ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 3, 1997 TAG: 9702040044
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
Who said Salem is a football town?
The sixth annual Salem-Roanoke Baseball Hall of Fame induction was held Sunday night before a Salem Civic Center audience of approximately 700 eager to honor the game of baseball and five men who made it a major part of their lives.
The Hall's sixth class included former Salem Buccaneers manager Steve Demeter, Franklin County baseball fixture Alvin Hall, former Salem outfielder and Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Ed Ott, Hall of Fame founder and president Posey Oyler and Southwest Virginia baseball pioneer Shannon Hardwick.
Baseball as a game may have found itself in recent trouble, but there was only positive energy to be found at the civic center. The positive tone was set early by 20-year major-leaguer Jay Johnstone, the banquet's keynote speaker.
Johnstone, who has four World Series rings, was known during and after his playing career as a comedian in an outfielder's uniform, was known to don a grounds crew uniform during games and once was seen making a trip to the Dodger Stadium concession stand while in that day's lineup. Johnstone's destiny as a funny man was sealed early in his career. The first roommate assigned to him in the majors was Jimmy Piersall, a noted baseball eccentric who once managed in Salem and owned semi-pro football teams in Roanoke.
``From him, I learned you have to have fun,'' Johnstone said.
Perhaps none of the inductees did as much positive work for baseball than Hardwick, a Craig County native who brought professional baseball to previously-uncharted waters of Southwest Virginia. Hardwick, 72, set an Appalachian League record in 1946 by winning his first 19 games of the season and finishing 24-3.
Hardwick, however, did as much as an executive as he did as a player. What he accomplished in the early 1950s may never be repeated.
In 1951 he went to the Major League offices in Columbus, Ohio and for $100, bought the first franchise to play in Bluefield. The next season, he not only owned the team, but pitched for it and was its general manager. ``That was pretty tough,'' he said.
While the other players went from town to town by bus, Hardwick took his personal car, stopping off along the way to find new players for his team. ``I went out and got 'em,'' Hardwick said. ``We started from scratch.''
The Hall of Fame recognized him for all he wrought. Plenty of friends were at the ceremonies to recognize him too; the Hardwick contingent took up seven tables. Talk about positive reinforcement. ``It's the highlight of my career,'' he said.
Ott's career highlights include two championships. The first came in Salem in 1972, when the Pirates won their first Carolina League title. Ott also was a catcher on the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates World Series championship team. He hit .333 in that Series.
Ott made a career of giving pitchers positive outlooks on the game. He remembered that whenever he told 1996 Hall of Fame inductee Kent Tekulve, a former Pirates pitcher, what not to do, something bad would happen. So he tried to deal with Tekulve, whose throwing hand often shook from nervousness on the mound, only in a positive manner.
``Instead of saying, `Don't throw it inside!', I'd say, `Make sure you keep it outside,'' explained Ott, in perhaps his only serious remark of the evening.
Hall has given Franklin County youth a positive outlook on the game for 40 years, and it seems to have worked. He has tutored all five major-leaguers from Franklin County. Some of his pupils were in the audience Sunday, including coach Abe Naff's Ferrum College baseball team and Gray Hodges, a 1996 Franklin County High School graduate and winner of the Ray Bellamy Award as the top prep baseball player in the area.
Oyler may be to Roanoke youth baseball what Hall is to Franklin County. His most recent effort was doing the legwork to get this Hall of Fame up and running. This ceremony should help him and the Hall's Board of Directors toward their next project, the construction of a permanent home for the Hall of Fame on the grounds of Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium.
Oyler and the Board took a positive step toward that goal with Sunday's ceremony, which brought in more than $15,000 in revenue.
That left Johnstone even more impressed. He thanked the crowd for trying to preserve and nourish the game he, and the 1997 inductees, always have loved. In their day, the only thing you counted in millions was attendance, not player salaries. About 700 friends at the civic center want those days, when baseball was only a game, to come back.
``It gives me great pleasure to come to the largest sports banquet I've seen in my life,'' Johnstone said.
And can you believe it? There wasn't a football in sight.
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