SPORTS STORIES:
SPORTS INFORMATION—2009
RESERVE'S NEWMAN PITCHED HIS WAY INTO THE HALL OF FAME...
CLEVELAND, OH (April 9, 2009) - If you have been watching the NCAA Division I basketball tournament you probably have seen the NCAA’s new commercial “Going Pro”. It promotes the idea of how their student-athletes aren’t necessarily going pro in sports but rather in the work force.
It’s an easy choice for most to make as a good percentage of collegiate athletes don’t have the skills to become professional athletes. But in Western Reserve University’s George Newman’s case, it wasn’t even a decision he was able to make.
“I didn’t make that decision, my dad did,” Newman said. “I didn’t know about the opportunities I had to play professional baseball.”
Newman, who pitched for the Western Reserve Red Cats from 1951 to 1954, is referring to the aftermath of a successful tryout at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. He was invited down by Cleveland Indians General Manager Hank Greenberg and he really impressed Greenburg and Mel Harder, the club’s pitching coach at the time.
“Mel said to me, ‘kid where did you ever learn to throw a curve ball like that?’, Newman remembered. “I told him when we were young we use to play up against the wall in the church school yard. We drew a chalk square on the wall and if you could throw a tennis ball inside the mark it was a strike. It was easy to curve a tennis ball and I quickly made the transition to a hard ball.”
It was the Indians who would throw the next curve ball, though. After the tryout, they offered Newman $20,000 on the spot to sign with them. But he had already finished his first year of dental school at Western Reserve during his senior season, getting a head start on what would become a long career as a dentist.
“All of sudden the scouts stopped talking to me and I couldn’t figure out why,” Newman explained. “I found out a few years later my dad told them to leave me alone and not try to sign me. He wanted them to let me finish getting my education.”
Although Newman, a local Benedictine High School product, never left the sand lot for the big leagues he had the luxury of watching his hometown heroes [Indians] play in the World Series in 1948 [won] and 1954. Bob Feller and Lou Boudreau were two pros he looked up to at the time and little did he know he would later share the same stage with one of them.
Newman, now 76, graduated magna cum laude from the Western Reserve’s dental school in 1957, finishing ranked second in his class of 60 students. After a long and successful career in private practice, the elder Newman handed over the family business to his son, Robert, who graduated from Case Western Reserve’s School of Dentistry in 1982.
“It’s now my son’s practice, but I still go in one day a week and work for him,” Newman said.
His son Robert and many more family and friends will be in Horsburgh Gymnasium in the Veale Center on the campus of Case Western Reserve on Friday, April 24. That night, Newman, along with nine others, will be inducted into the Case Reserve Athletic Club Hall of Fame. Click here for more information on the event.
“I immediately said ‘wow, what an honor’,” Newman said referring to when he heard the news. “I thought about all the great athletes that have gone through Reserve, Case Tech and Case Western Reserve all these years since I’ve played. It’s been over 50 years and so many great players have gone through our University – I couldn’t believe it.”
It won’t be Newman’s first rodeo as he is a charter member of the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame and was inducted with Cleveland professional sport icons Otto Graham and Bob Feller. While attending dental school, Newman played semi-professional baseball in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Triple AAA League, recording a 20-2 record on the mound in 1956.
His proudest accomplishment while earning four letters at Reserve was being selected as an All-Mid American Conference player his junior and senior seasons, recording wins over then conference rivals Kent State, Bowling Green and Marshall. As a senior, Newman won the team’s MVP award.
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