CEO’s Message – July 2024

Getting Into the Swing of Summer…Finally!

It took a while to get here, but it’s summertime in Walla Walla… and there is something in the air. You can hear it. You can smell it. Your taste buds start to tingle, and some of the old timers will tell you they can feel it in their bones.

Onion harvest…? Nope.

Combines whirring over wheat and stirring up dust…? Nope.

100-degree days and 80-degree nights…? Getting closer!

Ah…Baseball? Yep.

There are a few things that make summer summer around here. Glorious weather and magnificent agricultural bounty are definitely on that list. But for more than a century, baseball has been a major part of the fabric of our community. And baseball means summer.

Baseball doesn’t make Walla Walla special or different from thousands of other cities and towns, large and small, around our country. The game itself, and what it brings to so many millions of lives in so many different communities, is special.

Everyone has a story, whether they saw Ozzie Smith or Tony Gwynn in classic Padres yellow and brown, or Hollywood icon Kurt Russell in 1972 with the short-season, and short-lived, Walla Walla Islanders. And who could forget the magical summer of 2017 and the run to the Little League World Series by the Walla Walla Valley All-Stars! Legends forever!

And how about a quick shout-out to the Fire Department Little League team, who won the 2024 Walla Walla Little League City Championship with a 14-1 win over Grocery Outlet just a couple of weeks ago!

No conversation about baseball would be complete without a little baseball trivia. If the names Piggy Ward and Skyrocket Smith mean anything to you, you are a true Walla Walla baseball historian!

Columbia Rural Electric Association (REA) has been a fan of local baseball and softball for decades, supporting the game at all levels, from tee-ball to Sweets ball. Any sort of comprehensive index of all the leagues, teams, and age levels of all the boys and girls teams around here would quickly fill this entire magazine. Baseball and softball are big, and we love being a part of it. Our commitment to the communities we serve and to the kids who live, play, and grow up here, leads us directly back to America’s pastime year after year, and to the boys and girls of summer. May you “play ball” forever.

Best,
Scott Peters, CEO

P.S. Piggy Ward and Skyrocket Smith played for Walla Walla’s first “official” baseball team, the Walla Walla Walla Wallas, in 1891.