Hays native produces documentary
June 29, 2003
By JOY LEIKER
Hays Daily News
A Hays native is on a mission to prove she knows where the national pastime was born.
Tonya Dreher, a film and television graduate of New York University, has produced a 22-minute documentary about Ellis County's baseball teams of yesteryear.
"Hometown Heroes" is a glimpse of the stories of some of those teams -- from Hays, Catherine, Toulon, Munjor and Victoria -- from the now gray-haired men who grew up playing on them.
Dreher said her uncle, Darrell Dreher, president of the Hays Baseball Association and the father of two former Hays Larks players, first pitched the idea of a local documentary to her in 1999 when she was still in college.
He's now credited as the executive producer of her "rough draft" production, one she plans to tweak following her visit to Hays this weekend.
Four years ago, the 24-year-old already had a couple of other projects in the works. She put this one on the back burner until this past December.
"I didn't forget about it, though," she said.
She spent a couple of days over the Christmas holiday interviewing a handful of local players. Dusty Glassman first was a batboy in the late 1920s before he started playing ball for the Hays Larks in the 1930s. His link to local teams is legendary, and his name now is attached to local ball diamonds.
Others, like Bob Staab, George Lang and Pat Walters, all played for the Catherine Owls. Celley Schumacher played in Munjor, and John Schippers was on the Victoria team.
Dreher said the comaradarie among those small town teams, and the fans who poured into fields and parks to watch them, is where America's fascination with baseball is rooted. Farmers stepped off their tractors, and townspeople spent their Sunday afternoons watching the hometown boys play ball.
She doubts all the excitement over balls and bats, pitching and hitting ever started because of the big leagues.
Now living in New York, she's found more evidence of it. She recently met a die-hard fan who grew up watching the Brooklyn town teams, choosing to watch those games over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
A number of those former Ellis County players gathered for a luncheon Saturday at Thomas More Prep-Marian High School and again Saturday night for honors at the Larks' home game.
The luncheon included the first public showing of Dreher's documentary, a compilation of personal interviews, photos and maps. It jumpstarted a whole day of swapping stories. The old-timers took over the stage, she said.
Dreher said she thinks the competitive yet good-natured spirit of the sport in Ellis County is repeated in other places. That's why she hopes to perfect the local film and use it as part of an application for grant money to do more research.
Eventually, she envisions a final, two-hour project detailing dozens of town teams from all across the country similar to those here, all driving at the same point -- "that these teams made baseball the national pastime."
-- For more information about the documentary, call Dreher at (917) 902-6138 or e-mail tonya_dreher@yahoo.com.