Presiding over North Marion baseball, it’s Brack as in rock

Randy Brack in his office in the North Marion hitting facility

AURORA — We walk around a corner and head toward the entrance to Ben Brack Stadium on the North Marion High athletic grounds. The first thing I see is somebody driving a mowing machine across the infield grass.

It’s Randy Brack.

No surprise there. The long-time North Marion baseball coach and his wife, Cindie, live in Woodburn, but his home away from home is the Huskies’ ball field. Ask either of his sons, Tucker or Ty, who both played for him and now coach with him.

“I think Randall has spent more time on that field than he has spent with me or Tuck,” Ty Brack says. “We make fun of him a lot. He somehow got away without ever having to change one of our diapers.”

First, an explanation of why Randy Brack’s kids — and just about everyone else these days — calls him “Randall.”

“One day, I’m out at shortstop trying to get his attention,” Tucker Brack says. “I say, ‘Hey Dad.’ That didn’t feel right. Then I go, ‘Hey Coach.’ That didn’t feel right, either. Our third baseman looks over at me in the dugout and yells out, ‘Randall!’ Dad looks over.

“From 1996 on, all the players have called him ‘Randall.’ All the players before then call him ‘Coach.’ ”

There are plenty of players on both sides of that deal. Brack’s first season coaching at North Marion was 1979.

Another piece of information: The last name is pronounced “Brawk.” The Bracks have relatives in the state named Brock. Joe Brock was long-time baseball coach at Stayton High. His son, Greg, hit 110 home runs in 10 years in the major leagues with the Dodgers and Brewers. They are Randy’s cousins.

“Their side of the family got tired of people calling them ‘Brack’ all the time,” Randy says, “so they changed the spelling to ‘Brock.’ ”

Bob Brack was Randy’s father. Bob coached some youth baseball, but mostly he was a potato farmer-turned-businessman and community leader in the Woodburn/Aurora area. The senior Brack, who was chairman of the North Marion school board in the early ‘60s, died in 1993.

“Dad contributed to everything and was really into kids athletics,” Randy says. “So they named the stadium after him.”

Randy, 69, is one of the most successful coaches in Oregon prep baseball history. Through last Friday’s play, Brack’s record in 36 seasons at 4A North Marion is 622-293, including 15-5 this spring. That ranks fifth on the state’s career wins list behind Dave Gasser (750-235 in 36 seasons at Canby, Madison, Lakeridge and Astoria), Tom Campbell (729-454 in 41 seasons at Newberg, Southridge, Central Catholic and Tigard), Don Heuberger (717-264 in 39 seasons at Riddle and Regis) and Matt Nosack (640-220-2 in 34 seasons at Santiam Christian).

“The guy is a legend,” says Heuberger, who is in his fourth season as an assistant coach at Stayton following his illustrious career as a head coach.

The Huskies’ coaching staff is a family affair. Ty, 39, coaches third base and Tucker, 41, orchestrates the offense from the dugout. The last few seasons, Randy has coached first base.

“We have a pretty good system going,” Randy says. “I like doing the first base thing. I get to talk to every baserunner.”

Pat Casey has known Brack since Casey was coaching at George Fox in the late 1980s. While developing a program that reaped three national championships at Oregon State, Casey had players work out at Brack’s Grand Slam hitting facility in Woodburn.

“Just a great guy, a wonderful coach, a wonderful teacher,” says Casey, now retired and working as special assistant to OSU athletic director Scott Barnes. “He embodies what high school baseball should be about. He is a great dude, a first-class guy. We need more Randy Bracks in this world — not only in baseball, but in anything while working with young people.”

And: “That field — it’s immaculate.”

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Ben Brack Stadium is nestled in a bucolic setting and the country atmosphere of the east Mid-Willamette Valley. It reminds many of a certain ball field in Iowa that served as backdrop for one of Hollywood’s great baseball movies.

Ben Brack Stadium at North Marion High

“During the summertime, with the sun setting and after the lights come on, it has that ‘Field of Dreams’ feel,” Randy says. “There is nothing else around here. The lights light up the whole area. It’s pretty cool.”

Even for a day game in May, it’s pretty cool.

But the stadium wasn’t always a masterpiece. After 22 years as North Marion’s head coach, Randy gave up the job when the second of his sons, Ty, completed his eligibility there in 2002. “Never thought I’d be back,” Randy says.

