The Snohomish baseball tradition is even richer than I thought.
In a Sunday column, I named five men who played baseball there and went on to major league careers.
A couple of phone calls and an e-mail later, I was told that I had missed someone. I apparently missed two. One was a fellow named Roy Grover, who played three years in the American League in the early 1900s. The other was Jim Ollom, who pitched for the Minnesota Twins in 1966 and 1967. I apologized to Ollom Monday morning.
He was very nice about it. “That’s all right,” said Ollom, who was driving from his home in Phoenix to Los Angeles when I caught up with him. “You probably weren’t around here at that time.”
No, I wasn’t. But that still doesn’t excuse my oversight. I knew I should have called Keith Gilbertson Sr. and checked my list of players with him before the column ran. (Gilbertson gave me another name of a fellow who claimed to have played in the majors, John Altman, but I couldn’t find him in the Baseball Encyclopedia.)
Nobody knows Snohomish athletic history like Gilbertson, and nobody can recall names, dates, scores and game situations like the long-time Snohomish High School coach.
If you’re a male and played sports for the Panthers in the last half-century, chances are you were coached by Gilbertson. “I ran cross country for him,” Ollom said, “and he was my ninth grade basketball coach.”
See what I mean?
Jim Ollom was a great pitcher for Snohomish High in the early 1960s. “He was a 6-4 left-hander who could flat-out bring it,” said Bob Smithson, the former Cascade High baseball coach and the current athletic director for the Everett School District. “He and I had some classic duels. He’d pitch a no-hitter and I’d pitch a one-hitter.”
Back in those days, if a high school had a standout pitcher, it worked him every chance it got. So it was with Ollom and Smithson. They’d pitch two games a week. If a coach tried that today, he’d be called before the school board.
Now a supermarket representative for Dawn Foods in the Western United States, Ollom pitched seven no-hitters and averaged better than two strikes an inning his senior year before signing with the New York Yankees. He had a baseball scholarship to Washington State, but turned it down to go pro. “Bob Smithson got the scholarship,” Ollom said. “I think he was happy I signed.”
The scout who signed Ollom predicted he would someday replace Whitey Ford, the classy little left-hander who was winding up a career that would gain him a spot in the Hall of Fame. “I was just a farm kid from Snohomish,” Ollom said. “I thought it sounded great.”
He spent one year in the Yankees organization before his contract was purchased by the Minnesota Twins.
He had some fond memories of his minor league career. Pitching for Bismarck, N.D., in the Northern League, he once outdueled Steve Carlton – a future Hall of Famer – in an 11-inning game, 1-0.
He remembered a guy who played for Aberdeen, a hothead outfielder who used to get mad and throw bats and gloves. That was his introduction to Lou Piniella.
In 1965, while playing in the Carolina League, Ollom was promoted to Denver, the Twins’ Class AAA team, and drove straight through – 15 hours – to reach the Mile High City. Another pitcher called up at the same time started for Denver and got hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of Chuck Cottier, a future Seattle Mariners manager.
“I was sitting in the bullpen half asleep when they told me to warm up,” Ollom said. “I went five or six innings and did real well.”
His biggest thrill that year was his first victory. He got it before the hometown folks, shutting out Tacoma.
His manager in Denver was Billy Martin, who made a few enemies during his tumultuous career. But Ollom wasn’t one of them. “I loved Billy,” he said. “Everything he said was right. You didn’t disagree.”
You know how they talk about Denver being such a difficult place to pitch because of the altitude? Well, in 1966, Ollom went 20-8 with an earned run average in the 3s. “At the time, a guy doesn’t think about that,” he said, “but in hindsight, it was pretty good.”
The Pacific Coast League player of the year, Ollom was called up to the majors near the end of the season and had no decisions with a 3.60 ERA in three appearances.
Ollom was with the Twins the entire ‘67 season – he was 0-1 with a 5.40 ERA – but got into only 21 games, mostly as a reliever. The Twins had four starters – Dean Chance, Jim Kaat, Jim Merritt and Dave Boswell – who all pitched at least 220 innings and collectively had 53 complete games so there weren’t a whole lot of innings left over for the bullpen once you got past the top relievers.
Ollom recalled having a “few good games” that year, one of which came in Yankee Stadium. He started that day and struggled early, giving up a 2-run hit to Mickey Mantle. “I was so close to being pulled out of the game,” he said, but settled down and retired 18 in a row.
That was Ollom’s final year in the majors. He spent a couple more years in the minors before calling it quits. “I wasn’t getting my breaking ball over and it didn’t seem like I was putting it (my game) back together,” he said.
He was also starting a family and had to make some money. Players weren’t earning that much back then, even at the major league level.
Asked about his best memory, Ollom said, “It’s hard to say. The whole experience was great for me, a farm kid from Snohomish. We only had a couple of thousand people, but we had great baseball.”
And Jim Ollom was a big part of that tradition.
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