Slicers WIN!

Astroturf-covered float carries members of the 1987 La Porte High School national championship baseball team along LaPorte's parade route Wednesday. (WSBT-TV Photo/STAN MADDUX / July 4, 2012)

By STAN MADDUX WSBT Correspondent WSBT-TV

4:28 p.m. EDT, July 4, 2012
LaPORTE—
''I love LaPorte on the Fourth of July. Best day of the year,'' said LaPorte Mayor Blair Milo during the 66th annual LaPorte Jaycees holiday parade. 

Milo was riding on the back end of a 2012 Chrysler 200 during a parade with many highlights including a reunion of the 1987 La Porte High School national championship baseball team.

 

Grand Marshals BIG win

The national championship team along with Purdue University head baseball coach Doug Schreiber were among the grand marshals of the parade.

Schreiber, 47, the son of legendary former La Porte High School baseball coach Ken Schreiber, guided Purdue this season to its first Big Ten baseball title since 1909. He said Purdue had come close to winning the conference championship in recent years and the knowledge he picked up from his father along with veteran players helped put his team over the top.

''When you leave La Porte you definitely know how to win,'' said Schreiber. ''We're extremely proud of him as we are of all six of our kids,'' said Ken Schreiber, who retired in the late 1990s with seven state championships along with 1,010 victories and just 217 losses.

Sights/Sounds

  • Two A-10 thunderbolt fighter planes zooming once over the city kicked off the Wednesday parade just before 10 a.m.
  • A tricycle standing over 13 feet high at the handlebars peddled by La Porte County Surveyor Charlie Hendricks. Floyd Thomas with help from a welder made the tricycle in just two weeks. ''It was kind of fun after we started,'' said Thomas.
  •  Kevin Shoemaker, 49, of La Porte walked along the parade route holding a 4-foot long ball python snake and showing it to the crowd. ''They're more afraid of you than you are them. Believe me,'' said Shoemaker.
  •  A replica of a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero Japanese fighter plane depicted in the 1970 Pearl Harbor movie “Tora Tora Tora” made two passes over the always crowded parade route on Lincolnway. Doug Jackson, plane owner, was flying from Iowa to an air show in New York and decided to veer over LaPorte while en route, leaving a trail of white smoke in the blue sky.