MOUNT HOLLY––They were known as the Bat Pack.

They were the members of the East Gaston High School Warriors baseball team in 1979. That year, they were the runners-up in the state championships.

And this year, for such a laudable accomplishment, the team’s members––Derek Spears, Doug Criswell, Kevin Collier, Todd Kitchen, Jackie Lewis, Tracy Black, Wayne Kinley, Shawn Devinney, Chuck McGee, Scott Brannon, Vance Cleveland, Joey Huffstetler, Phil Jonas, Robert Kaylor, Steve Perkins and James Rhyne––were inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

Black, who was an outfielder, recently spoke of those good, old days.

“If you put a fence and two benches out in the middle of a pasture, that was our baseball field,” he said. “We used to crack ourselves up, because opposing teams would show up to play on our field and we would hear, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ We did have some home games in ’79 though.”

Kinley, the pitcher, agreed.

“Where the field sits now, home plate would have been way off in right field,” he said. “It was a cow pasture.”

Collier played centerfield.

“‘Pasture’ might be too kind of a word for it,” he observed. “We had no outfield fence. Somebody put up two poles and a fence for a backstop and scraped off some grass to put bases down. We had some rubber for home plate, and we played baseball out there.”

East Gaston’s boys of spring were also the Warriors’ boys of fall and winter.

“The core of that team did a lot of winning in all areas: baseball, basketball and football,” Kinley said. “Coach (Jerry) Adams was the duo coach.”

“The football coach was coaching the baseball team, so of course we went to the state championship,” said third baseman Devinney.

“We went because of a bad hop in the outfield,” Collier said. “We advanced to the play-offs, because our field was so uneven. There was a bad hop, and it let us clear the bases and win the game. The other team was furious!”

“It was good,” Kinley said, “but it was 100 years ago.”

The team’s success in advancing to the school’s only state championship season became an inspiration for the EGHS program.

In 1979, Darrell Van Dyke was a first-year teacher and assistant baseball coach. The school’s current baseball field is named for him.

East Gaston took an 18-and-five record, one published story said, into the 1979 State Championship series after beating Asheville-based T.C. Roberson High in a seven-to-three contest in Fairview in the second round of the state Three-A playoffs and defeating South Stokes, six to two, in Belmont to win the Northwest Three-A Conference championship. The Warriors advanced to the North Carolina Three-A State Finals to play the winner of the White Oak-South Johnston game. They played White Oak High at its field in Jacksonville.

White Oak’s pitcher was Louie Meadows, who played at North Carolina State University and was a Houston Astros second-round pick. He had a 28-and-0 high school record.

“We did not win,” Black said.

But they put up a good fight.

“There was a skirmish,” Collier said. “Call it that. Shawn, our third baseman––the runner was coming back at him, and Shawn lowered his shoulder to keep from getting run over and lifted the guy up. And the benches came out, and we had a little skirmish. Shawn lowered his shoulder like a football player, and most of us did play football together.”

“Of course,” Devinney said, “a couple of us got thrown out. I got wound up and got into it with another guy, and their coach came out. And when they started coming, Coach Adams was like my daddy out there, telling about it. So we both finished the game outside the fence.”

White Oak aside, the guys were already winners.

“The ’79 class was actually the same group of guys who won the county championship when we were in junior high at Mount Holly Middle,” Black said. “So we won that, and then it took us three years to win another conference championship when we were seniors.”

The sophomore class, the class of ’81, Collier said, already had won four state championships together at some level.

“I heard Coach Adams joke one time to another coach, ‘I just roll the balls out there and make the line-up and get out of the way,’” Collier recalled. “That’s what made it fun. He let us enjoy the game and play.”

The gang played American Legion ball in Belmont. Mick Mixon, whose first radio job was on a Belmont-based AM station and who later became the Carolina Panthers play-by-play announcer, called the games. 

“He was in high school over there in Belmont, and we thought he was a nerd and wouldn’t give him the time of day,” Collier said jokingly. “And he travelled with us to our games. I remember when Derek Spears was playing at Clemson, and he gave him an interview. It’s funny: we played Legion with the Belmont guys, who were our rivals, and (South Point High School coach) Phil Tate was our coach. And he started more of the East Gaston guys than his own guys, even after they won the state championship.”

“East Gaston was one of the best teams I’ve ever played on,” said Kinley. “There were a lot of incredible players on our team. We, as sophomores, were really fortunate to have those seniors. It meshed really well.”