One of only two coaches to lead two different teams to the national championship and one of the most decorated HBCU players in recent history headline the 2022 class for the National College Baseball Hall of Fame, presented by the College Baseball Foundation.
This year’s class, which will be inducted as a part of the College Baseball Night of Champions celebration Feb. 2-3 in Omaha, Nebraska, features former Pepperdine, Florida and Arizona head coach Andy Lopez, who finished his career with 1,177 victories, and former Southern University standout infielder Rickie Weeks, the consensus college baseball player of the year in 2003.
“This class checks all the boxes,” said Mike Gustafson, president and CEO of the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. “With national players of the year from various levels of college baseball to coaching legends and a pioneer, it is an accomplished list.”
Also included in the 2022 class are former Brown infielder and 1974 Sporting News College Baseball Player of the Year Bill Almon; Weeks’ Southern University head coach Roger Cador; former Michigan All-American and Big Ten Player of the Year Casey Close; two-time NAIA National Championship coach Ken Dugan of Lipscomb; eight-time College World Series umpire Jim Garman; Condredge Holloway, the first African-American member of the University of Tennessee baseball program; Southern California All-American and Mount San Antonio head coach Art Mazmanian; and 1988 NCAA Division III Player of the Year Ken Ritter from North Central College.
“After a couple years of virtual inductions, it will be great to be together again for the events in Omaha,” Gustafson said.
For more information on the Night of Champions celebration or to purchase tickets/tables for the event, click HERE.
For more information about the Hall of Fame class or the College Baseball Foundation, contact Mike Gustafson, president and CEO, at [email protected] or go to the College Baseball Foundation website.
About the 2022 Class
Bill Almon left Brown University as the holder of 13 of the school’s 19 game, season or career records. As a freshman he hit .536 in leading Brown to a 10-2 record. He earned All-Ivy and All Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League honors as a sophomore (1973) and junior (1974), hitting .350 with 10 home runs, 31 RBI and 20 stolen bases to also earn Sporting News College Baseball Player of the Year honors. He was selected No. 1 overall by the San Diego Padres in the 1974 draft and spent 15 years in professional baseball. He is still the only Ivy League athlete ever to be drafted first overall in one of the four major professional sports’ drafts.
Roger Cador compiled a 913-597-1 record in 33 seasons (1984-2017) guiding the Southern University Jaguars, building one of the most successful Historically Black College/University (HBCU) programs in the nation. In his time at Southern, the Jaguars captured two HBCU national championships in 2003 and 2005, 14 Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) championships and made 11 NCAA tournament appearances, including the first win in an NCAA Regional by an HBCU program. He is a 13-time SWAC Coach of the Year, producing 10 All-Americans and 62 drafted players. Cador played for Southern from 1970 to 1973 and is a member of the SWAC Hall of Fame and Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
Casey Close is one of the most decorated players in University of Michigan history, especially in his senior season in 1986 when he named the Baseball America College Player of the Year, an All-America by the American Baseball Coaches Association, Collegiate Baseball and Baseball America, and the Big Ten Player of the Year. The outfielder finished 1986 as the Big Ten triple crown winner in conference games, hitting .469 with seven home runs and 19 RBI. He also played on the Wolverines’ 1983 and 1984 College World Series teams and was a part of three Big Ten title teams (1983, 1984, 1986). He finished the 1986 season with a .440 batting average, third best in school history, and had a career .373 average.
Ken Dugan compiled a 1,137-460 record in 37 seasons (1960-1996) leading Lipscomb University on the diamond. He guided the team to two NAIA national championships in 1977 and 1979, and his 1984 squad won a then-school-record 34 straight games. In addition to the two NAIA titles, Dugan led Lipscomb to eight NAIA World Series appearances after a standout career as a player at the university, where he set school record for batting average (.456) and slugging percentage (.824) over the course of four seasons (1954-57).
Jim Garman made eight appearances in the Division I College World Series (1987, 1988, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2011) in 40 years as an umpire in the Pac-12, Big 12, Big West and Western Athletic Conference. He also worked a whopping 34 Division I Regionals and 15 Division I Super Regionals while serving as the Western Regional Coordinator for the National Umpire Improvement Program. Outside of college baseball, Garman worked the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, the 1988 Junior World Championships, the 1990 World Championships and five years in professional baseball (1977-81).
Condredge Holloway was a two-sport trailblazer at the University of Tennessee. In addition to being the first African-American member of the Volunteers’ baseball program, Holloway also holds the distinction of being the first African-American quarterback in Southeastern Conference football history, earning the nickname “Artful Dodger.” He finished his baseball career with a .353 batting average and holds the school record with a 27-game hitting streak. As a senior in 1975, he earned All-SEC and All-America honors at shortstop and is a member of Tennessee’s All-Century Baseball Team.
Andy Lopez is one of the most successful college baseball coaches in the game’s history, compiling a 1,177-742-7 record in three stops between Pepperdine, Florida and Arizona. He is one of only three coaches to lead three different programs to the College World Series and one of only two coaches – Augie Garrido (Hall of Fame Class of 2016) the other – to win the national championship with two different teams, Pepperdine in 1992 and Arizona in 2012. In all, he led his teams to five College World Series appearances and guided them to the postseason in 17 of his 26 seasons in the dugout. He is a three-time National Coach of the Year (1992, 1996 and 2012) and a nine-time conference Coach of the Year.
Art Mazmanian is a decorated player and coach, helping lead Southern California to the 1948 national championship, and after six seasons in the New York Yankees organization, led Mount San Antonio College for 31 seasons. As a player he was a second-team All-American in 1949 and had six hits in the 1948 title game. At Mt. SAC, he compiled 730 victories and had just two losing seasons in his entire time at the college. He sent 120 players into professional baseball. Mazmanian also managed 17 summers in the minor leagues and as an assistant coach under Hall of Famer Rod Dedeaux (Hall of Fame Class of 2006) on the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team.
Ken Ritter is one of the more decorated college baseball players in the Midwest at any level. The 1988 NCAA Division III Player of the Year for the American Baseball Coaches Association, Ritter was a three-time All-American at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., hitting a Division III record .577 in 1988, but his career numbers are just as impressive. He holds three College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) career records and nine North Central career records for batting average (.463), slugging percentage (.890), on-base percentage (.568), runs (179), hits (245), triples (14), home runs (53), total bases (471) and runs batted in (234). Playing for North Central, Ritter helped his teams to three CCIW championships and was part of the team that made the 1987 D-III College World Series.
Rickie Weeks put together two of the most outstanding consecutive seasons by any player in NCAA history. The second baseman led the nation in hitting in both 2002 (.495) and 2003 (.479) for Roger Cador’s Southern squad. In his final season in 2003, he hit 16 home runs and drove in 66 RBI while averaging 1.61 runs per game. The year before, he scored 63 runs, hit a Southern record 20 home runs and drove in 96. He notched Southwestern Athletic Conference Player of the Year and consensus All-America honors in each of his last two campaigns. He helped lead Southern to a nation’s best winning percentage (.863) and 44-7 record in 2003.
