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‘A legend’: Pyatte steps down after 50 years managing Merchants

Wanna know about Harold Pyatte and what he has meant for the Everett Merchants?

Last Friday night was Pyatte’s farewell game. After 50 years — 50 YEARS! — as the owner, operator and manager of the elite amateur summer baseball team, Pyatte was finally stepping down from his on-field duties. If there ever was an occasion that warranted sitting back and soaking in the moment, this was it.

Yet what was Pyatte doing 90 minutes before first pitch? He was hard at work setting up the concession stand in the concourse at Funko Field.

Yes, Pyatte’s time on the field may have come to an end, but his legacy will always remain. He is the living embodiment of Everett Merchants baseball.

“Harold is the program. Harold is the Merchants,” said George Ferran, who played for the Merchants in the early 1990s and helped coach the team in the 2010s.

This isn’t the first time there have been rumblings about Pyatte, now 80, hanging it up. Within The Herald’s sports department it was a decade-long running gag about whether it was Harold’s last season, and it’s no coincidence that when Pyatte was greeted by former players on the field before Friday’s game the first words out of the players’ mouths tended to be a dubious, “Is this really your last game?”

But this time it appears to be real.

“Every time I’d tell someone it was my last year they’d go, ‘Yeah, right,’” Pyatte said. “Then I’d go, ‘Well, maybe one more.’ One more kept getting closer to 50, and when I told my wife (Sherry) I was hanging it up she said, ‘Well, you’ve got one more year to 50, I don’t think there’s anybody in the country that has coached a collegiate or semipro team for that long.’ So I figured I’d go for it.

“But it’s time for me to spend more time with my family,” Pyatte added. “I have great-grandkids and grandkids, and I don’t get a whole lot of time in the summer to do things with them. And I don’t need any more accolades.”

Pyatte has spent his entire adult life involved with the Merchants or their predecessors. The 1961 Marysville High School graduate joined the semipro Everett Orioles in 1962, playing alongside future major leaguers such as Jim Lonborg and Wally Bunker, and he continued to play for local semipro teams through 1972.

Then in 1973, with the support of civic heavyweights Jim Ennis and Bill Rucker, Pyatte founded the H&L Twins, who became the Merchants in 1984, as a team to primarily give college players somewhere to play during the summer. Little did he know it would become a lifetime pursuit.

“Harold was always a good fellow, he was always well liked and fun to be around,” said Jim Langus, who played against Pyatte in high school and was his teammate on the Orioles. “He’s just a genuinely good guy, and I can see how that segued into coaching, because I know he had a wonderful experience with the Orioles and was a big part of the success they had. So it didn’t surprise me when he ended up coaching, but I didn’t see (50 years) coming.”

Pyatte’s commitment to the cause is the singular reason why the Merchants have lasted this long. In the past 50 years Pyatte has worn every hat possible and more, personally handling all tasks from player recruitment to fundraising to field maintenance. Without Harold — including the frequent dips into his and Sherry’s personal savings — none of this would have been possible.

The results speak for themselves: scores of players who went on to play professionally, including future major leaguers like Rick Anderson, Lyle Overbay and Todd Linden; countless tournament championship trophies, which fill multiple rooms in his Everett home. And then there’s the crowning achievement, the 1988 National Baseball Congress World Series championship. In 2005 Pyatte was inducted into the National Baseball Congress Hall of Fame, and in 2017 he was inducted into the Snohomish County Sports Hall of Fame.

“I never thought it would last this long,” Pyatte said. “I was going to hang it up when I won the World Series in ‘88. There’s nothing to achieve, what’s left? But it’s been a good run.”

Pyatte had long ago passed along third base-coaching duties to his staff — “It’s a little harder dodging line drives in the third-base box,” he said — but on Friday he returned to the coach’s box one last time as the Merchants hosted the Northwest Honkers in Pyatte’s final home game. In the bottom of the fourth inning Pyatte came out to argue with the base umpire after an Everett baserunner was called out to end the inning, egged on by a crowd that broke into, “Let’s go Har-old!” chants. Pyatte managed to avoid the distinction of being ejected from his final appearance at Funko Field.

So what does Pyatte’s retirement mean for the Merchants? First, Pyatte made clear that he’s only stepping down as the manager. He will remain the owner and still be involved in operating the team, but has passed on the baseball-related duties to the trio of Josh Berry, Beau Blacken and Cory Acklus, who as coaches have gradually inherited various duties. The Merchants will continue, just without Pyatte present on a day-to-day basis.

Pyatte’s shoes are big ones to fill.

“He’s a rarity in this game,” said Berry, who spent the past five years as Everett’s pitching coach and is succeeding Pyatte as manager. “He is somebody who expects something out of his players, and they want to live up to his expectations. I get chills just talking about it. It’s been special to watch, and to know I get to take that over and get to do the same thing … his 50 years is an accomplishment I’d love to achieve for myself.”

It’ll take a special effort to match those accomplishments, and even then it’ll be impossible for anyone to replace Harold Pyatte’s name as the one synonymous with Everett Merchants baseball.