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Seven more individuals inducted into British Baseball Hall of Fame

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The fourth annual class of the British Baseball Hall of Fame (BBHoF) sees seven more inductees announced: Bill Dawber, John Devey, Michael Harrold, RG Knowles, Simon Pole, Terry Warner, and Max “Lefty” Wilson. This brings the total number of enshrinees to 18.

Photos and full bios for each of these individuals, as well as the previously elected inductees, can be found on the BBHoF web page, and abbreviated details are given below.

Bill Dawber
In a career that spanned five decades, Bill Dawber was one of the few players in the London area to shine on the baseball diamond both before World War II and after, developing into arguably the region’s best player in the 1950s. A young member of the professional London Major Baseball League’s Romford Wasps, Dawber was part of a club that made the national finals in 1937. In 1952, Dawber’s excellence was singularly recognized in the south of England. That year, he was the only player from the region chosen to represent England on a 15-man squad that travelled to play The Netherlands. In 1952, Dawber was also picked as a member of an all-England side that played in a tournament against Spain and a US Air Force team. Dawber continued to play into his 50s, retiring in 1972.

John Devey
A dominant two-way player in the first professional baseball league in Great Britain history, the British-born John Devey not only led the league in batting but also paced the circuit in wins on the mound. His performance powered his club, Aston Villa, to a 17–8 record and a league championship. The league featured two former Major Leaguers, four former or future American minor leaguers and a host of other players with considerable experience in the United States. Beyond his baseball exploits, Devey is arguably one of the greatest all-around athletes to have competed on the diamond in Great Britain. He played football for England and was a regular for the Warwickshire county cricket team.

Michael Harrold
Michael Harrold was the Great Britain national team’s longest tenured manager, leading the squad to a European title in 1988 and the juniors to a championship in 1993. His exceptional career also included stints as a distinguished player at both the national and domestic levels, as well as success as a manager in domestic league play. In addition to his work on and around the field, Harrold was a long-time administrator. Among his many roles, he served as British Baseball Federation president and a member of the British Olympic committee.

RG Knowles
Richard George (RG) Knowles was pivotal in developing the first regular baseball played in London. A comedian by trade, Knowles rounded up fellow performers and began setting up games in 1889 in Battersea Park. His efforts led to the establishment of the London Thespians – one of England’s first dominant teams. As player–manager of the Thespians, Knowles led the club to national championships in 1893 and 1894. The Thespians were the first team to win multiple British titles. Backed by Knowles’s work, Thespian home games were known to sometimes attract crowds in the thousands. Beyond his club, he also helped form the London Baseball Association.

Simon Pole
During his decade-long British career, no player put up better statistics as either a pitcher or a hitter than Simon Pole. From 1999 until 2008, he boasted a career .454 batting average, with 35 home runs and 224 runs batted in. According to Project COBB, those are career bests for that period. He led the country’s top league in home runs three times and topped the circuit in batting twice. In 2005, Pole won the “triple crown” with a .571 average, six home runs, and 42 runs batted in. He was no less impressive on the mound. His 2.11 earned-run average was the best of any player during the span of his career. A native Australian, Pole represented his adopted country internationally, playing for Great Britain in six events including the 2005 European Championship A-Pool.

Terry Warner
In a baseball career that lasted nearly 60 years, Terry Warner consistently shined as an all-around player in domestic competition and, in 1967, delivered one of Great Britain’s most important all-time international pitching performances. Warner won two national titles with Thames Board Mills. Along with his on-field exploits, Warner also invested numerous years into teaching the game. He was a coach for Great Britain when they took on the Dutch at Crystal Palace Football Club’s stadium in 1965 and he managed the team in 1968. In 1984, Warner skippered the Croydon Bluejays to a national title.

Max “Lefty” Wilson
Max “Lefty” Wilson is the only Major Leaguer to have pitched a team to a British national championship. He played in Great Britain during the heyday of professional baseball in the late 1930s. In 1936, he pitched for the Catford Saints in the London Major Baseball League. His performance was so impressive that fellow future Major Leaguer Roland Gladu dubbed the left-hander the best pitcher in the country. The next season, Wilson moved to the north of England to play for Hull. There, he was treated as a hero. The Hull Daily Mail called him a “pitching genius” in its 10 May 1937 edition. He led the club to the national championship that year, producing one of the greatest finals performances in British history.

 

British Baseball Hall of Fame to induct seven more individuals next week

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On the 9th of this month – the now-traditional second Tuesday of October for the announcement of the British Baseball Hall of Fame’s annual class – seven more individuals will be enshrined, bringing the total number of inductees to 18.

