Bill Weatherwax

Don Cantrell

Newport Harbor High has only captured one varsity baseball

championship in its history and one of the major features on the

championship 1948 club was All-Sunset League catcher Bill Weatherwax, who

went on to become a five-year player with a St. Louis Cardinals’ farm

club in Idaho.

In time, he became a longtime Costa Mesa fireman and policeman,

serving almost 30 years with a commendable record.

Although the ’48 champions were loaded with fair hitters, good talent

and fine teamwork, Orange County critics during that period claimed

Newport’s main key was a 6-foot-4 southpaw pitcher named Frank Hamilton,

and his batterymate, catcher Bill Weatherwax.

Many of the Tar players were modest about their play and often praised

the work of Hamilton and Weatherwax.

The Sailors finished the ’49 season with a 17-5 record, including two

CIF contests, one win, and one loss.

Harbor did not have a fanciful outlook in the spring of ‘47, but it

changed quicly when Coach Wendell Pickens introduced a new player, Frank

Hamilton of Portland, Ore., to Weatherwax. Weatherwax was astonished at

how fast Hamilton could pitch, and had a solid curve to support his

fastball.

Weatherwax, a solid hitter, often had amble praise for the late

Pickens, who coached the Tar horsehiders and gridders for five years

before accpeting the athletic director’s post at Orange Coast College in

1948.

Always popular with his teammate and the school’s many students,

Weatherwax also fared well in three years of varsity football as a

tackle. He wa a first-stringer in 1946 and ’47.

He and the ’46 Tar gridders drew credit for dfeadlockiong defending

CIF champion Santa Ana High, 13-13, in a grim dust storm that contributed

to taking a victory away from the Tars

OPne heavy wind blew a Sailor convesion way off course.

And the ’47 Tars whipped Fullerton High, 7-0, with superb line play

and nifty secondary defense. Fullerton went on to win the league title.

Weatherwax was lauded by sharp railbirds who commended his rugged line

play as a tackle against a 6-foot-8 tackle named Ernie Cheatham of St.

Anthony High in Long Beach, in September of 1946.

Cheatman was a giant who went on to star at Loyola University.

The star Tar athlete also saerved well in the military during the

‘50s.

Bill Weatherwax, the anchor of the ’48 championship baseball team, and

a valued member of the Daily Pilot’s Sports Hall of Fame, celebrating the

millennium.