Then, in 2008, North Marion officials beckoned. Would he be interested in coaching again?

“My wife (Cindie) said, ‘I think you ought to do it,’ ” Randy says.

He said yes. The field, however, needed work.

Brack knew the guys running a nearby business, “Oregon Turf.”

“Best turf farm in the state of Oregon,” he said.

Some of the employees were former teammates, or sons of ex-teammates who Randy ended up coaching. Others were North Marion High grads.

“I stopped by the turf farm and asked, ‘Can we maybe give it a scraping and overseed it and we’ll see how it turns out?’ ” Brack says. “They said they would help me out.”

A few days later, as he was driving toward the field, Brack noticed a plume in the air.

“No way that’s coming from the field,” he thought.

As he got closer, he realized it was indeed coming from the field.

When Brack arrived, “I saw all the equipment. There wasn’t a speck of grass on the field. They had completely stripped everything. They had big levelers and all sorts of equipment and 10 guys out there working. They worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. They brought guys in to adjust the levels. It was fascinating to see them do it. They have the one percent slope from home plate to behind second base and the outfield so everything drains out that way. It was a fun thing to watch.”

Oregon Turf donated its time and resources to the project.

“I could not even put a dollar figure on what it would have cost,” Brack says. “It would be astronomical.”

In the years since, “anything I need, or if I have questions, I give them a call,” Brack says. “It’s a pretty convenient deal.”

The caretaker of the field is Randy. How much time does he put in?

“A lot,” is all he will say. “My boys help a little bit when they can, but they’re busy. I pretty much just do it all.”

“If you need him, the first place to look is the field,” Tucker says. “He is always out here. He doesn’t let me mow the infield, even though I can. He lets me do the outfield. He gets mad at me for doing patterns. I like to do different stuff, and he doesn’t like that.”

The results have been, well, sensational.

The steps leading to the varsity locker room at North Marion

“It’s the best high school playing facility in the state of Oregon,” says Mike Clopton, whom Brack passed this spring to move into fifth place on the Oregon career coaching wins list. “And it’s grass, not (artificial) turf.”

“It has to be the best one in the Northwest,” says Campbell, retired since his last coaching job with Tigard in 2019.

“It’s better than some minor league parks we played in — much better,” says Heuberger, a former catcher for the Portland Mavericks.

“You look at the field,” says Donny Reynolds, a former major league outfielder who worked with Randy at his Woodburn hitting facility, “and you can see how much he cares.”

Some observers look at the surface and think it’s synthetic.

“The Newport coach told me one of his kids asked, ‘Is that dirt real?’ ” Brack says.

The Huskies rarely lose games to rainouts.

“The field dries really well,” Randy says. “I have some material on it that holds the moisture. We can get games in that other fields cannot.”

When PGE Park was dismantled and turned to a soccer stadium, Brack retrieved 110 seats and had them installed for stadium seating. Some of them are behind home plate; others sit along the right-field line.

Alongside the stadium is a spacious indoor hitting facility that was built in 2010 and financed by a former player. The building also houses Brack’s office, along with varsity and JV locker room. Adorning the wall is a roster for the North Marion varsity for every year beginning with 1951.

Young kids in the community attend games at the stadium, dreaming of one day playing on the field.

“With kids on my current team, I hear them saying, ‘I remember in the seventh grade, I couldn’t wait to play here,’ ” Randy says.

“You could hardly wait,” Ty Brack says. “We were always going out to games and watching the high school kids and thinking, ‘I can’t wait to be out here.’ I see it now. Little kids from our youth programs have practices in our hitting facility. Then they come out to watch our games, and you can see it in their eyes.”

When the young ‘uns get to high school, they get to live the dream.

“I’m so spoiled to play on it,” says Rex DeAngelis, North Marion’s 6-5, 215-pound senior center fielder who has signed to play next season at Cal Santa Barbara. “It is like playing on a turf field. It’s gorgeous. You never get a bad hop. The stadium is awesome, too. Everything about it is fantastic. All the hours of field work are worth it.”

Coach Brack gathers his players after a 3-2 victory over Stayton

“We had the honor to play on the nicest grass field in the Northwest,” says Kory Casto, a former Husky who would go on to play two major league seasons with the Washington Nationals. “It was a treat. I would sit in class in the mornings and Randall is mowing the infield and lining the field and getting everything prepared. The amount of time he puts in … when you see it, you get a good feeling for the respect he has for the game of baseball and for keeping things like a nice house, so to speak.”

