College Baseball Hall of Fame

July 4th saw not only the traditional parade and street festival on Broadway in Lubbock, but also the induction ceremony for the inaugural year of the College Baseball Hall of Fame. Five former coaches and five former players were in Lubbock for the holiday celebration. It started Monday night with the Brooks Wallace Award banquet, which honors the College Baseball Foundation player of the year (Wallace was an ex-Tech player and coach who died of cancer in 1985).

The following day, the 4th, the inductees participated in the parade (that's Dave Winfield in the above photo) with an autograph session. Afterwards the televised induction ceremony began with each person given a jersey and some time to talk. It was great to be able to see guys like Winfield, Will Clark, Bob Horner, Brooks Kieschnick and Robin Ventura in person (though during the parade I think I saw one guy mime the Nolan Ryan headlock and head pounding of '93), but the coaches were definitely the ones I preferred listening to, especially Bobby Winkles (pictured below). Here is a link with better pictures and a description of the events and this one gives a brief bio of all the inductees.

The CBF secured the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper's archives and therefore the College Baseball Hall of Fame will become the newspaper's official archive of record. It will be housed at Texas Tech's Southwest Collections/Special Collections Library until the new minor league ballpark Tech will use is completed.