Column: American success history

In a lifetime of following and reporting on sports, there have been a few regrets.

I never saw Larry Bird or David Thompson play live. I’ve never seen Dan Trammel’s dunk against the Cats in the 2002 Big Sky Conference semifinals, even a replay.

I didn’t see the Whitefish boys basketball team win state.

Digging into that season three decades past sort of made up for it, though, and not every anecdote made it into the Daily Inter Lake’s oral history about that 1990-91 Bulldogs season.

Some of the good stuff happened at a different time. An example would be a bench-clearing incident between the Bulldogs and Flathead Braves during the 1989-90 season. The way Mike Bauer remembers it, a Brave got fouled hard on a dunk attempt and tempers flared.

“And I looked over and Coach (Bill) Epperly had my brother in a headlock,” Bauer said.

Pat Bauer confirmed this. “Mom wasn’t too happy about that,” he said.

The late Flathead coach got involved, reportedly, after Mark Gilman came up to Pat Bauer and tried to pry the ball away.

“So I shoved him away,” he said.”Then Travis Pine got in my face and I shoved him. Then the benches cleared and Epperly came and got me. I don’t think it was anything malicious. He was just trying to get me out of there.”

Reached this week, Gilman said that sounded… accurate. This is the issue with 30-year-old memories. They become pliable.

Mike Bauer remembered getting snowed in and his brother making him call coach Julio Delgado to say they couldn’t make practice.

“Julio says, ‘Your dad has a snowmobile...’ “ Bauer said. “So I hang up and I said, ‘Dad, we need a ride on the snowmobile.’ “

Neither Pat Bauer nor Dave Bauer, who spent 30 years as a Bulldogs’ bus driver, offer definitive confirmation that a snow machine was used..

“I probably did,” Dave said. “Now that I think about it, I guess I probably did.”

One thing is clear: One foot had better be in the dirt to miss a session.

“I told him I was going to get him snowshoes,” Delgado said. “I remember one time Lance Hudson, he was so sick, he showed up to practice and we got him a garbage can and he was throwing up. But he wasn’t going to miss practice.”

To be sure Delgado was a demanding coach, but every player I spoke to had fond memories.

Well, except for Luca Grassilli, but that was because we talked over email.

“Now I consider Whitefish my second home,” Grassilli, an exchange student in 1990-91, wrote from Italy. “And whenever my business travels take me to North America I do my best to make it up to the Fish, even for a short weekend.”

Grassilli grew up in Bologna, Italy, a hotbed for European basketball. “Basket-City,” he said they called it. Whitefish was going to be an adjustment. Delgado told him he’d get a shot to see how he fit.

“Hey, maybe it was my ticket to attend a few practices,” Grassilli wrote. “Boy, was I not ready for a full rollercoaster ride.”

His teammates teased him some about his English.

“But I think they were silently pleased with the way I tried to blend in and played ball with them,” he said.

That was then.

“My lack of accent… . I love BBQ’s, I go golfing when I have spare time, I wear my baseball caps backward, and shorts when I’m not at work,” Grassilli said. “My wife and even my dad say, ‘You’re so American.’ ”

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or at fneighbor@missoulian.com.