Three people – Ross Kendrick, Sir John Moores, and Norman Wells – were inducted in the first class back in 2009. They were joined by a set of five in 2010, and then three more individuals in 2011. The 2012 class will be the biggest yet and includes representatives from across the game’s history on British shores.

The 2012 class will be jointly announced on www.baseballgb.co.uk and www.britishbaseball.org.

Gerard-Thesingh, Gladu, and Thurston are latest inductees in the British Baseball Hall of Fame

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The second Tuesday in October, now established as the traditional time for announcing the new annual set of inductees into the British Baseball Hall of Fame (BBHoF), sees three more individuals receive the highest honour in the game:

  • Ted Gerard-Thesingh (Coaches, managers, umpires, and other officials);
  • Roland Gladu (Baseball players);
  • Brian Thurston (Baseball players).

They join the eight individuals already inducted in the first two classes. Biographies for all inductees, and more information about the BBHoF, can be viewed on the official webpage: www.bbhof.org.uk.

The biographies for the inductees in the third class are reproduced below.

Ted Gerard-Thesingh
For more than two decades, Ted Gerard-Thesingh was Great Britain’s top umpire, working 13 national championship contests and more than 100 international matches.

Beyond his role on the field, Gerard-Thesingh also trained countless other umpires and was a dedicated administrative official at various levels of British baseball. Gerard-Thesingh moved to the United Kingdom from South Africa in 1979. Upon learning there was a dearth of umpires in British baseball he set to work recruiting and then teaching new officials.

Quickly garnering respect for his work behind the plate and on the bases, Gerard-Thesingh earned assignments in all but one national title games between 1982 and 1995. Internationally, he was also an umpiring fixture. He officiated in the 1984 and 1988 European Championship B-Pool and the 1989 European Championship A-Pool in Paris, France. A serious injury in the mid-1990s cut his umpiring career short, but Gerard-Thesingh continued to contribute to British baseball.

He served as technical commissioner at a number of national finals and at the 1996 European Championship B-Pool in Hull, England. In recognition of his many years of service, Gerard-Thesingh was made an honorary life member of both the British Baseball Federation and the Amateur Baseball Umpires Association–Great Britain (ABUA-GB). In addition, the ABUA-GB began bestowing the “Ted Gerard-Thesingh Trophy” in 2003 as an annual award to acknowledge outstanding effort by a particular umpire each year. Gerard-Thesingh also received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 national finals.

Roland Gladu
Described in the 1939 book Baseball for British Youth as “[p]erhaps the finest batter who has ever played for an English team,” Roland Gladu was the only 20th Century positional player known have to competed in a domestic Great Britain circuit and then risen all the way to the Major Leagues in the United States.

Dubbed “the Babe Ruth of Canada” by the British press during his 2 years in the United Kingdom (1936–37), the French-Canadian Gladu played primarily for West Ham in the effectively professional London Major Baseball League.

As the club’s player–manager, he led the team to top-two finishes in both of his seasons as well as to one remarkable upset: a 5–3 triumph over the 1936 United States Olympic baseball team. In that contest, Gladu connected for two hits, including West Ham’s only extra-base hit (a double). While statistics are incomplete from this era, it is known that he led the London circuit in batting with a .565 average in 1937. Seven years on from his time in Great Britain, Gladu ascended to the Majors, hitting .242 with one home run in 21 games for the 1944 Boston Braves of the National League.

Brian Thurston
Brian Thurston, who retired as Great Britain’s most capped international pitcher, was a dominating force both domestically and abroad.

Thurston appeared in seven European Championships, throwing 83.0 innings and posting a 5–4 record with a 2.82 earned-run average. He also pitched his club side to multiple national honours. The left-handed Thurston led Great Britain to promotion into the top tier of European baseball in 1988, earning the Most Valuable Player award at the European Championship B-Pool on home soil. He won two games at the event, including the final against Czechoslovakia, in which he threw a 7.0-inning shutout, striking out 12 batters. The publication First Base described the outing as “a stirring display of power pitching.” Other stand-out performances were to come.

In 1989, he struck out 25 batters in 23.2 innings at the European Championship A-Pool in France and 2 years later he posted a 3.18 earned-run average, fanning 20 hitters in 17.0 innings at the 1991 championships in Italy. Despite suffering an arm injury later in his career, he also contributed to Britain’s international success with the bat. At the 1996 European Championship B-Pool in England, his run-scoring 10th-inning hit against Lithuania in the semi-finals secured Great Britain’s promotion back into European baseball’s elite group after relegation 5 years earlier.

Equally impressive in British league play, Thurston was a long-time member of his local side, the Hull (Humberside) Mets. During his club career he led the Mets to three national titles, a silver medal at the 1992 European Cup Winners Cup qualification tournament, and three national Knock-out Cup trophies (in the 1992 triumph, he threw a 7.0-inning no-hitter).

