Backroads and Ballplayers #111
Stories of the famous and not-so-famous men and women from a time when baseball was "Arkansas' Game." Backroads and Ballplayers Weekly is always free and short enough to finish in one cup of coffee.
This week in Backroads and Ballplayers Weekly:
Coach Curry II,
Aloy,
LSU,
Benintendi,
Frog’s Lost Story About Bad Luck
Salute to Coach Chris Curry, Part II: Only in Arkansas
As most of my regular readers know, I write a monthly piece for the online magazine, Only in Arkansas. The recap of the amazing Chris Curry/UA Little Rock accomplishments in the NCAA baseball postseason was one of the most-read features in Backroads and Ballplayers Weekly this year. I decided to rewrite that inspirational story for Only in Arkansas. Today, the feature about Coach Curry and the Little Rock Trojans is the lead article in Only in Arkansas (June 23, 2025).
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A Tradition of Excellence
USA Baseball Press Release: 6-21-2025
Arkansas’ Wehiwa Aloy was named the 47th winner of the Golden Spikes Award presented by Chinook Seedery today during a live presentation on ESPN. Created in 1978, the Golden Spikes Award honors the top amateur baseball player in the United States based on their athletic ability, sportsmanship, character, and overall contribution to the sport.
After being the fifth finalist in Arkansas program history, Aloy becomes the third player from the school to win the award behind Andrew Benintendi (2015) and Kevin Kopps (2021). He is the 12th winner from the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which is the most of any conference in the nation. Arkansas is the fourth school in Golden Spikes Award history to have three or more winners, joining Florida State (four), Arizona State (three), and Cal State Fullerton (three) as the only school from the SEC to accomplish the feat.
“In a season that featured outstanding individual efforts from a wide range of players, Wehiwa Aloy stood above the rest,” said Paul Seiler, USA Baseball’s Executive Director/CEO. “Wehiwa’s 2025 season was nothing short of incredible to watch, and he is greatly deserving of this honor. We are excited for Wehiwa to join our incredible family of Golden Spikes Award winners and look forward to celebrating his special season.”
Over the next two weeks, Arkansas’ three Golden Spikes Award Winners will be featured in Backroads and Ballplayers Weekly. Today, a Benintendi Update
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Getting Over It, Gage, Benny Watch, Bad Luck, & Coach Curry Part II
Reflections…
“It’s the only game in which the defense has the ball and the only game in which the person scores, not the ball. That, and 10,000 other things, make it the greatest game ever invented.” -Ken Burns
When I coached high school baseball, I tried to take teenage spontaneity out of the game. I was proud of that. We worked on preplanning every day. “Okay, guys, in baseball, you can think ahead about what you are going to do when the ball finds you.”
How many outs, where are the runners, where is a force out, where do I throw on a single, how do we communicate? My guys were ready. Then the ball was in play, and I watched in amazement as they lost their minds.
I saw it happen to a 29-year-old big-leaguer this week, and I saw it in the College World Series.
LSU!
Did LSU win the College World Series on June 14 when they beat Arkansas 4-1? That evening in Omaha, Kade Anderson may have moved up to the number one pick in the upcoming draft. He doesn’t look like a dominating pitcher. He reminds me of a left-handed Sonny Gray, but he convinced me that he might not lose again in the MCWS. Of course, he did not. Having a guy to get that first win in the series and the first win in the finals is a big deal.
The ejection in the final game will be dissected for a week or so, and the umpire will emerge as the villain. When all parties in the mess needed to take a deep breath, neither took the time to think: “I need to give this coach some slack,” OR “My team needs me in this game.”
It seems hard to have a big game these days when a back story does not become the “front” story.
I have two purple shirts. My hometown is Ozark, Arkansas, home of the capitalized Hillbillies. The school colors are purple and gold. “You just can’t hide that Hillbilly Pride.”
I don’t plan to wear one of my purple shirts for a few weeks. Losing to LSU is especially painful, but so is losing to Texas A&M, Tennessee, Texas, either of the Mississippi schools, or Vanderbilt. Oklahoma will be in that mix soon, and Alabama is becoming relevant.
So it was LSU this time. Texas, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and those two Mississippi schools were watching on TV. I wrote last week that every team except the eventual College World Series Champion was heading for a “painful last loss.” The Razorbacks found their unhappy ending playing that team from “Red Stick” in those purple shirts. Those rival schools sitting at home also had a devastating “last loss.” It just came sooner on a smaller stage.
Gage
I have this photo as my screensaver. Try it.
Benny Watch - Update on Arkansas’ Golden Spikes Winners I
The Chicago White Sox are pretty bad. They were historically bad until they were supplanted in the bad column by the Colorado Rockies. The White Sox seem to have no aspirations above bad, but they have won a World Series in this century (2005). The Mets and Tigers, who seem to be interested in being a contender, have not won a World Series since the mid-1980s.
I remember the 2015 MLB draft. I am sure most of my readers also recall that Vanderbilt’s Dansby Swanson was taken as the number one pick in the first round. LSU shortstop Alex Bregman was taken second, and Andrew Benintendi was the seventh player chosen. I was positive that Benintendi would be a better big-leaguer.
Benny has been a good major league player; sometimes better than good. He helped Boston win a World Series in 2018, won a Gold Glove in 2021, and made the All-Star team in 2022, but he has never reached the success of the two SEC guys taken ahead of him in the 2015 draft.
He seemed to tinker with his swing and try to hit home runs for a season or two, and lately, he has had a series of injuries that have come when he was going well. Whatever the hamate bone is, he has broken it two or three times.
I remain a big fan. I check every morning to see if he has a broken hand or if he is on one of his healthy periods. He is a streaky hitter. Occasionally, I find him “on a tear” (a sustained period of achievement).
So, when I checked on him on Saturday, our guy Benny was on a sustained period of achievement. In the 20 games prior to Saturday, June 21, Benintendi had batted .297, driven in 13 runs, and hit a grand slam homer.
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Bad Luck - Frog’s Letter Home
Over the last few days, I have seen dozens of social media posts that lament the Razorbacks’ bad luck in the College World Series. I am not sure about “bad luck,” but misfortune does seem to be associated with losing the first game in the MCWS. About 83% of the teams that lose their first game in the MCWS have had “bad luck.”
I have hundreds of notes on forgotten baseball stories. I found this one filed under “Bad Luck.”
Gilbert “Frog” Burchfield’s letter to his parents from the Arkansas Gazette:
—Arkansas Gazette 1941
Frog and Luckey
Of course, in a lost baseball tale of collective misfortune like the Frog Burchfield saga, the absent manager had the appropriate name, George Luckey. In his letter back home, Frog did not indicate why the Pioneers were playing without their manager, but in one newspaper account, Luckey was away dealing with a death in his family.
The 1941 Americus, Georgia, Pioneers were the last baseball stop for manager George Everett “Dick” Luckey. By this point in his career, the player-manager had played almost 1300 pro baseball games.
Although he was once a big-league prospect, by 1941, Luckey was going nowhere. Back in 1934, Luckey had hit .327 with 19 home runs for Class B Charlotte in the Piedmont League, but in the 102 games in his last season, Luckey batted a weak .241 without a home run.
After baseball, the veteran of 16 pro seasons apparently worked as a yardman for the railroad, and his baseball story virtually disappeared. Dick Luckey died in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, on May 5, 1962. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Nashville’s Mount Olivet Cemetery.
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It’s Baseball. It can be summed up in three words: “you never know”. 🤪🤪