This week Replays looks back at the 1950 Sandy's Texaco women's state champion softball team.

Helena was a mecca for ladies fastpitch softball during the decade of the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1957, Capital City clubs garnered six state championships. Following Sandy's title, East Helena's Kessler Beer won in 1951; Day's Plasterers claimed three crowns in 1953, '56 and '57, and The Freezers prevailed in 1954.

Of those eight state title contests, four were all-Helena area matchups.

In 1950, the local City League was comprised of six teams; Sandy's, VFW, East Helena CIO, Eagles, East Helena Recreation, and GVS. Everyone played each other twice, making for a 10-game season.

Sandy's Texaco was a gas station on the corner of Main Street and Neill Avenue, located across the street from the current site of The Trophy Case. Its softball team was coached by Buck Finley.

During the first half of the season, Norma Wittmayer, Marion Moran, Anne Marie Beatty and Jewel Stanley each hit home runs in Sandy's 32-6 win over E.H. Recreation. And no, that's not a typo. This was several decades before the 10-run "mercy rule," and games usually continued through their duration. Back then, only darkness saved an overmatched team from losing by 20 or 30 runs ... or more.

Sandy's beat VFW 28-3 at the Fort Harrison field, powered by homers by Norma Beatty, Stanley, Moran and Gladys Jahnke.

In the first game of the second half, against the Eagles, the Independent Record headline read "Sandy's Texacans Keep Pulling Old Alamo On Softball Rivals." They pounded the Eagles 40-1, as Stanley, Anne Marie Beatty, Pat Rude, Wittmayer and Jahnke all went yard.

In a 44-0 shellacking of E.H. Recreation at East Helena's Smelterite Park, Stanley blasted two taters to go along with her shutout. Rude and Anne Marie Beatty added a homer apeice.

Sandy's won the regular season championship with a 9-1 record, their lone loss coming to E.H. CIO, 8-6. CIO's Elaine "Vaccum Cleaner" Hoover outpitched Stanley for the Texacan ace's only defeat of the year. It was the beginning of a pitching rivalry between the two, which lasted for six years, until Stanley quit playing in 1956.

In the 1950 city playoffs, Sandy's went undefeated and captured the title at the Carroll College field, with a 14-4 victory over VFW.

At the State Tournament in Havre, they annexed the crown by first beating East Helena CIO 8-2 in the semis, and then Helena's VFW 3-1 in the finals. In the championship game, Sandy's jumped on VFW hurler Lora Hartz for all three of their runs in the first inning.

The champs, and Jewel Stanley (since she pitched every game), each finished with a sparkling 15-1 record.

Stanley was presented with a trophy as the tourney's outstanding pitcher. "VFW's Lora Hartz received two sirloin steaks and three pairs of nylons for pitching the only shutout in the tournament, defeating Havre CYC, 13-0," according to the IR.

In 1952, the team became The Freezers. Two years later, the Freezers went an undefeated 16-0 on their way to the city and state titles. Members of both the '50 and '54 championship teams were Jewel (Stanley) Hurley, Pat Rude, Louise (Gregor) Redfield, and Norma (Beatty) Ashby. Their second crown was bookended by runner-up finishes, in 1953 and 1955. From 1950-56, Sandy's/Freezers compiled a 102-17 record, for an .857 winning percentage.

For her storied career, Jewel Hurley won almost 100 games, while losing only about 15. Hurley possessed a fastball that turned most hitter's knees to jelly, and a change-up that had them swinging two or three times at the same pitch. She hurled at least six no-hitters, and ump-teen shutouts. The fireballer once struck out 20 out of a possible 21 batters in a seven inning game.

"I was the first one here to use the windmill windup," related Hurley, explaining that she learned the delivery on her own. "Before that, everyone brought the ball straight back and just swung it. We had a great team. One time we beat the National Guard men's team out at Fort Harrison, and they had to buy us all dinner at the Nite Owl."

Pat Rude became a catcher for the Arizona Ramblers in the Pacific Coast Fastpitch League for 13 years. In 1958, the Ramblers won the Women's World Softball Championship in Toronto, Ontario.

Dorie Darfler, who played third base for Sandy's, is the grandmother of recent Helena Legion brothers Josh, Caleb, Jake and Levi Samuelson.

And Norma (Beatty) Ashby -- after stints with Helena's Independent Record and Life Magazine in New York -- went into a career in television, writing and movies. She hosted her own live TV interview show, "Today in Montana," for KRTV in Great Falls for 26 years. Over the course of 7,000 TV shows, some of her guests included: seven Montana governors, first lady Pat Nixon, columnist Abigail Van Buren, and movie stars Olivia DeHaviland, Bob Hope, Robert Goulet and Clint Eastwood.

Ashby scripted the 1964 movie "Last Chance Gulch," which was narrated by her friend, broadcaster Chet Huntley. She is the author of the book "Movie Stars and Rattlesnakes; the Heyday of Montana Live Television."

Reporter Curt Synness: 449-2150 or curt52s@bresnan.net