HUNTSVILLE, Texas (May 23, 1980) - Dear Mom and Pop:

I bet you miss me and you're wondering where I've been. Spring break at LCC started three weeks ago. Well, don't be too surprised, but our whole baseball team is going to the World Series (not the one in October, but the one that starts next week in Nashville). 

We won all the marbles in the district and now the area. Isn't that neat? None of us really ever expected this. You remember how mediocre we looked a month ago? 

Well, just writing to let you know I won't be home for at least another week. We just won't quit and that's why our season just won't end. Watch for us in the newspaper!

Somewhere on top of the world, your lil' LCC Chaparral

"This is a real good time," Lubbock Christian College first baseman Tim Leslie said. " This is the definition of it."

"I'm just hap[y and thrilled to death," Chap Richard Bowles chimed in. 

And LCC coach Larry Hays performed a somersault on the infield grass to accentuate the point. 

LCC, a team that four weeks ago seemed to need spring break more than the various NAIA post-season tournaments needed it, defeated Grand Canyon College (Ariz.) 3-2 in 10 innings Friday to win the Area II playoffs and capture a berth in the NAIA World Series that begins Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn. 

The Chaps held onto a window ledge all the way through a mixed-emotion regular season which ended at 46-31. 

There were no mixed emotions apparent Friday as the Chaps, 52-32, used the combined six-hit pitching of Bowles and reliever Chris Cook to print LCC's second set of World Series tickets ever. The Chaps' previous visit, which ended in a fifth-place finish, occurred in 1977. 

LCC had entered Friday's action needing to win only one of two possible games with Grand Canyon. They were the only two teams remaining from a field that had included host Sam Houston State and William Carey College (Miss.), both of which had been ousted earlier from the double-elimination tournament. 

GCC, which had fallen to LCC 9-8 in the tournament's first-round Wednesday, sought revenge. The Antelopes succeeded by administering a 12-6 strapping in Friday's opener. 

It necessitated the second game. And that necessitated giving Bowles only his second collegiate start. The Chap pitching rotation already had been exhausted.

"Really, I didn't feel any pressure," Bowles said. "Coach Hays has shown a lot of confidence in me. He told me that if I did any kind of job at all, we'd win the game. That's just what happened. It was one of the greatest games I've ever played in."

LCC scored two quick runs in the top of the first as Tommy Inman gardened the wined walls in right field  with a leadoff double and moved to third base on a wild pitch by GCC starter and loser Robert Burton. 

Steve Brigante walked on four pitches and the Leslie, like Bowles a Monterey High School alumnus, singled to left. Inman scored and, when Antelope left fielder Terry Funk juggled the ball, Brigante also crossed the plate. 

Grand Canyon struggled with Bowles' overhand curve ball through 5 2/3 innings, scoring single runs in the second and fifth innings to forge a 2-2 tie. 

When Bowles began to tire in the sixth, along came Cook, who proceeded to allow only one hit and now walks over the final 4 1/3 innings. 

Meanwhile, Burton kept the plate clean for eight consecutive innings until the Chaps' extra-special inning in the 10th. 

Inman cracked a one-out single to center - LCC's first hit since the third - stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored the deciding run on Bowle's sacrifice fly to deep center field. 

"This may sound wrong, but I just feel fortunate," Hays said. "Of course I'm excited and proud of the way our guys came back. Man, they had a lot to overcome.

"They'd just lost 12-6 and that took away some of our aggressiveness. But between games I got the guys together and told them to think it was teh first day of the year and that someone said 'You get to play one game and, if you win it, you get to go to the national tournament. Would you like to play in it?'

"We didn't have a good offense today, but Bowles kept throwing a super curve and Cook showed a lot of guts by putting the ball where it's supposed to be."

GCC, prior to the final game, had rounded up 63 hits in their first four playoff games. 

Hays detected no reserve in the Antelopes' approach to the big game despite an announcement between contests that they had cornered an at-large invitation to the World Series, win or lose to the Chaps.

The 10-team field at the nationals is composed of eight area champions and the two highest-ranked teams that fail to win their areas. Grand Canyon was assured its berth when the nation's top two teams, Southeastern Oklahoma and David Lipscomb College (Tenn.), both had qualified by Friday. 

"I can guarantee you they didn't ease up," Hays said of GCC. "Burton didn't throw a tight pitch all day. He didn't have anything to worry about. And their team wanted to even the score for what we did to them the first time."

Rick Coskrey started for LCC in teh Friday's opener. He was chased in the second inning when GCC scored five runs. The Chaps were never again closer than 5-1 and tralied 12-3 in the eighth before Leslie's toke three-run homer in the ninth. 

LCC began its tournament barnstorming with an unexpected three-game sweep of the District VIII playoffs last weekend in Arlington.