Commanding Officers are proud of their organizations and our C.O.,  Major Manning T. "The Hook" Jannell was no exception.  One evening at the Officers Club located at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii,  Maj. Jannell was setting next to another outfit commander and the bragging started.  It seems the Commanding Officer from Kaneohe Bay had an outstanding softball team that was champions of the island.  Not to be outdone, Major Jannell indicated his team held the honors of Champions of All-Services West Coast.  It didn't take long for the subject to get to which team was best and the only way to find out was a challenge game.  The glove was proudly thrown by our leader and picked up by the All-Islands Champs.  The date, the time, and the field was picked and the rest of the evening was spent telling the other how bad they were going to be beaten.  There was only one problem here, the C.O. from Kaneohe had a championship team and we didn't.

The next day at formation there was an announcement that all those with baseball, softball, or any athletic experience were needed for a special assignment.  We ended up with just enough to field a team but ran headlong into the next problem, we didn't have glove, bat, or ball one.  A quick call to the special services at Pearl Harbor got a ragtag collection of a few bats, balls, and not quite enough gloves for everyone.  We might have even had time to have at least one practice session.

The evening of the game, we load our “team in name only”, the motley equipment, and a number of coolers of beer into 3 UH-34Ds  flying off  in an attempt to save our name.  We did make a grand entrance.  Flying in tight formation over the field, each plane broke off sharply forming a line that flared and landed together in the outfield.  We left them in the outfield either as a symbol of our team or a quick get away.

The first 4-5 innings were pretty embarrassing with our pitcher getting hammered followed by some pretty pitiful errors.  I don't think we had scored yet and it looked pretty bleak for bragging rights.  It was warm and humid and one of those beers would have tasted mighty fine, except we had put all the coolers in the opposing team's dugout.  They were having a grand time drinking and throwing insults our way.  They got so bored with our play a few of the outfielders took bottles of beer to the field with them.

About the 6-7 inning, the enemy was starting to have a few problems, the first being able to get out of the dugout to bat or go to their positions.  Their batting eyes started to cross and when they bent over to pick up a ground ball, some of them would fall the rest of the way to the ground.  Their pitcher had lost a lot of his steam and when we hit a fly ball, I saw some of the outfielders just point at it and follow it along the ground with their finger.  They would then yell at the other fielder to get it.  The tide had turned and we were now hammering them.  They didn't have any back up as their spares had spent more time in the coolers than the first string.  In the end, sobriety won out and we were able to overtake and pass them in the stretch.  We celebrated our victory at their dugout where they allowed us to finish off the rest of our beer.

We landed back at Ford Island as probably not the best team, but definitely the one with the best battle plan.

Submitted by:
    Warren R. Smith, former Cpl. USMC  (Click here for more of Cpl. Smith's memories of 1962)