Just saw an interview with author and one-time Bear pitcher Larry Colton on Olbermann. It concerned Colton's new book on the Southern League 50 years ago in 1964 when the Birmingham Barons became the league's first integrated team amid the strife of the civil rights confrontations that summer. (One of the black players was Charlie Finley's KC A's signee Blue Moon Odom.)
During the interview it was said that Colton holds the Cal record for strikeouts in a game--19. I'm wondering if anyone remembers Colton's feat. The CalBears website baseball page has no team records whatsoever. Did it really happen? When?
According to Wikipedia, Colton was signed by the Phillies in 1964 and made it to the majors for one game, in which he blew out his shoulder, ending his baseball career. I came to Cal in the fall of '63 and well remember such players as Mike Epstein and pitchers Dave Frost, Rich Nye and, of course, Andy Messersmith. But not Colton. I figure he must have finished up at Cal the year before I arrived. So, can anyone shed any light on this? By the way, among the books Colton has written is one called Goat Brothers about him and some of his teammates at Cal. Can anyone tell me if it's worth reading? Sounds good.

I read Goat Brothers in the summer between my pledge semester and hell week and found it very entertaining. Nice little snapshot of Cal in a different era.

Goat Brothers remains one of my all-time fav reads, though it was long before my time.

JimSox;842301835 said:

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Just saw an interview with author and one-time Bear pitcher Larry Colton on Olbermann. It concerned Colton's new book on the Southern League 50 years ago in 1964 when the Birmingham Barons became the league's first integrated team amid the strife of the civil rights confrontations that summer. (One of the black players was Charlie Finley's KC A's signee Blue Moon Odom.)
During the interview it was said that Colton holds the Cal record for strikeouts in a game--19. I'm wondering if anyone remembers Colton's feat. The CalBears website baseball page has no team records whatsoever. Did it really happen? When?
According to Wikipedia, Colton was signed by the Phillies in 1964 and made it to the majors for one game, in which he blew out his shoulder, ending his baseball career. I came to Cal in the fall of '63 and well remember such players as Mike Epstein and pitchers Dave Frost, Rich Nye and, of course, Andy Messersmith. But not Colton. I figure he must have finished up at Cal the year before I arrived. So, can anyone shed any light on this? By the way, among the books Colton has written is one called Goat Brothers about him and some of his teammates at Cal. Can anyone tell me if it's worth reading? Sounds good.

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Larry Colton, 19 strikeoouts, April, 10, 1963 vs. UC Santa Barbara. Lettered 1962 - 1964. There is a link to the Record book on the website
https://admin.xosn.com/pdf9/2669689.pdf?SPSID=749485&SPID=126525&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=30100&

Larry was a member of the PI Kappa Alpha fraternity as I was. He was younger by a couple of years. Goat brothers was a great but sad book particularly if u knew the guys featured in the book.

Larry married the daughter of film star Hedy Lamarr and I always enjoyed seeing The beautiful altho older Hedy at the Frat house at after football game partys.

Goat Brothers captures a time we forget.
Candor and insight are the books strength.
It was the best of times and maybe the worst of times.

buster99;842301889 said:

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Larry Colton, 19 strikeoouts, April, 10, 1963 vs. UC Santa Barbara. Lettered 1962 - 1964. There is a link to the Record book on the website
https://admin.xosn.com/pdf9/2669689.pdf?SPSID=749485&SPID=126525&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=30100&

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So there is. And it shows that my memory of things that happened half a century or so ago ain't all that great. It was Bill Frost, not Dave Frost. But my recollection that he was good wasn't wrong. Two years, 16-5, 1.51. Couple of no hitters, too. One on his own and one combined with Messersmith. I recall that it was really a pitcher's park. The right field fence was the back of the track stadium. Good luck trying to hit a homer there. And it was deep in left, too. Lots of 1-0 and 2-1 games. All that changed with the onset of aluminum bats.

Thanks, everyone for your responses. Colton's book Goat Brothers and his current one both sound like worthwhile reads.

mbBear;842301868 said:

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Goat Brothers remains one of my all-time fav reads, though it was long before my time.

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It was my era, and a great read for me. No jock here, just a fraternity guy learning to drink beer, chase women, and working my way through the EE ciriculum. Both a football and rugby fan, so I knew of many of the characters.

