By Colleen Kane
The Cincinnati Enquirer

George Ranz is talking about a different time, when an entire town, including its mayor, would turn out for a season of amateur baseball games. When the newspapers would print an article about that team at least every weekend. When the west side of Cincinnati was one of the premier places for amateur baseball.

Cheviot Patriots 1940's team (Photo provided)

Tim Oakes (R) of Mt. Airy leads the current Patriot team. (Mike Simons photo)

"When I was growing up, Cheviot was the place to go," the 79-year-old Ranz said. "The grandstands and all the hills around the field would be filled. Oh yeah, it was big. ... Amateur baseball in Cincinnati, it used to be one of the greatest areas in the country for it."

That was the Cheviot baseball team of the 1940s and '50s. Today, that same baseball team is trying to bring back a little of its past.

At least 50 former players from the semi-pro team's 92-year history are expected to gather with the current Cheviot Patriots team today at Cheviot Memorial Baseball Field for the club's first Veterans Game. Many of the guests will be players from Ranz's baseball days and will use the game to catch up with former teammates and show off old Cheviot baseball gear.

"I don't know what I'll do, but I'm 82. I'm not going to be running too much," said Jack Grassinger, a Cheviot player for "a couple years."

The festivities, which will also include a pre-game ceremony to honor the team's many players who also served in various wars, will begin at approximately 1:30 p.m., following the Western Hills Veterans Council Memorial Day Parade. The event will move to the nearby field house if it rains.

The game is part of an effort to restore Cheviot Memorial Field to its former glory. The ballpark, built in 1936, was recently renovated with the help of current Patriots, the city of Cheviot and local business donations. The project involved repairs on the field and the wooden grandstands and will also see the installation of at least 150 former Riverfront Stadium seats.

"It's such an undervalued place. When you see it, you'll think it's great. It looks like it should be in an old baseball movie," said Tim Oakes, Cheviot player and the project's leader. "We want to bring back competitive baseball because the place hasn't seen it in a while."

Like it was in the time when young boys' lives revolved around the sport. Many of the former Cheviot players have known each other all their lives through various baseball teams, some in high school at Elder or Western Hills, some in college at Ohio State.

"The west side just likes to play baseball," said Dick Hauck, 76. "Kids started playing on teams from the time they were 9 years old. And when they weren't playing on teams, they were playing scrap ball. You played ball all day when you weren't cutting grass or shoveling coal for your parents."

The Cheviot team was simply the next stop in their careers. Hauck and Ranz joined Cheviot when several Ohio State players were recruited to join. Grassinger was playing on another local team when he switched. Some, like Vern Hettisheimer, Jr., the team's current historian, followed in their father's and grandfather's footsteps.

They were already good players, and playing together made them even better. Mike Barbieri said his father Joe, a player in the 40s and 50s, was once told that they could have been an A ball club, the equivalent of one step below the majors at the time. Many players, like Hauck, went on to the minor leagues. Some even made it to the majors. And often players who were leaving the professional ranks would come back to Cheviot to finish their careers.

"We had some good ballplayers," Hauck said. "Everybody was concerned about winning, not who was the star. ... It was exciting, that's for sure. We had some big crowds."

On Sundays, the team would pack the 1,000-seat grandstands, some days even outdrawing the Reds' attendance, as some of the former players remember it.

While the Cheviot baseball club has managed to stick around all these years, making it one of the oldest semi-pro clubs in America, those crowds have long-since dwindled for semi-pro teams, with the coming of TV, movies and teenagers with cars. "It's weird how things have changed," said Mike Barbieri, who is a player on the semi-pro CoBalts. "A lot of people don't even know we have men's leagues around anymore."

That's why Oakes and his supporters are fixing the park and bringing back the older players - to help the community relive what baseball used to be like at Cheviot Memorial Field.

And who better to do it than the ones that lived it the first time.

"I'm anxious to see it," Ranz said. "To get back and see who's there."

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E-mail ckane@enquirer.com