Five more inductees join British Baseball Hall of Fame with announcement of second annual class

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The second class of inductees into the British Baseball Hall of Fame was announced on Tuesday 12 October 2010, and it saw five names join the three individuals elected in the inaugural class. The new figures are Alan Bloomfield (inducted under the Baseball players category), Margaret Borley (Coaches, managers, umpires, and other officials), Fred Lewis (Game builders), Sir Francis Ley (Game builders), and Gavin Marshall (Baseball players).
Alan Bloomfield, who was a junior footballer at Arsenal before committing to baseball, became one of the most consistently dominant ballplayers in the London area during the 1980s and 1990s. He appeared at more European Baseball Championships than any other Great Britain player and he was described by The Daily Mail of Hull in 1984 as “the best British player ever.” Bloomfield was a member of the first two Great Britain squads to win gold medals in European Championship competition, the B-Pool victories in 1988 and 1996. In 1988, he was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. Domestically, he competed for the Sutton Braves, the Southern Tigers, and the London Warriors, and he posted outstanding batting figures year after year. In all, he played on six national championship-winning squads.
Margaret Borley was the first member of the British baseball community to receive Queen’s honours for work in the sport, being named an MBE in 2007. Borley founded one of the country’s most successful youth organizations, the Tonbridge Bobcats Youth Baseball Club in Kent. In over 30 years of service to British baseball, Borley has led the Bobcats to numerous youth championships and helped develop a number of future Great Britain internationals, including Alex Malihoudis, Nick Carter, and Will Lintern.
Fred Lewis established baseball in the town of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, in 1909 and taught and administered baseball until his death in 1960. For at least 48 years – from 1912 until 1960 – baseball was played continuously in Chipping Norton thanks to Lewis. Lewis, who was a local Scout master, found out about baseball in 1909 when he obtained a year-old baseball guide. He immediately became an ambassador for the sport, fashioning much of his baseball equipment by hand or through local artisans. Through his disciplined work ethic, Lewis developed excellent ballplayers. In 1926, a Chipping Norton team led by Lewis travelled to London to play a team of expatriates, called the London Americans, at Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge. Lewis’s all-British team prevailed in the match-up, which earned attention from the national press for his club’s performance.
Sir Francis Ley was Britain’s original baseball magnate. He was the first domestic businessman to make a committed effort to develop the sport, by establishing the country’s first dynasty team – Derby – and erecting its first authentic baseball ground. Sir Francis’s teams won national championships in 1895, 1897, and 1898. This was the most of any team in baseball’s first decade in Great Britain. Sir Francis also proved that baseball had the potential to be a commercial venture in the United Kingdom, attracting upwards of 5,000 spectators on a regular basis.
Gavin Marshall was the first born-and-bred British baseball player to earn a professional contract in the United States. He was also a successful member of the British national team and a national champion. Marshall, whose father Barry and grandfather Ron were stand-out players and coaches both in domestic baseball and for Great Britain, showed his considerable baseball talents at a young age. The Hull native made his first appearance with the Great Britain senior side as a 16 year old in 1993. Marshall earned a college baseball scholarship to Centenary College in Louisiana and then to the University of the Pacific. After his collegiate career, he signed a professional contract in the independent Frontier League with the Dubois County Dragons. He played for 2 years in American professional baseball, making 57 appearances. He continued his baseball career in style upon his return to Great Britain, pitching the Brighton Buccaneers to a 5–1 victory at the 2002 national championships.
The Board of Electors for the British Baseball Hall of Fame comprises individuals who have experience in researching the history of British baseball. This includes one seat for a representative from SABR UK (the British chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research). An additional seat is reserved for a representative from the board of the British Baseball Federation as an acknowledgement of the governing body’s endorsement of the project.
New classes in the British Baseball Hall of Fame are announced annually, on the second Tuesday in October. The inaugural class was revealed on 13 October 2009, with induction requiring at least six “yes” votes from among the eight Electors. The Board of Electors grew to ten in number in 2010 and the threshold remained as six votes.
For biographies of all the inductees to date and other details on the British Baseball Hall of Fame, please visit the official website: www.bbhof.org.uk.

bbhof_200x225The second class of inductees into the British Baseball Hall of Fame was announced on Tuesday 12 October 2010, and it saw five names join the three individuals elected in the inaugural class. The new figures are Alan Bloomfield (inducted under the Baseball players category), Margaret Borley (Coaches, managers, umpires, and other officials), Fred Lewis (Game builders), Sir Francis Ley (Game builders), and Gavin Marshall (Baseball players).

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