In the middle of the 1957-58 school year, Tucson Unified School District announced it had hired Lee Carey as the baseball coach at Rincon High School, due to open in September 1958.
It was an instant headline. In today’s world, it would’ve been retweeted hundreds of times, many by confused members of the Tucson High Badgers baseball team. After all, Carey had just coached THS to1955 and 1956 state baseball championships and was considered Mr. Badger as much or more than anyone on planet earth.
From 1944-46, Carey had played on five state championship football, basketball and baseball teams at THS; he was named Tucson’s athlete of the year by this newspaper as a junior and senior.
And now he was headed to the new school, Rincon, barely four miles east on Fifth Street.
Carey was the real thing. In his fourth year at Rincon, he coached the Rangers to an 18-1 record and the first state championship, in any sport. A year earlier, Rincon was No. 2.
When Rincon opened its doors — TUSD’s fourth high school — it absorbed about 450 students from Tucson High. Enrollment was about 1,500 students. The school thrived immediately. The Rangers went 8-3-1 to finish second in the 1963 state football championships, and reached the state basketball finals in 1967, finishing 22-1.
But it was Carey who delivered the way he had as something of a boyhood legend at Tucson High.
The ’63 Rangers had the state’s top pitching staff. Ken Swartz went 7-0 and lefty Bob Jackson not only went 7-1 with a 1.21 ERA, he also hit .534. Jackson, who went on to pitch for the UA, was groomed to pitch; his father built a pitching mound in the family’s backyard — a rarity in the 1960s — and it led to a state title.
Rincon had plenty of motivation. It finished as runner-up a year earlier, losing to Phoenix North in the championship game. But in ’62, Rincon opened with 15 consecutive victories and routed Phoenix Camelback 17-11 in the championship game. Jackson not only saved the game in a relief appearance, he pitched a one-hit shutout with 15 strikeouts in the state tournament opener, against Glendale.
Shockingly, Carey resigned his coaching position a few days after the state championship game to become Dean of Boys at Rincon.
"I really didn’t think I’d coach forever," said Carey, who was only 34.
Lee Carey of Tucson High School signs with the Cleveland Indians in 1947 as manager Lou Boudreau, left, and general manager Bill McKechnie look on. Carey returned to Tucson and eventually became the baseball coach at both Tucson High and Rincon.
It’s not like he got out while the getting was good. Rincon was at the beginning of a golden age of high school baseball, reaching the state championship game three times in 10 years, winning again in 1971 in the top classification of Arizona schools.
The Rangers of the ’60s were so good that they produced future major-league pitchers Paul Moskau, Pat Darcy, Dan Schneider and Jim Crawford.
But it was Rincon’s ’62 team that set the standard of excellence, with third baseman Tom Alden hitting .459 and all-city catcher Jeff Schafer and shortstop Mike Armstrong adding significant production.
Carey remains one of the leading names in the history of Tucson high school sports, as a coach and player.
He was so good that when the Cleveland Indians moved their spring training operation to Tucson in the spring of 1947 that manager Lou Boudreau offered Carey a tryout at Hi Corbett Field. At the time, Carey was deciding between scholarship offers from Arizona, Yale and USC. He instead accepted what was then an unusually high bonus of $19,000 from Cleveland — about $250,000 in today’s money — and opened the minor-league season with the Class A Tucson Cowboys.
The Louisville Slugger company signed Carey to a contract when he was 18.
Carey, often referred to as "Larrupin' Lee" and "Legs" by Tucson’s newspapers, played six years in the minor leagues, reaching Double-A, before earning two degrees at the UA and becoming a teacher and coach at Tucson High. After he retired as Rincon’s baseball coach, he completed his career as an assistant principal at both Rincon and Sabino high schools.
In 1972, the Tucson Citizen selected Carey as Tucson’s best athlete of the post-World War II years. Carey, who completed the 112-mile El Tour de Tucson endurance race when he was in his 60s, died in 2014; he was 85.
