Writer confesses to using altered bat in a college baseball game 41 years ago

Forty-one years is a long time to carry such a burden.

The time has come to spill the beans. To tell the truth. To let the cat out of the bag.

The memory had been suppressed so long that I was shocked when it returned to me only a month or two ago.

Got you confused? Wondering what I'm talking about? Stay tuned. You'll find out how some 55 years on a baseball diamond nearly blew up in smoke on a chilly afternoon at Huron's Memorial Ballpark in April of 1983.

I was a sophomore starting third baseman for Huron College's baseball team, my hometown team, and even though the school no longer exists I still consider that Tribe squad to be the best or second-best baseball team I ever played on. We won the South Dakota Intercollegiate Conference championship before falling to Northern State in the NAIA District 12 playoffs.

Our season that year started in February when we made our annual spring trip. After visiting Fort Pierce (Florida) on our spring trip my freshman year in 1982, we headed west through the Rocky Mountains in 1983 to Lewiston, Idaho. It's the home of Lewis and Clark State, a NAIA national power that has hosted the NAIA World Series from 1984 to 1991 and again every year since 2000. In 2016, it was reported the school had 139 players drafted and 18 of them had played in the Major Leagues. Those numbers are surely higher today.

Here's what I remember about the trip, other than the place is gorgeous with a great mountain view and temperatures in the valley seemed to be a perfect 70 degrees every day that time of year. Some of our team's players (not me) took turns driving the bus through the Rockies (something that would never be allowed to this day) and there were at least a few moments where the opportunity existed that I would have never made it to this point to tell this story.

I remember we suffered two late losses to host Lewis and Clark State the first day we were there (the other matchups against them weren't as close) and we also got battered pretty good by a Division I Washington State team that didn't yet have John Olerud but had more than its fair share of sweet-swinging lefties. I also remember I went 2-for-2 in that game and finished my college career with a 1.000 batting average (2-for-2) against NCAA Division I teams.

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The basis of this story is really the batting cages that were located past the right-field fence and a couple of the aluminum bats there that a couple of my teammates decided would be a good idea to bring back to South Dakota. Those were the days when the aluminum bats had rubber ends that would occasionally pop off after hitting a ball.

You could, per say, take the end off and put in some Styrofoam^™ and pop the end back on (that was already the case with these bats). It was at the time, a modern version of corking a bat. To make a long story short, I decided I wanted to try out the bat in a home game when South Dakota's weather became conducive to playing baseball a few weeks after we got back from Lewiston.

Mark McGwire I wasn't. Sammy Sosa I wasn't. Barry Bonds I wasn't. I wasn't a power hitter and no amount of Styrofoam^™ placed inside an aluminum bat was going to change that. Call me a cheater. Technically, I was.

I'm sure there's a chance if the NAIA gets wind of this story, my career records might be scratched for eternity. Maybe the South Dakota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame will toss me out along with the Watertown Baeball Association Hall of Fame that I was inducted into just a couple of months ago.

What? Here's what happened. I used one of the bats one time. I hit a four-hopper to the second baseman with the illegally-altered bat. I grounded out and when I did, the rubber end popped off. I don't remember if it was me, or a teammate, but the bat was collected before our opponents, umpires and other officials ever caught wind of my not-so-proud moment.

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Who knows what would have happened? A lengthy suspension. Complete banishment from the NAIA and all levels of baseball. I would have argued the "tampered" bat was a failure. Only I could use a juiced-up bat that didn't have any juice.

Today's analytic baseball masterminds I'm sure would argue that there was nothing wrong with the "tampered" bat, but rather the real issue was my limited exit velocity and insufficient launch angle.

I played that sophomore year of baseball at Huron College, transferred the next year to play with my brother Rod on another SDIC-championship squad at Sioux Falls College and then graduated in December of 1984, with one year of eligibility remaining, to begin my writing career at the Public Opinion. There's more to that story, and maybe sometime I'll spill it.

I can breathe easier now. The truth has come out. Maybe the statute of limitations will prevent any punishment. I feel extremely thankful to have played baseball for 36 years (age 5 to 41) and continue to spend time at the diamond as an umpire of around 25 years.

Baseball has been good to me. I'm grateful it didn't all go away during that one fleeting moment in April of 1983.

Follow Watertown Public Opinion sports reporter Roger Merriam on X (formerly known as Twitter) @PO_Sports or email: rmerriam@thepublicopinion.com

This article originally appeared on Watertown Public Opinion: Column about using an illegally-tampered baseball bat in a college game