This coming Saturday, June 18, 2005, the City of Long Beach will honor its second group of inductees to its newly established “Long Beach Softball and Baseball Hall of Fame“.
Home to the legendary ten-time World Champs, the Long Beach Nitehawks, the City of Long Beach established a “Softball and Baseball Hall of Fame” last year, inducting some of the city’s greats in the inaugural class, including baseballers Tony Gwynn, Bob Lemon, and Bobby Grich and softballers Red Meairs, Leroy Zimmerman, Nick Hopkins and Don Sarno, among others. The inductees have been honored by separate, beautifully done plaques, one for baseball at Long Beach’s Blair Field, and the other, for softball, across the street, for Joe Rodgers field. (For those not familiar with Long Beach, CA, Blair Field (bottom field in photo) is a gem of a baseball field, a scaled down version of Milwaukee’s old County Stadium. It hosts Long Beach State baseball, high school baseball, and some of the minor league teams which have come and gone here, including the latest, the Long Beach Armada of the Golden Baseball league. It’s where I watched my younger brothers, Rick and Bob compete for Millikan high school, meeting up in their senior year against the Great Tony Gwynn. Blair Field also hosted the ISC World Tournament in 1976, when I was but 21. Across the street is Joe Rodgers Field, (top of photo) which was home to the Long Beach Nitehawks before they closed up shop. That’s where you’ll find the plaque honoring the Long Beach Softball Hall of Fame Inductees.
We were fortunate enough to be invited to the inaugural induction luncheon last year, which was a first-class event all the way. From the program, a bit more about the LBHOF:
Long Beach has been fortunate to he the cradle for many of professional sports’ most revered players. And when it comes to baseball and softball, our city has been blessed with a wealth of the games’ legendary figures. Bob Lemon, Bobby Grich, and Tony Gwynn are but a few of the major league baseball greats who began their careers here. On the softball side, the legendary Nitehawks. Led by such gifted players as Paul “Lucky†Humiston and Joe Rodgers made an indelible mark on Southern California Softball.
In addition to those who made their fame on the field, there have been hundreds of off the field players and supporters that have helped make Long Beach one of the country’s leading baseball and softball cities. How fitting it is then that Blair Field is the new home of the Long Beach Baseball Hall of Fame, and the adjoining Joe Rodgers softball field is the site of the Long Beach Softball
Hall of Fame
For several months now, two committees (one for baseball and one for softball) have been putting in countless hours writing the rules for selection to the Halls of Fame. Once that demanding task was complete, they each then endured the arduous task of narrowing down the field of proposed members for the inaugural class. Numerous names were submitted for selection and many of those not in the initial class will remain in consideration for future years. The large number of names given to the two committees speaks volumes about the quality of these two sports in Long Beach.
The inductees for the inaugural class of 2004 were:
BASEBALL HALL OF FAME
BOB BAILEY
ROCKY BRIDGES
JEFF BURROUGHS
RON FAIRLY
JACK GRAHAM
BOBBY GRICH
TONY GWYNN
JOE HICKS
BOB “RUPE†HUGHES
AL JOHNSON
BOB LEMON
HARRY MINOR
LAUREN PROCTOR
VERN STEPHENS
SOFTBALL HALL OF FAME
PATTY GASSO
CLEO GOYETTE
NICK HOPKINS
PAUL “LUCKY†HUMISTON
NICKI KEPHART
MARY LETOURNEAU
PETE MANARINO
SHELLIE MCCALL
IRVIN “RED†MEAIRS
ISIDORE PERRUCCIO
JOE RODGERS
DON SARNO
SHADIE SICKLES
KIM SOWDER
STACY VAN ESSEN
STAN WHITE
LEROY ZIMMERMAN
Click here to read the Hall of Famers’ biographies, from the 2004 program.