SPOKANE, Wash. – The Spokane Indians baseball team celebrated National Indigenous Peoples’ Day by highlighting a Nez Perce tribe member who played for several seasons.
Levi McCormack was the son of a Nez Perce leader and an impressive athlete. After graduating Lapwai High School, he played football and baseball at Washington State.
McCormack played for two minor league baseball teams called the Indians, the first being the Seattle Indians before they became the Raniers, and the second being the Spokane Indians.
His time with the Spokane team spanned the late 1930s to the late 1940s, with his initial season in 1939 and his second two spanning from 1946 to ’47 after his time in the Navy.
McCormack had a near-death experience with the Indians in 1946 when a bus carrying the team over Snoqualmie Pass crashed, killing nine of his teammates and injuring all of the others when the vehicle was consumed in flames.
As an athlete, his crowning achievement was being named the 1941 Western International League All-Star. After leaving professional baseball, he became a mailman in Spokane. He died in the Lilac City in 1974,
