World War II vet Crytzer headlines Alle-Kiski Valley Sports Hall of Fame class

By: George Guido
Saturday, March 26, 2022 | 10:01 AM

In the middle of a multi-sport athletic career at Freeport, Harry Crytzer saw it was time for a more vital calling.

Crytzer, as many did during that era, quit school during his junior year and left to serve in World War II. He had just helped lead the Yellowjackets to the 1944 section baseball title as the starting shortstop at the tail end of the previous school year and also had played football and basketball.

“I had four brothers in the service at the time,” Crytzer said. “I had started my junior year and they were taking 17-year-olds. It was No. 1 on everybody’s minds to win the war, so for me it was an easy decision to join.”

Before that, Crytzer played baseball for the Freeport and Natrona American Legion teams from 1942-44. In the summer of ’44, he represented Pittsburgh in the National Pressman’s baseball tourney, losing in the finals to a Detroit team.

“We were called the ‘Milk Truck Team’ because we traveled to the games in a milk truck,” Crytzer recalled.

For his decades-long contribution playing and coaching multiple sports, Crytzer will be one of 10 inductees at the 51st Alle-Kiski Valley Sports Hall of Fame banquet May 21 at the New Kensington Quality Inn.

At 94, he will be the hall’s second-oldest inductee next to 2019 inductee Dan Hawkins, then 95.

Crytzer continued playing baseball while stationed in Guam with the Naval Air Corps, playing for the Agana Naval Squadron when not serving as a radioman and nose turret gunner. Crytzer remained in Guam after the war as his team was island champs in 1947.

After serving, Crytzer returned to Freeport and finished his high school time at The Kiski School, near Saltsburg.

After that, he went to trade school and embarked on a 40-plus-year career as a sheet metal worker. Crytzer was the union business manager for 23 years, covering 23 Western Pennsylvania counties.

Crytzer continued his athletic career playing semi-pro football for the Leechburg Eagles and semi-pro basketball with the Freeport Fischers.

His long association with baseball continued throughout the 1950s as a player-manager for the successful Freeport Independents and as a player for the New Kensington Merchants and the Freeport Merchants of the Tri-County League.

“That was a good brand of baseball,” Crytzer said. “A lot of the guys were World War II vets. We got some big crowds at our games.”

While managing the Freeport American Legion team in 1960, the squad made it to the state finals in Reading, losing to Coplay. That team included Guy Conti, longtime coach with the Mets and the Dodgers, along with Gary Koontz, a pitcher in the Red Sox chain who later became the “Marlboro Man” in cigarette advertisements.

Crytzer also served as a Pittsburgh Pirates scout for a number of years, but with his job as a sheet metal worker and the need to support his wife and seven children, he never went into scouting full time, though he conducted a number of Pirates tryouts at Forbes Field.

With his many children grandchildren and great-grandchildren in sports, Crytzer has likely seen more Freeport athletic events than anybody.

A-K Valley Sports Hall of Fame

What: 51st induction banquet

When: 7 p.m. May 21

Where: Quality Inn, New Kensington

Tickets: $30

Contacts: Larry Lutz 724-822-3695; Bill Heasley 724-882-3079; Fred Soilis 412-736-1809

Tags: Freeport