Tom Wise (Madison, 1970)

Tom WiseTom Wise

Tom Wise (Madison, 1970)

October 2024 ~

As he jogged around all three bases and then crossed home plate, the last of four Senators to do so, Tom Wise (Madison, 1970) had to be thinking he’d made a pretty dang good impression on the rest of his team, especially coach Dick McClain (Madison, Coach).

After all, how many raw freshmen step into the box for their first varsity at bat and reverse the course of a pitch 300-plus feet for a grand slam? What Wise had just done was kind of a big deal.

At least he thought that. Maybe other thoughts were running through Wise’s head on that short, glorious trip around the base paths, too.  But it’s a good bet one of them wasn’t that his accomplishment would earn him some more strenuous running later in the form of several post-game trips up and down the steep hill adjacent to the Jackson High field.

In fact, says the man now known by most as “Tee,” you could lay money on that bet.

“We’re up seven to nothing in the fifth or sixth inning and McClain sends me up to pinch hit with the bases loaded; my first high school at bat,” Wise remembers. “The count goes to three and oh and McClain gives me the take sign. But I miss it, swing away, and hit the ball out of the park. After the game, we huddle as a team then Coach tells me to meet him at this hill that’s about 60 yards high at a 45 degree angle. He says, ‘Great grand slam. Great first at bat. But the way this works is, if you miss a sign, you run.’ He had me running that hill until it was dark.”

Consider that a hard lesson well learned for Wise, whose baseball honors at Madison would wind up including three 1st Team All-PIL and two 1st Team All-State selections and was capped off his senior year with Madison’s second straight state championship and his selection to the Metro-State All-Star game. In that contest, Wise stepped to the plate for his last high school at bat and hit a farewell dinger, the perfect bookend to his storied career. Or at least that chapter of it.

The only running Wise says he did after that game was to the airport, where he caught a flight to get a professional contract signed with the Houston Astros.

Wise started laying the groundwork for that trip years earlier on the fields and in the driveways and backyards of his northeast Portland neighborhood. He was the fourth of Cliff and Barbara Wise’s five kids and the first one born in Portland after the family relocated from Jackson, Mich.

Cliff had pitched at the University of Michigan and played halfback on the Wolverine football team behind Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon. With a young family to support, he turned down a chance to play professional baseball for the stability of teaching and coaching. When recruiters from Oregon came to Michigan looking for teachers to help fill a shortage in the state, Cliff took a leap of faith and accepted a position at Benson.

“Dad and Mom packed up their three kids and moved to Oregon, sight unseen,” Tom says.

While Cliff taught and coached, he and Barbara continued to raise and grow their family with Tom and his younger sister. Unsurprisingly, all the young Wises were good athletes.

“We all played all the sports,” Tom says. “There were a bunch of kids in the neighborhood, so we’d play street football, then when it got dark go to someone’s house, turn on the lights and play basketball in the driveway, then the next day go to the park and play over the line. Having a coach for a dad helped a lot. I’d go to Benson to watch basketball games then play after the gym closed. Sports were such a big part of growing up I didn’t know anything different.”

While playing with and “getting beat on by” two older brothers, including future major leaguer and PIL Hall of Fame inductee Rick (Madison, 1963), helped grow Tom’s skills a toughness, “Dad was my biggest influence,” he says. “He taught us the game from the time we could get a glove on.”

By eighth grade, Wise’s athletic skills were well known – and coveted. Suddenly, coaching friends of Cliff’s, by now Benson’s athletic director, were randomly dropping by the house a lot just to “check in” with their buddy.

“All these coaches from Benson started popping in just to see if Dad was around for coffee,” Wise says with a laugh. “The next thing you know they’re in your living room saying, ‘You’re coming to Benson, right?’”

They didn’t have to sell Tom; Benson was his No. 1 choice  – until he got a dose of reality from Dad.

“He said, ‘I get up at 6 every morning to go to Benson. You live 15 houses from Madison and all your friends are going there. I’m guessing you’re going to Madison.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m not getting up at 6 with you’.”