Says Ty: “The point to that is, if the players see their coach taking that much time to create a place for them to play like that, they’re going to go out and play hard. The feeling is, ‘We should not take this for granted.’ ”

Randy loves that his players like the field, but he wants to spread the feeling.

“I want the opposition to come in to think, ‘This is awesome,’ ” he says. “You also want that feel for the fans, where everybody enjoys sitting and watching a game and feeling good about being there.”

Casto asks if I have seen the field. No, not yet.

“When you drive up there,” he instructs, “you have to have the ‘Wonderboy’ song from ‘The Natural’ playing.”

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Randy Brack was a three-sport star at North Marion in the early 1970s, a 5-9, 160-pound quarterback in football — he played in the small-school Shrine Game — a guard in basketball, the shortstop in baseball. He was a leader on the Huskies’ 1972 team that won the then 2A state baseball championship. A dozen members of that team, along with coach Junior Sato, were on hand for a 50-year anniversary reunion after last Wednesday’s game against Stayton.

Brack considers Sato a mentor. Sato coached him in basketball and in high school and American Legion baseball. Brack batted leadoff for four years.

“I was with him from the first of November through August,” Brack says. “Junior is a fabulous person. We were close when I was playing, but as time has gone on we have become good friends.”

“Say anything good about an athlete, and Randy had all of the above,” says Sato, now 84 and retired. “He was a competitor, very coachable, dependable, loved the game. Most of all, he is a super individual. He has a lot of class. Never loses his temper. Always on task, always focused. I have nothing but respect for him.”

Brack was a team leader for the Huskies.

“Randy was one of the most consistent players I played with,” says Gary Packer, the team’s catcher. “He always knew the situation, was always heads-up playing baseball.”

“He was always prepared,” says Gary Hopkins, who threw a no-hitter in the ’72 championship game. “He was as steady and as good as it gets. Randy always did things the right way. Even if it wasn’t really important, he still did it the right way. His work ethic was super. If he was tired, he just kept going.”

Brack played a year of JV ball at Oregon State, then transferred to Willamette, where he was starting shortstop for three years. He taught for the first five years out of college. After a year at Gaston, Brack got a job at North Marion teaching middle school PE, coaching eighth-grade baseball and as an assistant football and basketball coach at the high school. When Sato was hired at Canby High in 1979, Brack got the varsity baseball job at North Marion at age 25.

Randy has a collection of baseball gloves stretching back to the 1930s

Brack coached for three years, but wife Cindie — they will celebrate their 47th wedding anniversary in August — was pregnant with Tucker. Randy chose to step back from coaching, teach and prepare for fatherhood. Two years later, North Marion officials asked him back. Cindie urged him to return, and he did, though he quit teaching for good and began to work for his father’s businesses.

It gave Randy a chance to coach both of his boys in high school. Tucker was a shortstop, Ty a second baseman. They played together in 2002, when Tucker was a senior and Ty a sophomore.

“I never coached them when they were little,” Randy says. “I had seen dads who coached their kids and they were fighting all the time, especially about the time they were in middle school. I wanted them to be excited to be able to play for me.”

They were.

“Playing for my dad was great,” Ty says. “You had that little bit of fear. I don’t want to disappoint him, but that’s probably normal for every kid.”

Randy quit one more time, for six years after Ty’s career at North Marion had ended. Tucker was playing college ball, “and I got to see him play,” Randy says. Randy conducted clinics and did lessons at Grand Slam with Reynolds, “and I was plenty busy,” Randy says. “Never thought I’d get back into coaching.”

In 2009, though, Brack was asked to return as North Marion’s coach and, again, got the nod from Cindie.

“I don’t know what he would do if he didn’t have baseball in his life,” she says. “If he didn’t have that, he would drive me crazy. He loves it. It’s his passion. It works for us. We both have our stuff we want to do.”

Sometimes, they do things together. Every other year, they visit Disney World in Orlando.

“Cindie is the queen of Mousehood,” Reynolds says. “They have a whole Mickey Mouse set-up in their yard at Christmas. When Randy is at the park, he is trying to hide out from Cindie and Minnie Mouse.”

“I love anything Disney,” she says with a laugh. “My office area, it’s all Disney. We have a few decorations at Christmas.”

