The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum unveiled its newest inductees on Thursday morning.
The list of four individuals and one team is headlined by former Major Leaguers, Roy Halladay and Vladimir Guerrero. Former Baseball Canada president, Ray Carter and longtime Canadian umpire, Doug Hudlin will be enshrined at the annual ceremony in St. Mary’s on June 24th.
The 2015 Pan-Am Games, Gold Medal winning national team is also being inducted. Londoner Brock Kjeldgaard and Dorchester’s Chris Robinson were members of that club, which pulled off an incredible tenth inning comeback in the gold-medal game. Down 6-4 to begin the inning, Canada got some clutch hitting to tie the game and then a gutsy try for home plate by former Blue Jay, Pete Orr, who beat out a tag at home plate after a throwing error and sent the crowd of 5489 into a frenzy.
Halladay was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998 and had become a star on the Toronto mound just four short years later. The Denver native became just the third Blue Jay to win the Cy Young Award, joining Pat Hentgen and Roger Clemens. Halladay was a six-time all-star with the Jays and still holds Toronto’s franchise record for best winning percentage at .661.
Halladay was also very involved with the Children’s Hospital and was the Blue Jays’ nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award a number of times and was even nominated for the Major League Baseball Players’ Association’s Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award in 2008.
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He told the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame that his 16 year old son considers himself a Canadian and that, “It was a privilege to live and play in Canada for as long as I did.”
Guerrero was one of the last of a long line of major stars to play for the Montreal Expos before they left Montreal. He was a mainstay in the Expos outfield for eight years beginning in 1996. In that time, Guerrero set Montreal records for batting average, home runs and slugging percentage and was a three-time Silver Slugger. Like Halladay, he was also very involved in community work off the field and became very involved with youth baseball and with outfitting players from his native Dominican Republic with equipment.
By the end of his career, Guerrero had hit 449 home runs, which ranks 38th all-time in baseball and admitted to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame that he was surprised to get the call, adding, “I’m very pleased to join the Canadian hall of fame first, since I was given my first opportunity to play Major League Baseball in Canadian.”
Guerrero will be eligible for Cooperstown next year.
Ray Carter will always be known for establishing the Canadian Women’s National Team in 2004, but he was a large part of the growth of the sport of baseball in Canada at all levels. Carter was the longest serving president of Baseball Canada, taking the role from 2000-2016.
He developed Challenger Baseball for kids with disabilities and helped to create a National Coaches Certification Program which has given rise to better-skilled players from Canada.
Doug Hudlin was an excellent athlete who hurt his back playing soccer at the age of 29. That turned his head toward umpiring, something he was involved in for 40 years in his home province of British Columbia. Hudlin worked his way up the ranks and quickly made a name for himself, becoming the first non-American umpire to work the Little League World Series. He was president of the BC Umpires Association and the founding director of the British Columbia Black History Awareness Society.
Hudlin passed away in 2014 at the age of 91.
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