Published: October 06, 2007 11:26 pm      

Wright’s passion inspires youth baseball

ASHLAND — T.R. Wright and other similar men made it possible for Ashland to be part of the organized youth baseball world in the 1950s.

Wright, who died in 1992, was instrumental in establishing the first Babe Ruth League and the first American Legion teams in Ashland.

He will be honored when a new press box is built as part of a $125,000 renovation made possible through a donation from Gary Wright to renovate the main diamond in Central Park.

Gary Wright is one of T.R. Wright’s sons who benefited from his father’s giving spirit.

Don Frailie, a classmate of Wright’s, said a lot of youth in Ashland during that time were the beneficiaries of a lot of volunteer time from fathers and other men throughout the city.

But he said T.R. Wright was much more than just someone who volunteered his time to coach.

“He epitomized what a good Christian daddy should be,” Frailie said. “Anybody can be a father but not everybody is a daddy. There’s a difference. There was none better than Mr. Wright. He was awfully good to all of us.”

Frailie saw later in his adult years what a good father T.R. Wright was. During a time when Frailie was teaching at Coles Junior High, Wright’s wife died while some of the couple’s younger kids were in school.

“Mrs. Wright had died when a couple of those kids were at a fairly tender age,” Frailie said. “I was always so impressed with how Mr. Wright was like a father and a mother both.”

Frailie said he and his late wife, Karen, attended church with the Wrights for years at Old Orchard Church of Christ.

T.R. Wright also had a passion for baseball that he passed on to his sons. He coached in the old YMCA Midget, Junior and Pony Leagues in the 1950s. What Frailie remembers about that was the team Wright coached, Ballard’s TV, was the only one in the league with full uniforms.

“We never had things like that until we played Little League and then they couldn’t get them off us,” Frailie said. “Everybody wanted to play for Ballard’s because Mr. Wright was the manager and because of those uniforms.”

He said the other popular team was Miller’s Funeral Home because of the blue caps the sponsor supplied to the players.

Gary Wright was 13 and a few months too old to participate in Ashland’s inaugural Little League season. He did play in the first Babe Ruth season, which his father helped established.

Gary Wright was a good player, Frailie recalled.

“When Gary was in ninth grade, he started at shortstop for Ashland (High School),” he said. “They’d bring him over from (Putnam) junior high. Gary was a dandy shortstop.”

Men like George Conley, Stan Radjunas and Ellis Johnson, whose sons were all about the same age, were other men who helped get Ashland established in the nationally recognized baseball leagues.

Gary Wright’s donation to renovate the park field, now known as Ernie Chattin Field, came out of his love of playing during that era and the love and respect for his father, Frailie said.

“All of us kids called it CP1,” he said of the main baseball field in the park. “There is no CP2 (formerly the softball field in the park where soccer is now played). But we lived down there. We not only had baseball but there was fast-pitch softball (to watch). We’d get there early and they’d turn off the lights around 10. You were as safe as you could be down there. It was as much a part of us as our homes were, really.”

Frailie said the upgrade being proposed is a salute not only to T.R. Wright but the many other men who made organized baseball a reality in Ashland.

“It’s a way of honoring all of our fathers who were so active back then, especially to do it for a bunch of snotty nosed little sneakin’ kids like we were,” he said.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.