All-American Navy baseball legend Chuck Davis embodied this refrain from the classic anthem “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” as he set pitching records that still stand—more than six decades later
We don’t call it “America’s National Pastime” for nothing. Whenever social and political turmoil erupted during the 20th century, we could count on one comforting constant: baseball. And at the beginning of arguably one of its most tumultuous decades, the 1960s, sports fans in Annapolis and Navy alumni had something to cheer about in the springtime: the Navy baseball team.
Dateline, June 5, 1960: “MIDDIE FANS TEN IN 9-TO-1 SUCCESS, Davis Pitching and Bellino’s 4 Hits Pace Navy Nine.” It was the front-page story in the New York Times Sports section. Despite this Navy win, Army was still the Eastern Intercollegiate League champion that year.
The “Middie” who struck out ten West Point Cadets that day was Chuck Davis, a gentle giant of a man who now lives in retirement with his wife in Florida. That’s where we caught up with him for his remembrance of that key game in his distinguished baseball career as ace pitcher for Navy.
“That was a great day,” Davis remembers. “Joe [Bellino—known best as winner of college football’s Heisman Trophy] hit two or three major-league-type line shots. That must have rattled their cages. They had a runner thrown out at the plate in the first inning after they had scored a run, and that was their only one all day. It was one of the best baseball teams Army had ever fielded. At the same time, we had a mediocre year. Our feeling was that the better they were at the time of that game, the better for us if we beat them. It was the biggest Navy baseball crowd we’d ever seen. The stands were packed.”
The following season, in 1961, would be even more memorable.
Photography courtesy Chuck Davis
1. Navy’s 1961 championship winning baseball team 2. Davis played for USA baseball during his career 3. Chuck Davis 4. Joe Bellino 5. Chuck Davis in action
The Team
Chuck Davis will be first to tell you that the players on the field are the ones who made his pitching record (wins and losses) look so good. “Ron Terwilliger and his brother Bruce had been star high school athletes for a rival school to mine in our hometown. Ron was a hard-hitting youngster second baseman with our team in 1961,” Davis recalls. “And Bruce was a plebe that year and went on to a fine career as a pitcher for Navy. It is well known that they both went on to greater things around Annapolis. The baseball field is named for them.”
The players backing up Davis were formidable, a well-balanced team of sophomores and juniors in the lineup. According to the star hurler, “the highest batting average was about .285.” The Class of 1961 boasted Bellino, and the four pitchers were all the seniors, too: Ed Ettinger, Gary Carlson, Dave Patz, and Davis, who emphasizes, “We won 19 straight games. The streak was snapped in a 4-2 loss against Princeton, on a fielding error by none other than one Chuck Davis. We ended up 24 and 2 and won the Eastern Intercollegiate league title.”
Navy sports lore has it that an injury sustained by Bellino in football had restricted his ability to throw to second base from his catcher position, so he switched to left field, and the Class of ’62’s Harvey Cybul took over as catcher. “We said shortstop Chuck Galloway was the best-conditioned infielder in the league from all the times he had to sprint out to take (short) relay throws from Joe. I don’t think any other team ever caught on,” Davis jokes.
And what about Bellino, who went on to play pro football for the AFL Boston Patriots?
To that question, Davis has his own assessment: “I always felt he was a better pro prospect for baseball than football.” Bellino himself, however, later referred to choosing football as “a no-brainer.”
“My folks lived in the D.C. area,” Davis recalls. “Joe went home with me a few times, and my mother was crazy about him. It’s fair to say that for those few months, he was the most famous young man in the USA.
“He handled it with ultimate class. If you visited casually with him, and did not know him, you would never know he had ever played in an athletic event. I never heard one negative remark about the guy.”
Sports and the Military
The boy who became a lanky pitching star attributes his interest in sports to, “like most guys, my dad.” Davis was five years old when his father returned from World War II. The returned veteran had been a small-college coach and was very focused on encouraging his son to play. “My own skill set featured being a very slow runner,” Davis quips with a laugh. “That put me in a position where baseball pitching was ultimately my best bet for some success. I was fortunate to have great coaching in high school.”
As an Army colonel in 1950, Davis’ father was assigned to the staff college in Norfolk, Virgina. The ship visits that father and son made to those moored there, “were fascinating, of course, for a 10-year-old kid. I had never lived on any service base, so this was my introduction to the functioning military,” Davis explains. “I certainly wanted to join it all.”
He ultimately did, becoming an Academy Plebe in 1957—the start of a lengthy military career.
And while the ’61 season will always be remembered as one of Navy’s finest, Davis achieved many accolades and records by the culmination of his four years at the Academy. Upon graduation, his school records included: Season ERA, Career ERA, Season Win Total, Season Complete Games, Career Complete Games, Season Shutouts, Career Shutouts, Season Innings Pitched, and several others which would eventually be broken by contemporary phenom Noah Song (Class of 2019). Davis was selected to the All-American college baseball team in ’61, played for the U.S. national team, and eventually was inducted into the Naval Academy’s sports Hall of Fame.
After USNA and Annapolis, Davis fulfilled his service commitment by joining the U.S. Marine Corps. “I had been impressed by the Marine officers I’d met both at the Academy and with my family,” Davis explains. “I was not crazy about lengthy sea duty. Those guys deserve a lot of credit—tough duty.” As for his service as a Marine in Vietnam, Davis describes it in his low-key style: “It was alternately boring and frightening. I saw action. There was misery. I met some marvelous young men of all backgrounds. I was lucky.”
This story would be remiss if it fails to mention Noah Song (Class of 2019), who broke some career records that had been set by Chuck Davis: Wins, Strikeouts, Innings Pitched, and tied for most Career Shutouts. According to Davis, “Make no mistake. Noah Song is the real deal.” The situations, however, were significantly different: “We generally played against bigger schools, but only saw them once a year. Now, Navy plays several games against some teams, giving them more looks at the pitchers and making it tougher on them.”
