EAST HELENA — ASARCO invested a lot into the East Helena community during the lead smelter’s years of operation. And one of ASARCO’s biggest hits was the semi-professional baseball team the company sponsored: the East Helena Smelterites.
Terry Screnar played for the Smelterites in the early 1960s. He described the team as being comprised of “guys who needed a summer job and could play baseball.”
“And a gentleman by the name of Kes Rigler here would kind of find out about these people, or they’d be directed to call him,” Screnar said. “And then he was able to find out if they could play ball. And if it looked like they could, then he would do whatever he could to get them a job at the smelter. So, they’d work from 7-3, and then play ball after that.”
But fast forward 60 years later, and the Smelterites’ play on the diamond is just one small piece of their lasting legacy.
Country music legend Charley Pride pitched and played infield for the Smelterites – with dreams of becoming a Major League ballplayer preceding the 30 Billboard No. 1 country hits he would go on to produce.
MTN caught up with Pride in June. 2020, months before his death in Dec. 2020.
“My thing was to go to the Major Leagues and break all the records there and set new ones by the time I was 35, 36 – and then sing,” Pride told MTN via Zoom. “That’s kind of the way I had it planned, y’know. But, it didn’t work out that way
I started singing there, and that’s where I started getting my recognition as singing in clubs and things like that from there to here, y’know.”
When Pride joined the Smelterites in 1960, his teammates didn’t yet know he’d go on to become the first African American inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But even back then, Pride’s iconic voice quickly earned him a local reputation as ‘Singin’ Charlie Pride.
(WATCH: A Lasting Legacy — 25 Years after ASARCO in East Helena)
“And then after the games, he’d be in his uniform and he’d be strumming on his guitar,” Screnar recalled with a joking smile. “He was a horrible guitar player. He subsequently learned how to play it halfway decent. Nobody had a clue – but then he started getting a job here and there uptown because he had a marvelous voice.”
He would come back to East Helena every couple years and make all the rounds – people, friends, whatever. And he was really a great gentleman.”
So Pride’s Hall of Fame music career first sprouted roots in East Helena, playing gigs at local bars – and even earning $10 per game to sing the national anthem. And while the rest of Pride’s legacy is now history, the Smelterites remain a strong memory for many East Helenans.
Andy Hunthausen, Lewis and Clark County commissioner and East Helena native, mentioned to MTN during an unrelated interview that he fondly remembers his older brothers shagging balls for the Smelterites.
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“When they’d hit one out of the park or over the fence or a foul ball, if they’d run, get them – and all the kids were running to get the ball – and if they brought it back, they’d get a dime to return that ball back in,” Hunthausen said. “And then of course they’d take their dime or dimes and head to Lucky’s candy store downtown.”