“Like 24 tote bags full,” Randy says. “You can’t believe how much stuff goes up at Christmastime.”

When Randy returned to coaching in 2009, “I had no idea about how long I would do it,” he says. “I thought maybe I would go another five years and try to get the program back on its feet. Now it’s been 15.”

It has given Randy a chance to reunite with his sons on the Huskies’ coaching staff.

“Our thought pattern is the same,” he says. “That’s from them being around me on the ball field from the time they were very little. When we talk to the players after a game, I’ll say what I say, and then I let them say things. They’ll say stuff and I’ll think, ‘That’s something I said way back when.’ It makes it really easy to coach with them. We don’t disagree on anything.”

Tucker spent four years as head coach at Chemeketa CC and seven years as an assistant the University of Portland. He is in his fifth season coaching with his dad.

“I never thought it would happen,” he says. “To put on the uniform with him and my brother as a coach — I don’t take it lightly. It’s special to me.”

Tucker is a chip off the old block — all baseball. Ty is a little different. “He has broader interests,” Reynolds says. This year, Ty won the Slamlandia Grand Slam poetry championship and will represent Oregon in the nationals in Des Moines, Iowa, next month.

“When I was in college, I was really into hip hop and other forms of creative expression,” Ty says. “It has helped me become a better baseball coach. Coaching with my dad, he has been able to see that in me as well.

“But we are always on the same page. We can look at each other and say, ‘This is what needs to be said, needs to be done.’ ”

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Those who know Randy best echo one refrain: “He loves his players.”

“He always expects them to perform at their best capability,” Cindie says. “He really wants them to learn about discipline — not just in baseball, but in life. A lot of his former players appreciate that. They are held accountable. They learn how to be a better person.”

“He loves every kid,” Tucker says. “He believes in all of them, even the ones who don’t get to play much. He thinks the world of them. He has high expectations for all of them, but he truly believes and wants to see them do well. One of the things I appreciate most about him: He doesn’t treat anybody different. He didn’t treat me or my brother different when we played. We were just two of the guys.”

“I have never heard him cuss,” Ty says. “I have heard him cuss when he is quoting someone else, telling a story, but he does not cuss. I have always found that to be incredible. He is able to keep his composure in that level of respect for people.

“Sometimes I will write somebody off right away; he doesn’t. He sees the potential and knows there is a way to get the most out of that person and keep him involved.”

“The times my teams played against him, I don’t know if I ever saw him get upset,” says Clopton, 613-438 over 38 years coach at Jackson and Wilson. “He is calm and under control. Runs a class program all the way around.”

Randy has earned the respect of his peers.

“Love the guy,” Campbell says. “He is a baseball man. Great competitor. Does everything the right way.”

“I highly respect everything Randy does,” Heuberger says. “He runs a quality program.  It takes awhile to get a program built up like that. For Randy, it’s reorganize and reload every year. He may not be quite as good year in and year out, but he does the most with what he’s got and they’re always competitive.”

Gasser put in two five-year stints at Astoria late in his career. Between stints, he had an unusual opportunity.

“Randy had gotten tossed from the previous game; I had never heard of that happening to him,” says Gasser, now retired and in the process of moving from Astoria to West Linn. “He asked if I would coach the next game for him. I put a jersey on and coached one North Marion league game. His kids were just great. It was a blast. I think so much of him, I consider it to be an honor for a day.

“You can absolutely count on the fact that his guys are going to play catch real good. They are not going to give you extra outs. He coaches defense exceptionally well. His teams know how to situationally hit. His pitchers always throw strikes with multiple pitches.

“At Astoria, I tried to schedule him every preseason because I always wanted to play the best. Every time you play them, you have to play good baseball or you will lose. It has been consistently like that ever since I have known him. He is a person who matters to me. I consider him a friend — a good one at that.”

Brack has coached two players who made the major leagues — Casto and Steve Schrenk, who pitched two seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Huskies’ two big-leaguers, Steve Schrenk (left) and Kory Casto

“Kory was the best hitter I ever coached, and Steve the best pitcher,” Brack says. “Tucker was a really good player, too, and had the competitive part. The kid I have right now (DiAngelis) is phenomenal. He is a special one.”

Brack also coached Pat Chaffey, who would go from Oregon State to play three seasons in the NFL.

“Played centerfielder for me as a senior,” Brack says. “He could run like the wind.”