There were several smallish side issues that helped it resonate with me. I was raised in the San Joaquin Valley and had spent time at the Lair, so I could relate to those sequences. Also the story of Ron Vaghn doing his best at Cisco's (Manhattan Beach bar of the 60s and 70s), struck a real cord. Then there was Jim van Hoften wrestling a disabled satellite back into the Challenger. I had helped design that satellite at Hughes - and no, it wasn't my fault.

I first read it as a proof copy on loan from a Cal connection. That initial version had a section on an uber Greek organization, about which I had previously only gotten hints. That sequence did not appear in the final published version.

An absolute must read for any 60s, fraternity, Bear football fan, and many others.

Larry is my vintage. I knew him fairly well. I wasn't a PiKA, but played ball with several of the people mentioned in the book, and Larry's (aka, Loopy) capture of the scene of Bezerkeley circa 1960 is spot on. "Goat Brothers" has many funny and also sad parts. His telling of driving his kids to school in reverse due to the failed transmission of his aging car is hilarious.

Good book, nice man.

Can't wait to read the new one.

I think the left-field fence back then ran along Bancroft and was about 600 feet from home plate. They also hadn't padded the concrete pillars in right field. Treacherous place.

"Goat Brothers" is an excellent read, but very bittersweet. Kinda reminds me a little bit of "Mad Men"-you get to see the arc of the '60s playing out as the world changed rapidly. Craig Morton makes a few cameos. Several of the guys went off to Vietnam. Loren Hawley was a world-class rugby player and his son starred for the Bears in the same sport a few years ago. Ron Vaughn played football for the Bears and ran into some problems when Cal played at Duke in the segregated South.

I always wondered if there was ever any thought of a memorial at Memorial Stadium honoring Bears who've lost there lives in war. There may already be one, I'm just not familiar with it. I realize that the stadium isa memorial to soldiers of the great war, the war to end all wars. But we've had a number of serious conflicts since.

RonO;842302070 said:

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It was my era, and a great read for me. No jock here, just a fraternity guy learning to drink beer, chase women, and working my way through the EE ciriculum. Both a football and rugby fan, so I knew of many of the characters.

There were several smallish side issues that helped it resonate with me. I was raised in the San Joaquin Valley and had spent time at the Lair, so I could relate to those sequences. Also the story of Ron Vaghn doing his best at Cisco's (Manhattan Beach bar of the 60s and 70s), struck a real cord. Then there was Jim van Hoften wrestling a disabled satellite back into the Challenger. I had helped design that satellite at Hughes - and no, it wasn't my fault.

I first read it as a proof copy on loan from a Cal connection. That initial version had a section on an uber Greek organization, about which I had previously only gotten hints. That sequence did not appear in the final published version.

An absolute must read for any 60s, fraternity, Bear football fan, and many others.

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I am from that era also. I knew a couple of PiKA's, but joined another house. Goat Brothers perfectly captures the arc of the sixties playing out against the jock centric culture represented by that house. Counting Coup is another excellent read. Colton writes in a journalistic style and is a very good writer, a talent that may have surprised him from his comments in Goat Brothers.

The uber Greek organizations you mention, were they Winged Helmet, Skull and Keys and Beta Beta? Several members of my house were in one or all of them. I have vivid memories of guys staggering through the front door at night after a Skull and Keys or Beta Beta initiation, passing out in the living room or struggling to make it upstairs wasted from the booze they had to put away during the the process. I believe these organizations went out of business in the late sixties when fraternities and sororities at Cal declined rapidly, though in the early sixties they were emblematic of a kind of fraternal super status.

Appreciate the nice comments about Goat Brothers (and other books I’ve written). Here’s the backstory on my Cal strikeout record. I live in Portland, Or., and in 2007 a guy here wanted an autograph for his copy of Goat Brothers. While I was signing, he asked if I struck out a lot of batters when I was at Cal. I told him I mostly played shortstop and only pitched one season and did okay. “What’s the most you ever struck out in a game?” he asked. “I think it was 17 or 18,” I answered. He wanted to know if that was a record and I told him I had no idea. He went home and googled it and called me back to inform me that the record was 18 by Bill Frost and Andy Messersmith…but not me. It got me to wondering, so I dug out my box of Cal clippings and there it was: “Colton K’s 19.” The guy called back again and I told him I’d struck out 19. He had me fax him a copy of the article, and then he sent it to the Cal sports information dude. Next thing I know, I was the new Cal strikeout king…44 years after I set the mark. My buddies in Portland now call me Dr. K. I should also set the record straight on a couple other comments on the Bear Backer website I read. First, the name of the uber-elite, secret frat group is the Gun Club. It still exists. Second, my mother-in-law Hedy never got within six time zones of a post-game Cal kegger, and the chances of that having ever happened are 931 percent less than Cal going to the Rose Bowl again in our lifetime. And finally, what Olbermann failed to include in his citing my strikeout record is that I also hit a home run in that game. Come on, Keith…get the facts straight. Ironically, the UCSB pitcher I hit it off tracked me down on Facebook last month. I was considering canceling my FB account as a worthless waste of time, but now I think I’ll keep it a while longer. Oh, and one more thing: one Bear Backer subscriber said that given my academic record at Cal I might be surprised by my own writing career. Very true. As a freshman, I had to take Subject A (Bonehead English). Not only did I have to take it, I flunked it and had to repeat the friggin’ course. So when I got the call that my book Counting Coup had been nominated for a Pulitzer, I wanted to track down the butthole who flunked me and ask him how his writing career was coming along.

