Tiny Washington town has rich baseball history
SEATTLE -- Money was running out and their funding options were running thin. Brewster High School, tucked away among a small agricultural town in Eastern Washington, needed financial assistance to keep its baseball program afloat.
Like much of the economy, pandemic-related issues had impacted Brewster’s ability to generate revenue, and even those options were mostly limited to ticket sales. So, head coach Todd Phillips turned to a familiar avenue by applying for the annual equipment donation grant presented by the Mariners’ On BASE initiative, and they were among 10 schools selected last month for the $5,000 contribution.
Brewster, Wash., is far and away the smallest town among the high-school programs that applied, with a population of 2,367 as recently as 2019, when the team also received the grant. Comprised of a mostly Hispanic and Filipino demographic that makes up a mainly agricultural community, Brewster has a school system where 98% of the students speak English as a second language.
Among that same group, 90% are on free or reduced lunch, which underscores why this area has many resource-challenged households that can’t afford the travel, fees or uniforms with playing AAU-level sports. Many are also impacted by the seasonal demands of agriculture, with many parents struggling to find time to simply transport their kids to a game.
“Most of our families work in the orchard, and it's like, travel baseball happens in the summer,” Phillips said. “Moms and dads are working seven days a week in the summer. They can't take you around driving around all over the state to go play. So, we have to find other ways to get those kids opportunities, and it impacts in a lot of different ways.”
Phillips, a 2002 graduate of this same Brewster baseball team, has poured his heart and soul back into it since taking on a coaching role in 2012 and the head coaching gig in ‘14. His beard may have grown grayer since, but his passion is just as prevalent -- because he cares about preserving a program that quietly has some of the richest high-school baseball history in the state.
Brewster’s baseball program was established in 1935, won its first district championship in ‘47 and its first of six state titles in ‘79. Four players through the years have gone on to play professional baseball, which might not sound like much, except for how tiny this town is and how hard it is to get on a Draft radar. The four Brewster Bears who’ve gone the distance are Hawkins Gebbers, Cody Gunn, Andy Hill and Jerrod Riggan, who spent four seasons in the Majors with the Mets and Cleveland from 2000-03, then returned to coach at Brewster and later hired Phillips as an assistant.
Plenty more have gone on to play college ball. Beyond those he knows personally, Phillips has done research via newspaper archives dating back to the ‘30s, and he’s aggregated that chronology by building out his own website dedicated to Brewster’s past.
“We've got a big history here,” Phillips said. “I'm really proud of the history of our program. Our school has created some quality kids that have gone on to do some cool things. They get to go play baseball someplace from just a little Podunk town. We’re a small school, and to send this many kids to go on and play the next level over years and years and years is pretty cool.”
Part of Brewster’s tradition is its pipeline. Kids who decide to play sports at a younger age are typically selecting baseball. The Brewster Boys & Girls Club has been instrumental in that youth development -- socially, emotionally and athletically -- and it oversees year-round baseball and softball programs. The Mariners awarded the Brewster B&G Club a $25,000 grant last July as part of a newly launched community impact grant program established in 2020 as part of a broad set of commitments to advance social justice and racial equity.
The Mariners say they were drawn to assisting the club’s significant needs but also admired its determination and resiliency. The club has also attracted local resources from Gebbers Farms, who along with supporting the B&G Club with financial and in-kind resources, maintains a pristine ballfield near their orchards with the same materials that the Mariners use to maintain T-Mobile Park. Along with the city ballfields meticulously cared for, the baseball fields in Brewster are some of the finest in Washington State -- a sharp contrast with the state of players’ equipment and tough circumstances.
That grant, separate from the one bestowed to Brewster High School, will allow the club to enroll up to 35 youth for league play in softball and baseball, resulting in 100 hours of physical activity for each child. Another 200 youth will have access to physical fitness through year-round indoor activities. And these grants were established to support organizations working to improve physical and mental health for youth from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.
And the Mariners explicitly sought to broaden their scope beyond greater Seattle and King County, which is why Brewster reached their radar.
“We've got the largest geographical territory in Major League Baseball, and we want to make sure that at some level, we're touching our fans in all of those areas -- not only our existing fans, but our future fans,” said Mariners executive vice president and general counsel Fred Rivera, who helps oversee the grant process. “We want to create new fans and new excitement in those areas by touching them in as many ways as we can, and frankly, getting them at a young age.
“The geographical diversity, I think that is very important to us, and we have conversations about that to make sure that we are a Pacific Northwest team that captures our entire fan base and our entire communities.”