Across the last 50 Arizona high school baseball seasons, two teams have gone undefeated: the 1972 Tucson High Badgers, 25-0, and the 2000 Willcox Cowboys, 33-0.
That’s two teams out of about 7,000.
Tucson coach Ray Adkins, hired in 1959, won a state championship in his first season as the Badgers’ coach. If it seemed easy, it wasn’t.
In the 1960s, Adkins coached two of the biggest names in Tucson baseball history, future major-league shortstop Eddie Leon and catcher Rich Alday, who became a Hall of Fame baseball coach at Pima College. Adkins also coached future state championship softball coaches Armando Quiroz of Flowing Wells High School and Bert Otero of Desert View High School. But it took Adkins a dozen years to win a second state championship at THS.
“It was sometimes frustrating,” Adkins told me in 1998. “We were second in 1960 and 1970 and just getting out of Tucson during the playoffs was like winning a state championship.’’
Tucson prep baseball in the Adkins years — 1959-76 — was loaded with elite state championship coaches like Catalina’s Cliff Myrick, Sahuaro’s Hal Eustice, and Rincon’s Gary Grabosch and Lee Carey.
Finally, in 1972, the Badgers not only won another state title but became a team for the ages.
Led by senior pitcher Frank Castro, who went 13-0 with an 0.68 ERA, the Badgers overpowered most opponents. Senior shortstop Ron Hassey, who became a first-team All-American at Arizona and a 14-year MLB catcher, hit .486. Senior first baseman Al Lopez, who was a starter on Arizona’s 1976 College World Series champions, hit .340, and outfielder Mike Odum, who hit .484, was a first team all-state player.
Castro became something of a legend at the ’72 state playoffs, beating Phoenix Carl Hayden, Scottsdale Coronado and Chandler High School by pitching 18⅔ innings in three days, allowing one run and striking out 18.
“I’m not a bit tired, although my arm is a little sore,” said Castro, who had to pitch in relief in the state semifinal and final games as the Badgers fell behind. “Ron Hassey saved me last night and Al Lopez did it tonight.”
In the semifinal victory over Coronado, Hassey’s extra inning single gave the Badgers a 7-6 win. And in an extra-inning state championship game against Chandler, Lopez hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning to save a perfect season, 4-3.
Said Adkins: “You get a pitcher like Frank Castro once in a lifetime.”
Tucson High's state title was big news.
The genesis of the ’72 Badgers didn’t take place in Tucson but in Asbury, New Jersey, of all places. That’s where Adkins was born and became a 12-time state championship coach before relocating to Tucson in the mid-1950s.
Adkins was a baseball man to the core.
After graduating from Trenton State University, he signed with the New York Giants and hoped to be a major-league ballplayer. After playing with the Class D Milford Giants of the Eastern Shore League, Adkins enlisted the Navy and became an underwater demolition expert during World War II.
When the Navy discovered Adkins’ baseball history, it removed him from harm’s way and sent him on a tour of the East, promoting the purchase of War Bonds to civilians. In my 1998 interview with Adkins, he told me that he was paired with baseball Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio on those War Bonds tours.
“I had to pinch myself a few times when I found myself having lunch with Joe DiMaggio,” he said.
Ultimately, Adkins relocated to Tucson, preferring a warmer climate more suitable for coaching high school baseball. After resigning his position as THS’ baseball coach in 1976, he became an assistant principal and Tucson High’s athletic director until 1983.
This is the 50 anniversary of the Badgers’ undefeated season and it’s sad to note Adkins died in 2000, Castro died in 2013 and Lopez passed away in March. The ’72 Badgers were inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.
