Just Another Week: Missing The Sweet Swings Of Summer

I understand why high school summer baseball is no longer being played here or anywhere in Wisconsin, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

Reading newspaper archives from 25 years ago has brought back memories and, more importantly, taught me a few history lessons. I enjoy reminiscing with former Whitehall coach Damon Lisowski and Arcadia coach Paul Anderson, leaders of two of the most successful summer programs. 

As you may have read a few weeks ago, 25 years ago, Anderson’s Raiders upset Lisowski’s Norse in the regional round of the summer baseball tournament. Arcadia southpaw Ben Vazquez threw a gem to beat the Whitehall team that had defeated Arcadia in the regular season and went 18-1 prior to the game. It was the second year in a row that the Raiders upset the Norse in the tournament. 

I didn’t cover those games, but I was there a few years later when Lisowski’s Norse got revenge, beating what might have been Anderson’s best Arcadia squad. The 2005 Arcadia team went 25-4, but fell short of the state tournament when Whitehall scored three runs in the top of the seventh for an 11-10 sectional final win. Of course, then Arcadia beat favored Whitehall the next season as the Raiders went to the state tournament.

And so it went: Arcadia, Whitehall, Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau, and West Salem were the major powerbrokers of the summer. Others like Cochrane-Fountain City, Blair-Taylor, Alma Center, Lincoln, and Independence — not yet Independence/Gilmanton — also had successful runs. 

The regular season was played in preparation for the postseason, and everybody knew it. The tournament at that time was essentially a Dairyland Conference championship bracket. It seemed West Salem would win the Large Dairyland and Whitehall would win the Small Dairyland, but there were no guarantees how it would play out in the end. 

While one might expect the schools with the largest enrollments, Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau and West Salem, would dominate the tournament, that wasn’t the case. G-E-T had just one state tournament appearance in the 2000s, and West Salem didn’t make a single appearance from 2002 until summer ball started winding down in 2008. Even Arcadia went six years without a state tournament appearance from 2000 to 2006. The size of the school didn’t seem to matter, at least not until the end. 

But the joy of summer baseball was about more than that. It was, so to speak, the only show in town. There were large crowds at just about every game. The 7 p.m. start times meant parents didn’t have to miss games or rush from work. Since there were no other sports being played, parents and fans didn’t have to split up. Teams were playing between 20 and 30 games at that point, the contests would sometimes last well into the night. (Note: I might not enjoy that as much now that I’m 40, but it was fun in my 20s). 

Summer ball ended when it should’ve, maybe a couple of years too late. With rumors of its demise coming, at the time it was speculated that the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association would end the tournament. Eventually the WIAA ended the series, but that was after the local teams had already switched to spring. 

It got to a point where more players wanted to have jobs or use their summers to prepare for football or basketball, with weightlifting programs and summer basketball leagues taking off. The smaller schools struggled to compete, and West Salem dominated the end, winning the final four sectional tournaments. 

The switch to spring ball made it clear that the summer success wasn’t a fluke. West Salem continued its dominant play with three spring state baseball tournament appearances and a state title in 2017. Eleva-Strum won the crown in 2024, and Independence/Gilmanton advanced to the 2017 championship game. 

There was good ball being played here in the summer. 

Spring baseball is fine. The teams are competitive and take the game seriously — something that wasn’t happening for a lot of the summer squads toward the end. The games are also played at 5 p.m., when it’s often cold and wet outside, and parents and fans have to split up to support other sports. I also think the spring baseball tournament series is lost in the shuffle, but that’s a conversation for another time. 

Of course, we still have summer baseball being played, but it isn’t the same. With all due respect to the Legion programs, there is no denying that it’s not nearly as competitive. Twice in the last couple of weeks, there have been games I planned to cover canceled for no apparent reason. One of the first Legion ball summers I covered a game in which a team went to play in Independence, only to realize it only had eight players. Not wanting to waste the trip, a coach played in the outfield — and ended up dropping a fly ball.  

I would love to see a hybrid season. Instead of playing baseball in March and early April, it could start in mid-April and play until the end of June. 

Even that won’t bring back what once was so great. Maybe summer high school baseball is meant to be gone forever. But man, was it a lot of fun.