Father-son baseball game continues with improvisation

CLOVIS — Like every tradition, it started small and worked its way up.

Now the father-son baseball game played in Clovis among former Little Leaguers and their fathers is 43 years old, and not even the coronavirus could stop it.

This past July 4 was mostly like the 42 before it, for a father-son baseball game founded by Jim Cowman and taken over by Stuart Stratton. They still played the game, but it wasn’t exactly the same. These are, after all, the days of COVID-19.

“We couldn’t get on a baseball field,” Stratton said, “because they were all locked up.”

So, they improvised. A soccer field would have to do, and organizers went to work building a baseball field on it. Because there wasn’t much of a fence encircling the field, to avoid the balls being hit way out of the park, they replaced baseballs with wiffle balls.

Yes, a wiffle ball game at a soccer field. But there was a game after all.

“Oh, yeah, yeah. We had a blast, so much fun,” Stratton said. “We thought the police might break us up, but we went ahead and did it. We just thought, ‘What the heck?’ But the police didn’t bother us, and I guess there were no complaints.”

The tradition began back in the Jimmy Carter years, thanks to Cowman.

“I came to town and got involved in the American Little League,” Cowman recalled, “because my boys were playing — we used to have six leagues with five teams apiece. I had two sons in Little League.”

From that association sprang the July 4 tradition.

“They were a good bunch,” Cowman said, “and we started a father-son baseball game. We had a lot of good kids and a lot of parental support, and it went well. I haven’t been to every one, but I went to the first 15 or 20.”

And this year’s installment.

The 83-year-old Cowman didn’t play this time, saying the only reason was some recent health trouble. Otherwise he would have at least batted, with an eager 8- or 9-year old more than happy to pinch run their way to first base for him.

The tradition has rolled on, a tradition that has included a memorable father-son duo of Eck and Bruce Colson, a future pro player.

“Bruce Colson was one of the best pitchers the Wildcats have ever had,” Cowman said. “I think he’s still around, working for the railroad, but I haven’t seen him in years.”

Another tandem was Stratton and his father, Norm, a.k.a. “Stormy Norman.”

“He wore like, pizza pants, tablecloth, like the red and white tablecloth at Pizza Hut,” Stuart Stratton recalled of Stormy Norman. “So whenever we talk about it, we say, ‘Yeah, Dad wore pizza pants.’”

Stormy Norman has left us, but memories of him playing in his pizza pants live on.

And so does the game, which has expanded from a father-son event to include mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and girlfriends.

Count Cowman in again next year. He hopes to be back at the plate.

“I always plan on it,” he said, “but at 83, it’s kinda tough planning things because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”