The dynasty that never was: 'They put us on the map;' the story of OSU's 1981 team
- Daniel Allen, Staff Reporter, @danielallen1738
In this eight-part series, The O’Colly will revisit the 1981-87 Oklahoma State baseball teams, an era that is recognized as one of the most dominant stretches in college baseball history.
The Cowboys’ seven consecutive College World Series appearances mark the longest stretch in the sport’s history, but they never came away with a national championship.
Tom Holliday gripped his phone with a pressing opinion in mind.
As a phone call with Oklahoma State coach Gary Ward regarding the Cowboys’ 1981 lineup progressed, Holliday, OSU’s pitching coach, grew bullish as he read each name off the handwritten roster.
The returning production offensively and on the mound. The surplus of veteran experience. All of it provided Holliday with more assurance about the impending lineup.
Entering Year 4 of Ward’s tenure, both coaches knew the program needed a breakthrough.
The fan support around the program prior to Ward’s tenure had dwindled drastically during the latter years of Chet Bryan’s tenure. Nine consecutive seasons of regional-deprived teams put a damper on the program’s outlook. However, Ward and Holliday bolstered the fan investment, notably with a Big Eight Tournament championship in 1978 during the coaching tandem’s first season in Stillwater. Winning seasons in 1979 and 1980 – including a 43-10 campaign in ’80 – only enhanced that.
But OSU hadn’t appeared in the College World Series in 12 years. And in Holliday’s mind, the 1981 team was the one to make it happen.
“We’d pieced together a lineup of nine guys where, in all honesty, we felt like we were better than any team we played at every position,” Holliday said. “I mean, we were good. Really good.”
So, as the phone conversation between the two winded down, Holliday gave his two cents.
“I like this team this year,” Holliday told Ward. “I think this is the one.”
“You think so?” Ward questioned.
Absolutely,” he responded without hesitation.
First base slugger Jim Traber returned to OSU after a flashy freshman season in 1980. Mark Poole and Mickey Tettleton were set to man the catching position, with Poole being “the deep thinker” and “brains behind the plate that held a team together,” according to Holliday, while Tettleton was the “freak athlete” who could also slot in an outfield position.
The pitching rotation, however, was all the more enticing for Ward and Holliday. Two-way star Darren Dilks, a left-hander and pinch-hitter who had transferred to OSU in 1979 from Chaffey Junior College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, highlighted the core. No one, in the minds of the OSU coaching staff, was more paramount within the lineup than the elusive talent of Dilks.
“Dilks was the ultimate move-around kind of guy who could really play first base, could pitch, and could just excel anywhere you put him,” Ward said. “He was just a star. And we needed someone, like him, who could pick a team up and lead by example. And we got that in (Dilks).”
The latter two pitching slots were filled by junior college transfers throughout the season. Regardless of whom it was, the coaches were seldom scant in confidence. They’d witnessed the production in the fall. The spring was merely a time to display it in front of competition.
As for a coveted program breakthrough? Ward and Holliday had been building toward it the three prior years. And with a little less than one month ahead of Opening Weekend, in their minds, that breakthrough was imminent.
“We didn’t know when we were gonna get to Omaha, and we honestly felt like 1981 may have been a year late,” Holliday said. “But we knew it was coming.”
From 1981 on, Ward and Holliday had one commonality in mind: given OSU’s surplus of talent on its roster, the group would only improve from its 1980 form.
Often, a central figure within a roster is pinpointed midway through or in the latter stages of a season. OSU, however, was so experienced and “driven toward a national championship” that each prospect contributed in their own way.
“We intimidated everyone we played because it was kind of like our personality,” Holliday said. “We just expected to win. To win every game that we played in and beyond.”
The Cowboys opened their season with a 5-4 win over a ranked Arkansas squad in Fayetteville. Satisfying, but not good enough. Even amid an impressive season-opening win, Ward saw an excessive amount of necessary improvement within his team.
“Coach Ward, I remember he coached his tail off that year,” Traber said. “We beat (Arkansas) to start the year on the road, but we got an ass chewing afterward. We got an ass chewing after just about every game we played that first month; it felt like, even though we were winning so daggum much.”
Shortly after a 3-0 start came a series loss to Texas-Pan American – now known as Texas-Rio Grande Valley — on the road. Then a two-game split with Rice in a neutral-site series played at Pan American’s ballpark. It was, in retrospect, the lone adversity stretch OSU endured all regular season. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, in Holliday’s mind.
But with every “ass chewing” came improvement. And with each dose of improvement came immediate success.
OSU logged totals of nine runs or more 21 times over the season’s course. And as the offense gradually reached its peak form, the pitching staff complemented its success. Of course, highlighted by a multitude of pitching gems from Dilks.
After beginning the season at old University Park in Stillwater, OSU opened a new ballpark in Allie P. Reynolds Stadium on April 4 in a conference series against Missouri. OSU lost three of four, albeit to a talented Tiger team, but Holliday saw a silver lining in the moment.
“We needed that (new) ballpark, and it came at a great time for us,” he said. “You talk about fan investment; people started showing up to our games (which) made that better almost immediately.”
And attendance wasn’t the lone logistic that benefitted OSU from its new home confines.
“When we came in and got to Stillwater, OU was the talk of the town,” Holliday said. “They were really in control of everything, recruiting wise, rivalry wise, everything. They got all the prominent kids in our state. And (the stadium) kind of helped shift things our way.
“That and all the winning we did.”
The stark contrast in plusses from an out-of-shape, worn-down venue such as University Park to that of the new 3,821-seat Reynolds Stadium was immense. A fresh, polished home venue injected life into the fanbase. The OSU faithful poured in, and so did the recruits.
Holliday said OSU garnered pledges from as many as 10 prominent junior college recruits nationwide shortly after Reynolds Stadium’s opening.
Long before the era of the transfer portal and NIL, college baseball programs built themselves off of junior college transfers and high school prospects. Naturally, Holliday preferred experience. So, he often went the junior college route. Of course, that was while maintaining a feasible balance between attaining high school talent.
