Summer ball builds baseball culture
I was sitting in the press box at Huskies Field in Othello and got to talking with the kid running the scoreboard about Columbia Basin River Dog history. I brought up the 1999 Major League Draft class at Moses Lake and he just smiled.
“B.J. Garbe used to babysit me,” he said. “We all know those guys on the 1998 national championship team. They’re like heroes.”
It’s not everyday that your babysitter goes on to get drafted No. 5 overall in the Major League Draft. But what do I know? My grandma used to babysit me and she couldn’t hit like B.J.
The thing that makes the Columbia Basin Babe Ruth program special is that they come from different towns, different cultures, different background. They come from places like Moses Lake, Othello, Ephrata, Warden, Quincy and others.
When Alabama, North Carolina, Tucson and Pine Forge, Pa. rolled into Ephrata last year for the Senior Babe Ruth World Series at Johnson-O’Brien Stadium, they were all sporting 15-16 players that all played on the same high school team.
The Columbia Basin River Dogs didn’t even come from the same town, let alone the same ball club. They truly are the Basin Boys of Summer and they have won national Senior Babe Ruth championships in 1998 and again in 2015. The Dogs were in the title game again last year and added another national runner-up to their resume.
Ryan Doumit was on that 1998 national championship team. B.J. Garbe was the tournament MVP. Doumit, Garbe and Jason Cooper were all drafted in the first two rounds of the 1999 Major League Draft, but before that, in the last summer together before they turned professional, they were Columbia Basin River Dogs and darn proud of it.
“The confidence going into our senior season of high school started with that summer when the River Dogs won the World Series,” said Doumit, who spent seven seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, two with Minnesota and finished up his big league career in Atlanta. “It was fun because we had kids from Ephrata, kids from Quincy, kids from Othello. You always knew who these guys were because you were playing against them all the time. Now, you’re on the same team. There’s no doubt that we were a talented team, but it was the team chemistry that was cool. We hung out together. We were friends.
“It wasn’t you’re from Ephrata, I’m from Moses Lake and now we’re going to butt heads. Our colors were teal and navy blue, not anybody’s high school colors. The colors represent the Columbia Basin and we were very proud of the fact that we all came from very small towns and we were doing big things in the baseball world. We’re very proud of that.”
Cooper was originally drafted by Philadelphia in 1999, but chose to go to Stanford where he earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology in three years. Cooper, a sweet swinging left-hander, played both football and baseball for The Cardinal. He was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the third round (82nd overall) in 2002 and played nine seasons in the minor leagues, reaching the Triple-A level.
Playing River Dog ball was an important step to his development, which included a nomination for the national player of the year at Stanford, he said.
“We definitely felt like we were the best team in the country,” Cooper said. “I don’t feel there were many teams that worked as hard and were as strong as our club. Even though we had kids from all over, we fully expected to win and we went in there with that in mind, and that’s what we did.”
The 2017 River Dog team is off in fine form, going 3-1 at the Spokane tournament over the weekend to finish second.
Rodney Harwood is a sports writer for the Columbia Basin Herald and can be reached at rharwood@columbiabasinherald.com