Wise was a three-sport star at Madison. He earned two letters and 2nd Team All-PIL honors in football and three letters in basketball, leading the PIL in scoring one year, setting the Madison assists record and earning 1st Team All-PIL and All-State honors.

Along with his individual baseball honors, which also included leading the PIL in both hitting and pitching his senior year, Wise played on the Madison-based Contractors team that in 1969 became the first (and still only) Oregon squad to win the American Legion World Series.

“From the day I stepped into Madison and all the way through I benefited from great coaches, teachers and teammates,” Wise says. “The PIL was the best league in the state, and the coaches made it clear that no game was ever going to be a gimme. They were all great technicians, and we knew they always had our backs.”

After Madison, Wise faced a difficult decision. While he loved football, a knee injury during his junior season ended his future in that sport. So he was faced with the choice of accepting a baseball scholarship to the University of Oregon, where he’d also been invited to walk on to the basketball team, or pursue a pro baseball career.

“I was all set to go to the U of O and then I got drafted by the Astros,” he says. “They had been saying I could be a first- or second-round draft choice, but I slipped a bit because I’d had an operation on my knee. After I got drafted I was still going back and forth. Then I talked to an Astros scout who said, ‘Here’s the deal. If you go to the U of O and hurt your knee again, you’ll probably never get another chance to play baseball’.”

Even without another injury Wise knew that, unlike today, MLB teams preferred working with younger players straight out of high school over those who first played college ball.

Ultimately, he decided to hop on that plane after his last high school game and start earning a salary – such as it was -- to play the sport he loved. “My first salary was 500 dollars a month, plus five dollars in meal money on the road,” he says. “We only got air conditioning in our team bus if we hit 55 miles per hour and rolled down the windows. Our bus shut down after one game, so we had 25 guys trying to push the thing up a hill to get it to compression start. It didn’t work,” he adds with a laugh.

Unfortunately, Wise’s pro career didn’t wind up working the way it seemed destined to when, after only a month in Rookie League in Covington, Va., he was promoted to the Astro’s short-season A league team in Williamsport, Penn. The next year, he played a full season of A ball in Coco Beach, Fla., leading the team in home runs, doubles and triples.

Wise was designated as one of the top prospects in the Astros organization and scheduled to jump up to AAA the next year. But with a week left in his season, he blew out a knee again sliding into second.

“Houston decided to wait until December to have my knee operated on, so spring training comes around and I go straight to the DL (Disabled List) and didn’t come off it until June,” Wise recalls. “I played in double A ball and then got released because there were younger kids coming up without knee problems.”

Wise returned to Portland and started sending out letters to MLB clubs to no avail. “Back then they didn’t have the surgical techniques they have now, and if you got labeled (as a potential injury risk) you were done. That was just the reality of it.”

Wise turned to the corporate world, taking a job with Pepsi and continuing to play with the Portland Logos city league team for several years before switching to slo-pitch softball. He’d wind up recruiting some former Madison teammates, including Jim Officer and Bruce Maxwell, to form a squad that helped Wise reach yet another world series.

After working for Pepsi for 32 years, ending his time there as regional sales manager, Wise spent his final 10 working years with smaller beverage companies before retiring in 2018.

Wise has a son from a previous marriage and a daughter with Sue, his wife of nearly 30 years. They own a growler station (called Growler Guys) on Portland’s south waterfront that daughter Casey manages, Sue works in and Tom “stays away from,” on his wife’s orders.

So, instead, Wise golfs, does yardwork, helps coach the Lincoln High softball team, is active in, and currently president, of the Old Timers Baseball Association and generally “putters around” in pursuit of his goal of “doing whatever I can to keep myself upright.”

 


CyberMuseum bio:



You might also be interested in:

Patty Jensen (Grant, 1969)

Pat JensenPat Jensen

July 2023 ~ They say practice makes perfect, but the identity of the first “they” to say it remains something of a mystery. Some ascribe it to Vince Lombardi, while

Jeff Owens, Marshall, 1975

Jeff OwensJeff Owens

September 2022 ~ A few things seem constant in the life of Jeff Owens (Marshall, 1975): Wanting the ball in his hands, literally or figuratively. Big games or big game,