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Dozens would follow.
    For reasons that are unlikely to ever become clear, Oklahoma sanctions varsity baseball in the fall, but only for those schools too small for football. During his career at Asher, it was not unusual for Coach Bowen’s teams to win a state title in the fall, then follow it up with another in the spring. During one remarkable stretch, Asher qualified for the state finals sixty straight times—thirty years in a row, fall and spring.
    In forty years, Coach Bowen’s teams won 2,115 games, lost only 349, hauled home forty-three state championship trophies, and sent dozens of players to college and minor-league baseball. In 1975, Bowen was named the national high school coach of the year, and the town rewarded him by upgrading Bowen Field. In 1995, he received the same award again.
    “It wasn’t me,” he says modestly, looking back. “It was the kids. I never scored a run.”
    Maybe not, but he certainly produced enough. Beginning each August, when temperatures in Oklahoma often reach a hundred degrees, Coach Bowen would gather his small group of players and plan the next assault on the state play-offs. His rosters were always slim—each graduating class at Asher had about twenty kids, half girls—and it was not unusual to have a squad of only a dozen players, including an occasional eighth grader with promise. To make sure no one quit, his first order of business was to pass out the uniforms. Every kid made the team.
    Then he worked them, beginning with three-a-day practices. The workouts were beyond rigorous—hours of conditioning, sprinting, running bases, drilling in thefundamentals. He preached hard work, strong legs, dedication, and, above all, sportsmanship. No Asher player ever argued with an umpire, threw a helmet in frustration, or did anything to show up an opponent. If at all possible, no Asher team ever ran up the score against a weaker school.
    Coach Bowen tried to avoid weak opponents, especially in the spring, when the season was longer and he had more flexibility with the schedule. Asher became famous for taking on the big schools and beating them. They routinely thrashed Ada, Norman, and the 4A and 5A giants from Oklahoma City and Tulsa. As the legend grew, these teams preferred to travel to Asher, to play on the pristine field that Coach Bowen maintained himself. More often than not, they left on a quiet bus.
    His teams were highly disciplined and, some critics said, very well recruited. Asher became a magnet for serious baseball players with big dreams, and it was inevitable that Ronnie Williamson would find his way to the school. During the summer leagues, he met and became close to Bruce Leba, an Asher boy and probably the second-best player in the area, a step or two behind Ronnie. They became inseparable and soon were talking of playing their senior year together at Asher. There were more scouts, both college and professional, hanging around Bowen Field. And there was an excellent chance of winning the state titles in the fall of 1970 and the spring of 1971. Ron’s visibility would be much higher just up the road.
    Changing schools meant renting a place in Asher, a huge sacrifice for his parents. Money was always tight, and Roy and Juanita would have to commute back andforth to Ada. But Ronnie was determined. He was convinced, as were most baseball coaches and scouts in the area, that he could be a high draft pick the summer after his senior year. His dream of playing professionally was within reach; he just needed an extra push.
    There were whispers that he just might be the next Mickey Mantle, and Ronnie heard them.
    With covert help from some baseball boosters, the Williamsons rented a small house two blocks from Asher High School, and Ronnie reported in August to Coach Bowen’s boot camp. At first, he was overwhelmed by the level of conditioning, the sheer time spent running and running and running. The coach had to explain several times to his new star that iron legs are