EVERETT — For Everett Merchants coach Harold Pyatte — a baseball man through and through — there’s nothing much better than reaching the National Baseball Congress World Series.
Pyatte is in his 45th season with the Merchants. He’s played for and now coaches the club comprised mostly of college athletes and former pros. He remembers each trip to the Series fondly, but nothing quite compares to the 1988 season.
“Your whole summer comes down to that one moment where your work pays off and you win,” said seven-year Merchants veteran Ty Holm, who’s won two World Series playing for the Seattle Studs — Everett’s Pacific International League rival. “There is nothing better than that, and I want nothing more than to do that for Harold and this team. The Merchants won it in 1988, and he still talks about that team like it was yesterday. So if we could give him another ‘ship, that would make his life.”
Everett, which qualified for the World Series as the PIL’s No. 2 seed, opens the tournament in Wichita, Kansas at 4 p.m on Saturday with a pool-play game against the Liberal, Kansas Bee Jays.
Traditionally, only the PIL regular-season champion is awarded a spot in the coveted NBC World Series, and the Seattle Studs claimed that honor this summer. But a new rule allowing the NBC to invite at-large entries worked in Everett’s favor. The Merchants (21-16) finished second in league play, but since the Studs were given an at-large entry that allowed the PIL’s second-place team to earn the league bid.
Pyatte and the Merchants gladly obliged. They’ll be heading to the Series for the first time since 2014 when they exited after suffering back-to-back one-run losses.
“I feel like I wouldn’t be taking this team unless we deserved it,” Pyatte said, “and we have played well against the best teams we’ve faced. We thought if we can compete against them, we can compete in the World Series.”
Success against top teams included two wins against perennial power Seattle — one of which was a 17-5 home blowout.
While a national title is the Merchants’ goal, being enveloped in such rich baseball history and lore at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium in Wichita, Kansas and the pageantry surrounding the tournament is a great way to end a summer of hard work, tournament success aside.
Story has it that the tournament came to be in 1935 when Wichita sporting goods salesman Hap Dumont formed the idea that if the city would build a new baseball stadium he would host a national semi-pro baseball tournament, drawing teams all over the country.
Satchel Paige was regarded the best pitcher of the era, and Dumont offered him $1,000 to bring his touring team to play in the first NBC World Series. Paige struck out 60 batters in four games, and the tournament was a great success. That laid the foundation for what the tournament is today, as thousands of young prospects and former big leaguers have competed.
In fact, in one of Everett’s pool-play games, it will share the diamond with the Kansas Stars — a club composed almost entirely of retired major leaguers. The Stars’ roster includes: future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones, Adam LaRoche, Roy Halladay, Tim Hudson, Joe Nathan, Roy Oswalt, Jake Peavy, Jonny Gomes, Brandon Inge, Ben Sheets, Dan Uggla and Jason Marquis to name a few.
“You play all summer just for the opportunity to go there,” Holm said. “When you are there you have to take it like another baseball game. Later in the day you got to reflect and think, ‘Wow, that was really cool.’ Don’t get too big-eyed during the game.”
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