DiAngelis spent his early years in Connecticut before moving to the North Marion area before his freshman year. How has it been to play for Brack?

“I can’t even describe it,” he says. “I am so fortunate. He has been so helpful bringing me up through high school, teaching me all these great things. I love the whole coaching staff. They have provided so much information for me and brought me to places I never would have thought I would come. They helped me get recruited. We have a lot of fun. It’s awesome.

“(Randy) is like that father you never had. He expects a lot out of you. He will get on you, but when you succeed, it’s great. He loves to see it.”

Casto is the same age as Tucker Brack. Casto was a bat boy for the Huskies when an older cousin played.

“Tucker and I were in school for 13 years together,” says Casto, now living in Tigard and working as client director for Intervision Systems. “We were over at their house a lot as kids. There was a lot of tradition with the program already when we came through. We had been groomed from youth baseball to be ready for the system.

“Randall is a great baseball mind. We learned the intangibles, the things that don’t show up on paper. He treats a practice more in a college or professional environment than what you would expect to see in high school. From getting the field prepped to the way he chalks the lines to (composing) the lineup card, it is all very much part of his routine. We had some fun and good times together as a team and tried to lighten him up at times, because he is such a straight-line guy.”

Or, maybe not.

“He likes to kid around a lot,” Cindie Brack says. “That surprises people. On the field, they see that focus. At times, he gets a little irritated with the umpires. They think that’s his personality. It’s not at all. He is pretty easygoing.”

“He is old-school on the field, all about fundamentals,” Reynolds says. “But he’s also a fun guy.”

There are certain tenets that need to be adhered to in baseball, Brack believes. Above all, hustle out there.

“I’m a baseball traditionalist in a lot of ways, but at the same time, I like what major league baseball is doing with time,” he says. “Our game is too slow. I hate it when kids walk on or off the field. Our guys don’t do that. I don’t like it when other teams do it.

“(Hustle) is a part of the game that needs to be coached more. Along with that comes the respect for the game, that you understand you have to play the game hard. Hit a ground ball, hit a fly ball, you run it out hard. Don’t pull the parachute halfway down the line and peel off for the dugout.”

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Brack sold his hitting facility in 2011. He doesn’t teach lessons anymore.

“If I do them, it’s with North Marion kids,” he says, “and I don’t charge a dime.”

Randy has had opportunities to move on to coach a higher-classification high school program and at the small-college level. North Marion is on the smaller end of the 4A classification with fewer than 400 students. His loyalty, however, remains.

“Dad is not just a baseball guy; he is a North Marion guy,” Ty says.

Says Randy: “It’s a great community. I grew up here. I have coached here a long time. I have a lot of connections here. Not everybody is going to like you, but for the most part, there are such great people in this area.”

When I ask him to update me on his coaching record, he says he doesn’t know. He’s not kidding. He really doesn’t.

“I guarantee you I had more to do with the losses than I ever did with the wins,” he says, sloughing off the victories to longevity. “How many guys coach as long as me?”

“He doesn’t take any of the credit for anything, and he will take all the blame,” Tucker says. “When something goes wrong, he’s not afraid to say, ‘That’s my fault.’ Kids really appreciate that. It’s a great attribute.”

Times are changing. Brack has coached American Legion teams for 36 years. He is not sure he will have one this summer. “It is dying out,” he says. “It’s sad.”

He says he still has the same drive and desire to coach, “but it is harder to understand some of the things that go on now,” he says. “I am not a fan of travel ball for any age kids. It is getting bigger. It’s becoming more important because of the exposure. I worry what it is going to do eventually to the high school programs.”

Brack, a member of the Oregon High School Coaches Hall of Fame, has no plans to retire, though he turns 70 on January 1.

“That kind of scares me,” he says with a smile. “You wonder what are the kids thinking. They don’t call me grandpa, but they see me with my grandkids. This group is awesome. The parents are great — very supportive. I’m lucky.”

There is only one thing left to achieve — a state championship.

“North Marion has been to 10 state semifinals since we won it all in 1971, eight of those times with me as coach,” Brack says. “We have never made it to a championship game.”

Does that stick in his craw?

“You bet it does,” he says. “Not for me. I want our kids to experience that.”

Even if it never happens, the legacy is established. There will be other coaches at North Marion, but none of them like the man they call “Randall.”

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