Return to Ellensburg, The Place Where Lohrke Got Lucky

By Bob Brigham

In 1946, the Spokane Indians of the Western International League were stocked with veterans. Not baseball veterans, ex-servicemen from World War Two.

One wonders if they felt-battle weary that Monday, June 24, when they boarded the team bus for a 300-mile journey to Bremerton on other side of the state of Washington. They had just played 16 innings against the Salem, Oregon team, capping off a seven-game series played between Tuesday and Sunday. Now they had to travel all day and into the night to do it all over again against Bremerton in the coming week.

They would travel 60 miles southwest on Highway 90 to Ritzville. Then it was due west for about the same distance to a little town called George. There 90 dips south again, looking for a place to cross the mighty Columbia River. Once across the Columbia it's only about 25 miles into the setting sun to Ellensburg.

"I liked it better when it was Webster's Cafe," Mary Mimz told me as we stood outside Sweet Memories Bakery. I wasn't going to argue with her. Mary is 91 years old and has lived in Ellensburg most of her life. She and husband Frank showed Sweet Memories to me when I asked where the Spokane team had stopped for supper 50 years ago.

"I think two of the players escaped death that night because they got permission to go to Bremerton in a car with their wives." Mary said.

Good memory, Mary. Pitchers Milt Cadinha and Joe Faria were the lucky ones.

Then we talked about another lucky player, one so blessed with good fortune that Jack Lohrke became "Lucky" Lohrke as a result of a phone message that was waiting for Indians manager Mel Cole when the team arrived at Webster's

It had been left by San Diego Padres owner Bill Starr. It instructed Cole to send Lohrke to San Diego as soon as possible.

Most of the players finished their meal and got back on the bus that took off into the twilight, headed north for Bremerton. Lohrke, then a 22-year-old infielder, hitch-hiked back to Spokane, his mind racing ahead to the opportunity that awaited him in San Diego.

My chat with Mary and Frank Minz was pleasant, but I felt the need for more substance to flesh out my story on Lohrke. When I first got to Ellensburg, I stopped a stranger outside the chimpanzee lab on the campus of Central Washington University, which is known for its chimp program. (In which our primate cousins are learning American Sign Language to the extent that they can carry on simple conversations with humans.)

The stranger had never heard of Lohrke but found the story fascinating. He suggested a few baseball buffs in town who might be able to answer some of my questions. One of them was a Gene Grunden.

I drove downtown, wondering how I was going to find Gene. I had phoned his home, but there was no answer. At 310 No. Main Street I saw a store with a name that for some reasons encouraged me in my quest, "Anchor in Time--Antiques and Rare Books".

Hmmm. Let's take a shot.

Bruce Magnotti is the proprietor of Anchor In Time. Besides antiques and rare books, he sells baseball cards. Things were looking better.

"Know a fellow named Gene Grunden?" I asked.

Bruce, a laconic sort, said, "If you stick around for about five minutes, you can meet him." He pointed to his son and told me that Gene was the boy's Little League coach and "was on his way to pick him up for practice."

Lucky Lohrke, meet Lucky Brigham.

When Gene arrived, I was ready for him. I had the map out. He showed me the route the team bus took and where it went off the road.

"You see I-90 here?" Gene began. "Well, it didn't exist in 1946. The bus went up Highway 10, which sort of parallels 90 now."

Gene got his face down close to the map. "Airplane Curve. Airplane Curve... here it is." He pointed to a spot where the road turns sharply left and explained that the elevation here is about 3,000 feet. "There is a pretty steep downgrade right after Airplane, and that's where the bus left the road. Went right through the guardrail and down about 300 feet over the side."

Gene was about Little League age in 1946, but he was a baseball man and he knew about the fateful bus trip of the '46 Spokane Indians. I asked him about his career.

"Had a try-out with the Washington Senators in '60. Hit a double off Chuck Stobbs." We laughed about how Stobbs had thrown the pitch that Mickey Mantle hit for the famous 565 feet, tape-measure home run.

"Yeah. The Mick and I both hit Stobbs pretty good."

Jack Lohrke made it to San Diego, albeit a little shell-shocked. He had seen combat in Europe, surviving two battle experiences in which comrades on either side of him were killed. En route from Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, to California where he was to receive his discharge, he was bumped from the military transport by a colonel. The plane went down with no survivors. Yet none of these close calls had the emotional impact of the bus crash that took eight of his teammates and the driver. His trip from Spokane to San Diego was complicated by the sad task of having to accompany the young widows of two of his fallen friends to their respective homes.

Lohrke went on to a respectable seven-year major league career. How many of those who were killed at Airplane Curve could have made it to The Show? There may have been another Jack Lohrke or two. Even a Chuck Stobbs. Probably not a Mantle; they are pretty rare. Most of them were no doubt Gene Grundens, stars on their high school team, good enough to give the pro game a try for a few summers. Then it's on to pumping gas or selling insurance. And coaching Little League.

It was baseball's worst disaster. For those involved and their families, it was a personal tragedy. But these men were minor leaguers, unknown except to fans in around the Western International League. Imagine if a plane had gone down earning a major league team from, say, New York to Chicago. Given the idolatry we lavish upon our sports heroes, the dollar investment a big league club represents, it is a thought almost too monstrous to contemplate.

How would the people who run the game keep it running?

In 1946 baseball rallied around Spokane. Not really for the grand cause of "saving the game" for that community, but for self-interest.

After all, Sam Collins, the owner, had an investment to protect. Robert Abel, WIL president, had a responsibility to the other league franchises to salvage the schedule. He went immediately from league headquarters in Seattle to Spokane to preside over an emergency meeting at which a contingency plan was formulated.

This is not to imply cynicism. These men felt sorrow for the victims and their families, and they had an emotional attachment to the game. But baseball is a business.

League members offered replacement players from their rosters. The Pacific Coast League did the same. Even Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers took time out from his responsibilities which at the time included planning nothing less than the integration of baseball. The Mahatma wired Collins, offering players and a manager.

Finding players would not be a problem, as it turned out. They came out of the woods --- and the woodwork. Quality players? That remained to be seen. But there was no shortage of men who saw the tragedy as a means of starting, upgrading or extending their own careers. It had been announced that the Indians would try to put a team together for the 4th of July double-header with Salem. As the day approached, more players showed up. By July 4, Collins had enough players in uniform to play. Player-manager Ben Geraghty, one of six players who survived the crash, was told by his doctor that he had not recuperated sufficiently to manage. So Glenn Wright came out of retirement to take his old job as skipper.

The Indians lost both games, but team trainer John Anderson, himself a former player, suited up for the second game and managed two doubles in three at bats.

By 1947 Lohrke was a rookie with the New York Giants. He played with them through 1951, then spent the following two seasons with the Phillies. After that it was back to the PCL for a few seasons before hanging it up.

Today he lives in San Jose, retired for good after working 20 years for Lockheed. I wonder if he ever travels. Like a trip to the great Northwest. Spokane, perhaps, where in his last game before a road trip that was supposed to take the team to Bremerton, he had a pretty good day.

In the words of the Spokane Spokesman-Review "...the sensational third baseman continued his great play afield and contributed four hits ... including a line drive 380 feet over the clock to the left of the scoreboard ... The ball must have just barely missed putting the timepiece out of order." Shades of Roy Hobbs!

I wonder if he has ever gone back to Ellensburg. The town of 13,000 where I-90 turns north towards Airplane Curve, the place where "the sensational third baseman" was pulled off the team bus and sent instead to San Diego.