All hail Hano, the Eternal

Congrats to Arnold Hano, recently elected to the Baseball Reliquary’s Shrine of the Eternals, the national organization’s equivalent to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Don Newcombe and Bo Jackson will join Hano for this year’s “induction.” They will be formally enshrined in a public ceremony on Sunday, July 17, at the Donald R. Wright Auditorium in the Pasadena Central Library.

Of the fifty eligible candidates on the 2016 ballot, Newcombe received the highest voting percentage, being named on 42% of the ballots returned. Following Newcombe were Jackson with 38% and Hano with 26%. Runners-up in this year’s election included Chet Brewer (25.3%), Charlie Brown (24.7%), Charlie Finley (24.7%), Bob Costas (24%), and Rocky Colavito (23.3%).

Elected in his first year on the ballot, Hano, born in 1922, is a prolific writer and social activist. Few baseball books have weathered the decades better than his A Day In The Bleachers, an eyewitness account of Game One of the 1954 World Series. He had recently left a job as editor for a firm that produced fiction and was determined to make his mark as a journalist.

Call it serendipity, call it fate, call it plain old dumb luck – Hano was in the right place at the right time to document one of the greatest plays in baseball history, the celebrated over-the-shoulder catch by Willie Mays of Vic Wertz’s titanic centerfield blast. The book became a model for first-person reporting on baseball games, its unique point of view revolutionizing the staid sports journalism of the day.

The popular and critical success of A Day in the Bleachers catapulted Hano into the highest ranks of freelance journalism; his byline soon became ubiquitous in periodicals such as Sport, Sports Illustrated, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and both the New York and Los Angeles Times.

He also published biographies on athletes Mays, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Muhammad Ali, and others, and was a regular contributor to baseball annuals. His career climaxed in 1964 when he was named 1963’s Magazine Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association and received the 1963 Sidney Hillman Memorial Award in magazine journalism for a muckraking study of the miserable conditions faced by immigrant farm workers in California’s Central Valley.

Hano moved to Laguna Beach, California in 1955, where he still makes his home. He is the subject of the 2015 documentary HANO! A Life in the Bleachers by filmmaker Jon Leonoudakis. His description of “The Catch” is still referenced, cited, and reprinted in whole or in part, thrilling a new generation of baseball fans and aspiring sportswriters.

Newcombe, Jackson, and Hano will join 51 other baseball luminaries who have been inducted into the Shrine of the Eternals since elections began in 1999, including Jim Abbott, Dick Allen, Roger Angell, Emmett Ashford, Moe Berg, Sy Berger, Yogi Berra, Steve Bilko, Ila Borders, Jim Bouton, Jim Brosnan, Bill Buckner, Glenn Burke, Roberto Clemente, Steve Dalkowski, Dizzy Dean, Rod Dedeaux, Jim Eisenreich, Dock Ellis, Eddie Feigner, Mark Fidrych, Curt Flood, Ted Giannoulas, Josh Gibson, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, Pete Gray, William “Dummy” Hoy, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Bill James, Dr. Frank Jobe, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Roger Maris, Marvin Miller, Minnie Minoso, Manny Mota, Lefty O’Doul, Buck O’Neil, Satchel Paige, Jimmy Piersall, Pam Postema, Jackie Robinson, Rachel Robinson, Lester Rodney, Pete Rose, Casey Stengel, Luis Tiant, Fernando Valenzuela, Bill Veeck, Jr., Maury Wills, Kenichi Zenimura, and Don Zimmer.

The 2016 voting breakdown: