team and Yvan Rechy the 1962 squad.
You can only imagine what glorious days those were – and I was there.