The summer game: Memories of a Marion boyhood
(Third in a series)
For sports-loving high school boys in Marion during the 1950s, the year had four seasons. They were football, basketball, track and baseball.
You could go out for cross country instead of football if you wanted to, but not very many boys did.
There were no other high school sports. All five were coached by one man, Les Hipple. He was a very demanding coach who enforced strict training rules, worked his players into top condition and insisted that they learn, very specifically, the fundamentals of each sport.
His methods worked, and his teams won more football games, more basketball games, more track championships and more state cross country championships than any other Marion coach.
But in one season of the year, Hipple changed his approach radically. And his record showed it. In his decade or more as baseball coach, Marion lost far more games than it won. The beauty of it was that no one cared.
Baseball at Marion was not an official high school sport, although the school district helped fund the program. It operated under the aegis of the American Legion, and the uniform jerseys bore the name of Stuber Motors, the Ford dealer in town.
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