Baseball was the sport Elliott Bass of Iola and Michael Whipps of Garnett played during the summer. They were athletes for their respective high schools in other sports.
Both came to Allen County Community Junior College in Iola in 1970. And history happened.
“My brother, Wendell, was at the college and had gone in asking for a baseball team when he was there. They told him the college didn’t have the funds to do so,” said Elliott “Chief” Bass. “Mike and I may have been playing catch or something and we got the idea of asking again.
“We approached the administration and asked if they could purchase the uniforms and equipment for a baseball team,” said Mike Whipps. “We had gone to the City of Iola and it agreed to let us play games on the city field at Riverside Park.”
Let them play. And Allen County Community Junior College, now Allen Community College, did.
Whipps and Bass are among the inaugural class of the ACC Baseball Hall of Fame. They will be inducted into the hall in ceremonies Friday at ACC.
Also being inducted are the members of the 1983 baseball team, which finished third at the JUCO World Series, former ACCC pitcher David Proctor of 1986-1988, and the late Judith Bragg of Iola, who was a teacher at the college and longtime ACCC baseball supporter.
Whipps said the two student-athletes helped schedule games for the 1971 spring season. Bass said the other junior colleges in Kansas were “thinking about starting baseball teams” at the same time but Allen played as a “club” team the first season.
“The college said we needed a coach and our first head coach was Omer Knoll, an art teacher at the school,” Bass said. “He wanted to coach us and help us but really didn’t know a lot about baseball. Mike got a guy he knew from Garnett and I got Ken Sype from here who had played softball with me. Those two guys really helped bring the team together.”
The Red Devils were 6-7 in the spring of 1971. They played five games with four-year college programs.
Whipps said the second season was the first year in the Jayhawk Conference, which was formed by the Kansas two-year colleges. Bass said the college built the baseball field, known as Red Devil Field, which the team still plays on. Also, Joe Haynes, an accounting instructor at the college, was the new head coach.
Bass played first base for the Red Devils to start with, then moved to left field. He led the team in stolen bases, plus hit .319 the first year and .320 the second year.
“I batted second or third in the lineup and Mike was our cleanup hitter,” Bass said.
Whipps played shortstop for the Red Devils. He hit around .400 each year and earned All Region VI as a shortstop.
Whipps and Bass did not play college baseball anywhere else. Whipps said he injured his knee the first year at ACC, had the first of five knee surgeries and played his second season.
