By Matt Crownover
Chronicle staff

     If baseball in Okanogan were a tree, Dick Sheets would be its root.
     Sheets, who was born in Wenatchee and moved to Okanogan, has his fingerprint on nearly every form of baseball in the mid-Okanogan Valley.
     In 1942 Sheets’ dad, Wayne, took a job as a warehouse superintendent in Seattle. There the younger Sheets realized his love for baseball on a field near the Civic Ice Arena and Civic Auditorium.
     “We were over there every day and that’s where I learned to play and develop my skills,” the Omak resident said.
     His dad found work as a warehouse superintendent at J.M. Wade Co., Okanogan, and in 1945 Sheets joined the Okanogan High School baseball team as a freshman, he recalled.
     He played three years for the Bulldogs as a hard-throwing, right-handed pitcher and one of his greatest assets was his speed, he said. During one of his high school years there was no baseball program, he added.
     “I was quick,” Sheets said. “I was a tall and skinny kid and full of wise cracks so I learned to move pretty fast or I’d get thumped.”
     Sheets began playing with the Omak Orphans semi-pro team during the summer of his junior year in 1947. At 17, he was the youngest player to make the team.
     During his senior year in 1948, Sheets said major league scouts attended his high school games, but he had no indication they were looking at him.
     After graduating, Sheets and his mother, Florence, moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where Sheets’ brother, Dale, was working. He quickly found work as a dishwasher at Morrison-Knutson Construction Co., in the Indian village of Talkeetna.
     Little did he know, an invitation to attend tryouts had been sent to Omak by the Brooklyn Dodgers.
     “If I wasn’t in Alaska at the time, I don’t know what I would have done,” Sheets said. “I probably would have gone over there and tried out.”
     Instead, Sheets spent the summer of ‘48 in Alaska and then moved back to Okanogan to rejoin the Orphans, founded by former Spokane Indians player Bob Corson in 1947. According to Sheets, the team was named the Orphans because it was without sponsors.
     After taking the 1948 season off, Sheets was back patrolling center field for the Orphans.
     Omak’s season consisted of about 50 games, with at least two games per week and doubleheaders on most weekends. The Orphans would draw large crowds at games against the other town teams and would travel to Canada to play in tournaments, he said.
     Home games were played at a field near the current Omak High School football field, he said.
     In 1952, Sheets spent one summer playing with Ephrata before joining the Okanogan town team to finish his career. He played catcher and center field for Okanogan.
     As a catcher, Sheets said he used his speed to his advantage.
     “With all the equipment on, I would still usually be able to beat the batter to first base to back up the play, and that would make them mad,” he said.
     In a game in 1958, Sheets said the thought of hanging it up first entered his mind.
     “One of the other players hit a high fly ball at me and I was running to it and the ball looked like a tube,” Sheets said.
     He later realized that because his arches had dropped, he was running on his heels and couldn’t run as smoothly as before and the ball looked as if it was bouncing around as he tried to catch it. He originally thought there was a problem with his eyes and decided to call it quits.
     “He just had so many aches and pains that he couldn’t deal with it anymore,” said his wife, Virginia. They married in 1948.
     Sheets’ influence on baseball didn’t end with his playing career. In 1953, while Sheets was talking with Eb Koppel, an agriculture teacher at Okanogan, the subject of youth baseball came up, Sheets recalled.
     “We were just talking about all these kids in Okanogan who didn’t get a chance to play baseball and we decided to try to do something about it,” Sheets said.
     Sheets said he, Koppell and another friend, Hershal Hall, held a meeting at the Okanogan grade school and were shocked to see 150-200 kids eager to play ball.
     Sheets got businesses around town to help sponsor teams and provide uniforms and hats. He also convinced the creamery in Omak to provide drinks and ice cream bars for the kids, he recalled.
     Koppell and Hall were in charge of finding coaches and setting the schedule.
     Eight youth baseball teams were formed that summer.
     “I think the people who are keeping it going nowadays are great,” Sheets said, “but they have no idea what it took to get it started.”
     In 1956 Sheets began a different baseball chapter, this time as a coach. He spent four summers coaching the Okanogan Legion team, comprised of players ages 14-17. It was Virginia Sheets’ favorite time, she said.
     “I learned to keep score right away so that kept me involved,” she said. “I just loved the boys. That end of baseball was more fun for me than the town teams.”
     Nowadays, Dick and Virginia Sheets spend their time at their house near RockWall Cellars, an Omak winery owned by their son, Doug Sheets, and daughter, Diana Mock. Dick and Virginia Sheets own Nana’s Nook Antiques next door.