MAY 19, 1972
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TUCSON HIGH GOES 25-0 TO WIN STATE BASEBALL TITLE
The list of undefeated high school baseball teams in modern Arizona history is brief.
2000 — Willcox High, 33-0
1972 — Tucson High, 25-0
1965 — St. David High, 17-0
There were a few other undefeated teams from 1910-50, including a 20-0-1 Tucson High team of 1941, but they played so few games that it doesn’t endure.
So here’s the question: Are the ’72 Tucson Badgers the best baseball team in state history?
Badgers coach Ray Adkins won the 1959 state title and reached the championship game in 1960 and 1970, but after the Badgers rolled to a pinch-yourself-it’s-true unbeaten season in 1972, he told the Star, “If there’s a better team than this one, I’ve never seen it.”
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It wasn’t just the 25-0 record, it was the drama of Tucson’s final two victories at the state tournament.
The Badgers beat Scottsdale Coronado 6-5 in the state semifinals when future UA All-American and MLB standout Ron Hassey hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth inning, a game in which Tucson trailed 5-2 in the fifth.
The championship game was even more theatric.
Chandler High led 3-0 in the second inning and Adkins’ supply of pitchers was exhausted. The state’s player of the year, Tucson senior Frank Castro, had pitched a complete-game victory two days earlier in a 10-1 victory over Carl Hayden High.
A day later, in Tucson’s comeback against Coronado, Castro was summoned for five innings. He didn’t allow a run.
So when Mike Odum, a .484-hitting center fielder and No. 3 pitcher, couldn’t get out of the second inning, Adkins asked Castro, who also played second base and batted cleanup, if he had a few more innings left in his arm.
Remarkably, Castro pitched the final 6º innings, allowing just two hits and no runs, while the Badgers rallied to tie the game at 3-3.
“My arm was a little sore,” Castro said, “but I told the coach I’d be ready if he needed me.”
That would never happen in today’s pitch-count world of baseball. But over three days, Castro went 3-0 by pitching 18º innings, allowing just six hits and one run. It was surely the greatest single state tournament performance by any baseball player in Arizona history.
Castro also had three RBIs and batted .300 in the tournament.
But that wasn’t the end of the ’72 championship game. When Castro shut out Chandler in the top of the eighth inning — extra innings — the game remained tied at 3-3.
That’s when future UA College World Series first baseman Al Lopez smashed a home run over the left-field fence to win the title, 4-3.
“Are you kidding?” Adkins said. “These kids didn’t lose their poise all week.”
The Badgers completed the season with a team ERA of 0.68. Although statistics are not kept by the state from year to year, it is surely the lowest team ERA in state history. Castro finished 13-0, and that’s not all. Six months earlier he was the starting quarterback on the 1971 state championship team.
Where are they now: After playing at Pima College and NAU, Castro worked in Tucson until his death in 2013; he was 59. Hassey, who played shortstop at THS and converted to catcher thereafter, played 14 seasons for the Yankees, White Sox, A’s, Expos, Cubs and Indians. He caught three perfect games. In 1976, he was one of the leading players as Arizona won its first College World Series. He retired from coaching in the Pacific Coast League two years ago. He is 63.
How they did it: “We started six sophomores in 1970, and finished second in state,” said Adkins. “So to have them now, as seniors, winning the whole thing, going undefeated, well, how can you beat that?”
The six sophomores-turned-seniors included Hassey, Lopez, Castro, Odum, Jesus Lopez and Tony Figueroa.
