The following is adapted from the author’s new book Season of Shattered Dreams: Postwar Baseball, the Spokane Indians, and a Tragic Bus Crash That Changed Everything.

The deadliest tragedy in American professional sports history occurred near Snoqualmie Pass on the heels of World War II. It involved the Spokane Indians, a minor league baseball team full of talented ballplayers, most of whom had put their dreams on hold while serving in the military during the war. 

On the morning of June 24, 1946, the team left Spokane aboard an old 25-passenger bus for their next series against the Bremerton Bluejackets. US Route 10, also known as the Sunset Highway, was the two-lane road that connected Spokane to Seattle. Interstate 90, which would make travel across the state quicker and less perilous, was still decades away from completion. Bus driver Glen Berg steered the coach through varied terrain. Just outside of Spokane, the road cut through a ponderosa pine forest. Closer to Sprague, the tree line gave way to rolling green and gold hills. After Ritzville, where the team stopped for a quick rest break, the road pointed due west, past endless wheat fields dotted by the occasional farmhouse. After Moses Lake, Route 10 descended into a visually stunning canyon, where brown basalt cliffs rose from the Columbia River. 

Spokane’s roster consisted of players from small towns, big cities, both coasts, the upper Midwest, a cowboy ranch in Arizona, and tribal land in Idaho. Many were second- and third-generation Americans whose parents or grandparents came over from Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, and Russia. Several had gained valuable experience playing for service teams during the war and had held their own against major league competition. Some players, including third baseman Jack Lohrke and former Seattle Rainiers outfielder Levi McCormack, had put aside baseball while fighting in some of the war’s deadliest battles. Ben Geraghty and Chris Hartje, both in their early 30s, previously had cups of coffee in the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Geraghty hoped to someday put the knowledge he acquired from Casey Stengel to use as a big league manager.

And then there was Vic Picetti, an 18-year-old first baseman considered to be the best prospect on the West Coast and the latest in a long line of Italian American ballplayers to come out of San Francisco—a lineage that included names like DiMaggio, Lazzeri, and Camilli. As the sole supporter of his mother and two younger siblings, Picetti had a lot riding on his shoulders. The Indians had varying levels of promise and talent, but all shared a common goal of providing for their families and moving up to play in the Pacific Coast League or, just maybe, the major leagues. 

While the ball team slowly made their way across Washington, back in Spokane, team owner Sam Collins received a telegram from San Diego. The Padres, a team in the Pacific Coast League who held the rights to Lohrke, wanted their red-hot prospect to report to San Diego posthaste. Collins’s first thought was to send a wire to Bremerton, but then remembered that the team was planning to stop in Ellensburg for dinner. The team business manager phoned the state police and asked them to contact the Ellensburg police department.

By late afternoon, the bus had reached Ellensburg. While the team ate dinner at Webster’s Café, Berg, the driver, took the bus to the Washington Motor Coach Company’s local garage, where he complained that the engine was running poorly, resulting in a faulty vacuum brake booster. Mechanics changed the gas line, but in Berg’s assessment, it “didn’t seem to do any good.” As the players ate, a police officer found the team and told Lohrke to call the Indians’ front office. “You’ve been recalled by San Diego,” said the voice on the other end. “Come back to Spokane as soon as you can.” As the team reboarded the bus after dinner, Lohrke grabbed his belongings, said good-bye to his friends, and bummed a ride back to Spokane. 

The bus rolled out of Ellensburg around 6pm, heading west and gradually approaching the Cascades. As the bus passed through the towns of Cle Elum and Easton, jagged snow-covered peaks and pine-covered slopes loomed ahead. Some players dozed off while others chatted. 

Traversing the Cascades required a drive over Snoqualmie Pass. At slightly more than three thousand feet, it had a lower elevation and lighter grades that made for a less treacherous passage than other areas in the North Cascades. Native Americans were the first to establish a trail there centuries earlier. In the mid-nineteenth century, the discovery of gold in British Columbia’s Fraser Canyon attracted droves of miners, who crossed the pass by foot or on horseback. As more emigrants traveled west in subsequent decades, a wagon road was gradually constructed. Automobiles first crossed Snoqualmie Pass in 1905, but conditions were so poor that the trip took multiple days. A compacted gravel road, part of the Sunset Highway, was completed in 1915. The journey was still by no means easy, however. Shortly after the new road opened, a drive from downtown Seattle to Yakima—a distance of 170 miles—took ten hours. By 1926, the Washington State Highway Department had straightened curves and reduced steep grades west of the summit and the two-lane road was designated as US Route 10. 

At around 7:30pm, the Indians’ bus reached the top of the pass and began to descend the western slope of the Cascades as rain fell from the dusk sky. Just past the summit, the bus chugged downhill on a straight stretch of road. Berg later estimated that he was traveling at twenty-eight miles per hour. One witness, however, reported that the bus passed him around that same time, traveling at more than forty-five or fifty miles an hour. Pitcher Gus Hallbourg looked out the window and saw a deep ravine to the right. He remarked to teammate Bob Kinnaman, “This would be a hell of a place to go over, wouldn’t it?” 

Berg exchanged headlight blinks with an oncoming Inland Motor Freight truck, each signaling that the road ahead was clear. But moments later, Berg saw a black sedan approaching on the wrong side of the road, its headlights shining directly in front of him through the mist. McCormack and Geraghty saw the same glare of headlights. Berg later said he believed the car was passing a truck.

Berg maneuvered the bus onto the narrow shoulder of the road, simultaneously trying to avoid the oncoming vehicle and the cable guardrail that separated the bus from the deep abyss. He made a split-second decision to step on the gas rather than the brakes for fear of skidding on the wet pavement. As the wrong-sided driver and bus converged, the sedan clipped the front end of the bus. Berg managed to get its front wheels back on the road, but the rear tires remained on the soft shoulder. He struggled as the front end veered back onto the shoulder. The bus collided with the protective guard cables, then began to take out concrete guard posts like bowling pins. There was an eerie stillness as the bus suddenly broke through the cables and went over the edge.