THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: A trip back in time, to a ballpark in Post Falls

A sunny weekend afternoon in May 1984. 

A good excuse to get out of town.

In this case, it was a quick road trip from Sandpoint to Post Falls, to cover an American Legion baseball doubleheader between the Sandpoint Lakers and the Post Falls Loggers. 

I was just less than 2 years into what would be a 16-year stint as the sports writer at the Daily Bee in Sandpoint. 

The site for the games was a cute little park off Spokane Street, now called Brett James Memorial Field. 

My friend Bruce was coaching the Lakers, and his wife Renee was keeping the scorebook. I had a Minolta camera and maybe a roll or two of black-and-white film.

I’d long since forgotten how the games went — all I remember was it was a nice late spring afternoon, it was a road trip and it was baseball. 

(Just to make sure I wasn’t making this stuff up more than four decades later, the other night I went through our morgue books here at The Press. 

In the Tuesday, May 29, 1984 Sports section, there was a little blurb from the weekend about Post Falls beating Sandpoint 14-4 and 10-1, noting that Legion baseball had returned to Post Falls after a two-year absence). 

I THOUGHT about some of those things last week, when I took pictures at a baseball game there for the first time in more than a quarter-century.   

Just like 42 years ago, it was an American Legion baseball game — the Coeur d’Alene Lumbermen against the Prairie Cardinals in a class AA North Idaho League game. 

Back when I first covered that twinbill there in 1984, the place was called Sportsman’s Park, which houses two baseball fields — a big one and a Little League-sized one — and some tennis courts. 

In 1990, the larger baseball field was renamed Brett James Memorial Field, after the former Post Falls High athlete who passed away in 1989 at age 17 following a battle with leukemia. 

The Post Falls Loggers’ coach when the program returned after that two-year absence was John Pettoello, who would become head coach when Post Falls started a high school baseball program in 1993. 

I enjoyed chatting with him after games, mostly after he would bring his Legion and high school teams north for games at Memorial Field in Sandpoint. 

Pettoello coached third base, and as coaches are wont to do, usually had a line of encouragement for each player as they came up to bat. 

As in ... 

“Hey you now Bobby King, Bobbbbbbbbbbbbby King! Right guy, right place.” 

More times than not, it seemed, Bobby King was the right guy in the right place for the Post Falls Loggers, and many times wound up standing next to his coach at third base, or racing by him on the way home. 

In fact, the writeup from the 1984 game in question mentions King hitting a home run in the first game. 

THE PARK looks like it’s been updated nicely, with new fencing and a fresh slab of cement behind the backstop. 

In past years, if memory serves, Brett James Memorial Field seemed a bit of a launching pad. I watched Kirk Gosch of Coeur d’Alene High hit four home runs in a doubleheader there in 1999, shortly before the new Post Falls High School was built and the Trojan baseball team started playing its home games on-campus. 

Another time, when the Legion class AA Area A (district) tournament was held at Brett James, the championship game went so late into the evening as the two teams played Home Run Derby to the tune of something like 18-16 before the game was suspended by darkness and had to be completed the next morning. 

According to the signs at Brett James Memorial Field, it’s 280 feet down the left field line, 317 to straightaway left, 371 to left center (close to dead center), 363 to right center and 310 down the line in right. 

On this night last week, when the Lums and Cardinals played, there was quite the wind blowing in to make it almost impossible for anyone to leave the yard.  

Plus, the fence is 12 feet high. 

Younger teams have played at Brett James since the AA Legion and high school teams left years ago. The Post Falls Loggers eventually became the Prairie Cardinals, playing home games at North Idaho College, and later at Lakeland High, and now at Post Falls High. 

Until last week, when the Cardinals made a trip back in time. 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.