Grays Harbor Loggers
The Grays Harbor Loggers represented Aberdeen and Hoquiam, Washington, in the short-season Class A league in the Pacific Northwest in 1977, 1978 and 1980, playing at Olympic Stadium in Hoquiam, an all-wood ballpark built with Works Progress Administration funds and opened in 1938. The franchise began in 1976 as the Grays Harbor Ports under owner and manager Carl W. Thompson Sr., who sold the club after a 26-46 season. Renamed the Loggers and run as an independent club, it went 22-44 under manager Ralph Dickenson in 1977 and drew 10,571 fans.
In 1978 artist and baseball executive Van Schley supplied the Loggers with a manager, Bill Bryk, and 12 players he kept under contract and paid himself. The veteran club went 47-23 and won the North Division by 1-1/2 games over Walla Walla. The league final was a best-of-three series against the Eugene Emeralds. Grays Harbor won the opener, rain washed out the rest of the series, and league president Bob Richmond awarded the league championship to the Loggers.
That July, Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Murray, a friend of Schley's, came to Grays Harbor to film a segment for the show after a plan to film with the Chicago White Sox fell through. He worked out with the team for several days and coached first base. On July 26, 1978, before 141 fans at Olympic Stadium, Murray pinch-hit in the eighth inning of a 7-4 win over the Victoria Mussels and singled to left field off Paul Kirsch, an outfielder pitching in relief. On July 31 at Walla Walla he pinch-hit again in the ninth inning and struck out on three pitches against Padres farmhand Randy Miller, finishing his career 1-for-2. The segment, "Things We Did Last Summer," aired on October 28, 1978, and Murray rejoined the team for its championship celebration.
The club played the 1979 season as the Grays Harbor Mets, a New York Mets affiliate that went 19-52 under Danny Monzon and featured 15-year-old Jose Oquendo, before New York pulled out. Back as the independent Loggers in 1980, the team went 33-36 under Bryk, finished fourth in the North Division and drew 20,020 fans. That roster included catcher Mark Parent, who later caught for the San Diego Padres and six other big league clubs, infielder Luis Quinones, a member of the Cincinnati Reds' 1990 World Series champions, and pitcher Mike Couchee, who reached the Padres in 1983. Outfielder Tack Wilson of the 1977 club later played for the Minnesota Twins and California Angels. The franchise folded after the 1980 season.
The short-season Class A league in the Pacific Northwest grew out of the Western International League, which played from 1937 to 1954 with clubs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Canada. The league reorganized as a Class B circuit with seven charter teams in 1955 and switched to a short-season schedule in 1966, the level at which it played through 2020. Its member towns stretched from British Columbia to southern Oregon and east to Idaho, and many of them, including Bend, Boise, Walla Walla, Grays Harbor and the Tri-Cities, changed franchises and nicknames often as owners and major league partners came and went.