lcolton;842303249 said:

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Appreciate the nice comments about Goat Brothers (and other books I've written). Here's the backstory on my Cal strikeout record. I live in Portland, Or., and in 2007 a guy here wanted an autograph for his copy of Goat Brothers. While I was signing, he asked if I struck out a lot of batters when I was at Cal. I told him I mostly played shortstop and only pitched one season and did okay. "What's the most you ever struck out in a game?" he asked. "I think it was 17 or 18," I answered. He wanted to know if that was a record and I told him I had no idea. He went home and googled it and called me back to inform me that the record was 18 by Bill Frost and Andy Messersmithbut not me. It got me to wondering, so I dug out my box of Cal clippings and there it was: "Colton K's 19." The guy called back again and I told him I'd struck out 19. He had me fax him a copy of the article, and then he sent it to the Cal sports information dude. Next thing I know, I was the new Cal strikeout king44 years after I set the mark. My buddies in Portland now call me Dr. K. I should also set the record straight on a couple other comments on the Bear Backer website I read. First, the name of the uber-elite, secret frat group is the Gun Club. It still exists. Second, my mother-in-law Hedy never got within six time zones of a post-game Cal kegger, and the chances of that having ever happened are 931 percent less than Cal going to the Rose Bowl again in our lifetime. And finally, what Olbermann failed to include in his citing my strikeout record is that I also hit a home run in that game. Come on, Keithget the facts straight. Ironically, the UCSB pitcher I hit it off tracked me down on Facebook last month. I was considering canceling my FB account as a worthless waste of time, but now I think I'll keep it a while longer. Oh, and one more thing: one Bear Backer subscriber said that given my academic record at Cal I might be surprised by my own writing career. Very true. As a freshman, I had to take Subject A (Bonehead English). Not only did I have to take it, I flunked it and had to repeat the friggin' course. So when I got the call that my book Counting Coup had been nominated for a Pulitzer, I wanted to track down the butthole who flunked me and ask him how his writing career was coming along.

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I hope that you'll post more often. I'm still giggling.

I could not put down "Goat Brothers" and it affected me deeply. Thank you for that. I've just given it to a fellow alum a few weeks ago and I know that he will enjoy and appreciate it as much as I.

Go Bears!

wow I was sure I saw Hedy at least once but maybe your wife had a close resemblance to her mother.

On the other hand I was usually at the house with guys like steve Thompson so irs possible that my beverages affected my memory.

waltwa;842303278 said:

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wow I was sure I saw Hedy at least once but maybe your wife had a close resemblance to her mother.

On the other hand I was usually at the house with guys like steve Thompson so irs possible that my beverages affected my memory.

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Lol. Until I read your second paragraph I was thinking "boy, he must have been tossed".

No, no, no. Never tell a writer that you GAVE his/her book to a friend. Make them go buy their own. It's not about the art...it's about sales.

On the other hand, I'm honored that you really liked Goat Brothers. Now get out there and buy my other books. Hopefully, you'll like them, too.

No, my (ex)wife never came to post-game keggers either. She wasn't a fan of football or frat boys. (Not sure how I slipped under the radar.) She now lives in Seattle and for the first time ever actually got excited about football with the Seahawks Super Bowl run. I wouldn't go so far as to put her in the 12th Man brigade, but she might be an alternate for the 17th Man.

I forwarded the post about her mom going to the frat house and she had a good laugh about it.

lcolton;842303374 said:

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No, no, no. Never tell a writer that you GAVE his/her book to a friend. Make them go buy their own. It's not about the art...it's about sales.

