Slide • The
women’s softball team is 20-17 overall.
They play Wednesday at CSU Fullerton and
a double header Saturday against UC Riverside
at the 49er softball complex. Tracey Roman
/ Online Forty-Niner
Coach
leaves legacy
Patrick Hodgson
Southern
California sports fans are more exuberant
than children watching a new episode of
SpongeBob Square-Pants since the Los Angeles
Lakers and Clippers have qualified for
the NBA playoffs and the Los Angeles Kings
have qualified for the NHL playoffs.
Despite great reason to celebrate and increase blood alcohol content levels
over this rare and monumental moment, Southern California sports fans should
be paying attention to something more relevant in sports. I’m here to
talk about a legend at Long Beach State who was known for keeping his players
loose with his Jerry Lewis antics. The man is Bob Wuesthoff, former LBSU baseball
coach, who guided his team to another league title in his last season at The
Beach.
Wuesthoff was the skipper for LBSU for six years ranging from 1964-69, way
before the Dirtbags era. In his first season at the helm the team won the first
league title in school history after enduring a brutal 6-25-1 record a year
prior to his arrival. In that season Wuesthoff got his team to play at a level
above one of the highest summits ever witnessed in the history of LBSU baseball
by conjuring up 31 wins and only 13 losses.
After his tenure was complete coaching 49er baseball, he taught youth leagues
for several decades.
The youth camps were about a month and a half of not just baseball, but jokes,
fun and other recreational activities. It was a place many of his former players
sent their kids to have a good time and learn a thing or two from a great teacher.
In appreciation for the man initially responsible for putting LBSU baseball
on the map, a scholarship fund was created for him by seven of his former players
that include John McConnell, John Gonsalves, Rick Hayes, Jack Hoffman, Barry
Wallace, Rod Gasapar and Rick Bryson.
The former LBSU stars are attempting to raise a sum of $150,000 to beckon the
next future great baseball player to dominate Blair Field. The LBSU baseball
teams known for producing great talents such as Oakland A’s shortstop
Bobby Crosby and former MVP and New York Yankee Jason Giambi would have a better
chance of garnering talent such as Crosby and Giambi thanks to this scholarship
of the man who got a pulse started in LBSU baseball.
At the end of the day Bob Wuesthoff, who now battles Parkinson’s Disease,
is a great story for sports and is an even greater story for life on how one
man can have an impact on seven people and how one man’s name can impact
an institution.
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