By Shoe Sullivan

Columnist

It’s hard to write a column when you’re crying, but I’ll try.

Feb. 12, 2023, was Super Bowl Sunday. It was, by far, one of the worst days of my life.

And it had nothing to do with NFL football.

I lost one of my best friends ever. We all did.

Bob Pesch, who went by “Ma,” passed away quietly in a Stevens Point hospital.

He came down with some illness and left us at the age of 75.

He was a local legend and was loved by everyone who knew him.

Ma and I went way back. I met him in our high school days. He was PJ’s Class of 1965, and I was Pacelli Class of 1966.

He was known as “Bob” then.

My buddies and I were playing tackle football in a field close to his home at 810 Shaurette Street, and he somehow joined in.

The guy was impossible to bring down. A bulldozer of a kid.

Everyone liked him immediately.

It turns out that Bob was a baseball star in Point’s Little League.

He even hit a two-run homer in the 1959 All-Star Game.

Many years later, I asked him about that day.

I asked him if he was thrilled with his tremendous clout.

He said, “Yeah, but I kinda felt sorry for the pitcher.”

That was Bob. He was such a caring person.

After his Little League days, my brother Casey was coaching a grade school basketball team, and he invited Bob to help out.

Bob fell in love with coaching right away.

Then, he began coaching in Little League and immediately became the coach every kid wanted to play for.

When he finally left the coaching dugouts, Bob had ended up coaching hundreds of kids. Hundreds.

It was from coaching all those kids that he earned the nickname “Ma.”

Ma was Pete and Estelle’s only child, and he never married.

He thought of all his players as “his kids.”

Countless times, and over many years, Ma would pack up his “kids” in his van and take them to Brewer games and Taco Bell.

It was his treat. He paid for everything.

In his early 20s, Ma moved to Shawano for a year or two to work at a radio station.

He had a girlfriend named, Susie, but he wasn’t really serious about it and soon moved back to Point.

Ma was like the Pied Piper of Point, and adults flocked to him as much as the kids did.

In 1968, he started a softball team that played at Iverson Park.

The team was called “Ma’s Children,” and no team had more fun.

Pesch almost became the first batter to hit one out of the park at Iverson.

His drive crashed into the 275-foot sign down the left-field line.

Sports and laughing were two main things in Ma’s life.

He lived at home, and he never met a bratwurst or taco that he didn’t like.

He worked many years at Northside IGA where he stocked shelves at night.

Ma also was a scorekeeper/announcer for decades of softball games when he wasn’t sorting cards at Larry Fritsch Cards in Point or delivering newspapers.

He also scorekept city basketball games for many years at the Stevens Point Rec Department.

One time at Iverson, Ma was in the booth when I came up to bat with two out.

As I was stepping into the batter’s box, Ma got on the microphone and said, “Totals in the inning.”

And another time at Royal Wood in Plover, Ma was in the scorebooth on the east diamond.

Joe Sanders yelled up, “Hey Ma, who’s up to bat now? Shoe or Prune?”

Ma yelled down, “What’s the difference?”

Prune shouted, “Come on, Ma, who’s up?”

Ma yelled, “I’ll let you know when I’m done with this taco!”

Pesch became something of a national celebrity in 1972.

Joe Falls, the sports editor of the Detroit Free Press, claimed in a “The Sporting News” column that he, Joe Falls, thought he held the Milwaukee County Stadium bratwurst-eating record.

Falls said he ate four brats while covering a game between the Brewers and Tigers.

Prompted by his buddies Randy Wievel and Rufus Konopacki, the three set out to County Stadium with the intention of beating Falls’ “record.”

Ma didn’t just beat Fall’s mark. He obliterated it by downing eleven brats (with hot sauce) while the Orioles were beating the Brew Crew.  His record will never be broken.

Wievel and I wrote about Ma’s tremendous effort in the UWSP “Pointer.”

We then over the years had the brat story published in the Milwaukee Sentinel, “Sport” Magazine, and “The Sporting News.”

Wievel had the best line, saying “Ma never ate well against Baltimore”.

National broadcaster, Bob Costas, heard about Ma’s sensational effort with the brats and told the story many times on national television, including Conan and during a Brewers/Pirates game when he was up in the booth with his buddy Bob Uecker.

Costas said it was the funniest baseball story he ever heard.

By the way, Mr. Costas said he’d like to send a video to Ma’s Memorial Service during this summer. A day has not been determined yet.

Pesch made national news again in 1975 when he, Wievel, and I were at Tiger Stadium in Detroit showing the world how to catch foul balls on NBC’s “The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola.”

Ma broke a cardinal rule of foul-ball catching by eating knackwurst during the Tigers’ game against Minnesota.

Detroit coach Joe Schultz of “Ball Four” fame hit us baseballs into the stands.

Ma lived to coach and loved to laugh. He had a contagious laugh.

One day a bunch of us were playing a pick-up game of basketball in St Peter’s Gym.

Ma was sitting courtside.

Wievel saw his teammate Harvey Giese wide open under the basket.

He threw a perfect pass which should’ve led to an easy lay-up.

The ball sailed a foot over Harvey’s head, went through the doorway, and crashed into a popcorn machine in the hallway.

And then…and only then… did Harvey kinda reach up for the pass.

He was about two seconds late.

Dead silence. Everyone was stunned.

And then it came. Ma’s laugh! Ma was laughing hysterically. He fell off his chair.

And the gym exploded with laughter.

Ma’s laugh could do that.

For hobbies, Ma loved to go bowling and golfing.

He also enjoyed watching “Hogan’s Heroes” and “F-Troop” on television, and his favorite character was County Agent Hank Kimball from “Green Acres.”

Through sports and just being himself, Ma made everybody’s lives a little brighter. There’s no question that he made the world a better place.

He was an icon. A legend. A better person never existed.

He didn’t want a funeral, but if he had one, the church would be overflowing.

Like so many others, and I mean many, it’s really hard to realize that Ma Pesch is gone.

Earlier today, I picked up the phone and dialed 344-6633, a phone number committed to memory.

I was gonna say, “Hey Ma, did you hear about…Ma?”

Then I started shaking and gently put the phone down.

To contact Shoe, email [email protected]