On the other hand, I'm honored that you really liked Goat Brothers. Now get out there and buy my other books. Hopefully, you'll like them, too.

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The moment I wrote that, I regretted it. I will make it up to you by reading (and buying) your other books. I am sure that I'll enjoy them. I will certainly let you know.

Larry -remember you well as I lived in the PiKA house as a graduate student. Was Ron Vaughn the member that slipped under the PiKA national radar?
Also, I seem to remember you dislocated your shoulder while in frat football game, or, has the years worn out my RAM.
Great to hear you success.
Duke(aka Wings)

lcolton;842303249 said:

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Appreciate the nice comments about Goat Brothers (and other books I've written). Here's the backstory on my Cal strikeout record. I live in Portland, Or., and in 2007 a guy here wanted an autograph for his copy of Goat Brothers. While I was signing, he asked if I struck out a lot of batters when I was at Cal. I told him I mostly played shortstop and only pitched one season and did okay. "What's the most you ever struck out in a game?" he asked. "I think it was 17 or 18," I answered. He wanted to know if that was a record and I told him I had no idea. He went home and googled it and called me back to inform me that the record was 18 by Bill Frost and Andy Messersmithbut not me. It got me to wondering, so I dug out my box of Cal clippings and there it was: "Colton K's 19." The guy called back again and I told him I'd struck out 19. He had me fax him a copy of the article, and then he sent it to the Cal sports information dude. Next thing I know, I was the new Cal strikeout king44 years after I set the mark. My buddies in Portland now call me Dr. K. I should also set the record straight on a couple other comments on the Bear Backer website I read. First, the name of the uber-elite, secret frat group is the Gun Club. It still exists. Second, my mother-in-law Hedy never got within six time zones of a post-game Cal kegger, and the chances of that having ever happened are 931 percent less than Cal going to the Rose Bowl again in our lifetime. And finally, what Olbermann failed to include in his citing my strikeout record is that I also hit a home run in that game. Come on, Keithget the facts straight. Ironically, the UCSB pitcher I hit it off tracked me down on Facebook last month. I was considering canceling my FB account as a worthless waste of time, but now I think I'll keep it a while longer. Oh, and one more thing: one Bear Backer subscriber said that given my academic record at Cal I might be surprised by my own writing career. Very true. As a freshman, I had to take Subject A (Bonehead English). Not only did I have to take it, I flunked it and had to repeat the friggin' course. So when I got the call that my book Counting Coup had been nominated for a Pulitzer, I wanted to track down the butthole who flunked me and ask him how his writing career was coming along.

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Thanks so much for posting, Larry. Very glad to have heard from you and glad I saw your interview on TV.

Just placed an order for the book.

lcolton;842303374 said:

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No, no, no. Never tell a writer that you GAVE his/her book to a friend. Make them go buy their own. It's not about the art...it's about sales.

On the other hand, I'm honored that you really liked Goat Brothers. Now get out there and buy my other books. Hopefully, you'll like them, too.

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First copy was "appropriated" by one of Jim van Hoften's administrative assistants, second copy was "appropriated" by my wife, a published author, as a highly valued example memoir writing. I bought a third copy, replacing the first two, and I had to hide it deep in the shelves to keep it.

Can't say enough good things about Counting Coup. I wish someone who makes serious documentaries about life in the United States would read Counting Coup and use it as the basis for a film. It is a very powerful and memorable book, and you lived local to write it.

...and my wife strongly seconds your comment about sales. Looking forward to your next one. If you make a book tour, hope to get a signature again. My best.

Loren Hawley and Steve Radich came to my fraternity and knocked down one of my frat brothers because he was dating Radich's girlfriend Ayris Hatton - those two guys were azzhols. RIP both of them. But I knew Colton and he was a nice guy as were most of the Pikes. Goat brothers captured that 60s era at Cal better than anything I have ever read. Larry is really quite a good author and has a way of looking back and expressing the bitter sweet nostalgia of those halcyon days. My god we were so young and confident - had no idea what awaited us in the world ahead.

I love this thread. It brought back lots of memories. I didn't arrive at Cal as a student until 1971, but my parents were friends with several Cal assistant coaches, so we attended most games and I remember meeting players in the Brick Muller Room.

Larry, in case you're still checking on the thread, do see John Strawn much? John set up a foursome of himself, you, me, and a fourth I've forgotten for a charity golf event in McMinnville in about 1998. I remember not playing well, but having a great time. Over the years, John and I lost touch.