Sports Legends Museum holds fall induction

Oct. 25—Baseball was the theme of the day, which Jim Holland pointed out was appropriate, considering the Fall Classic will be starting in a few days.

Holland, the former longtime general manager for the Princeton Rays and director of game day operations for the West Virginia Miners, was one of the presenters for the fall induction at the West Virginia Sports Museum in Artie. About 70 guests attended the outdoor ceremony on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon.

Seven new inductees were enshrined into the hall founded in 2014 by West Virginia coaching icon Tex Williams. The museum is housed in the old Artie post office where his mom used to work.

Steve Crosier, the museum's baseball chairman, joined Williams and Holland as presenters.

Keith Tyler, who was a star basketball player for Williams at the University of Charleston and is now the state director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, dedicated the Spiritual Garden outside the museum.

Among those honored was Don Hager, a former sports editor at the Charleston Daily Mail who donated a scrapbook of stories and photos documenting decades of sports across West Virginia.

The other six inductees all made themselves known on the baseball field. They were Jeremy Cummings, Pedro Ledger, Lawrence Nesselrodt, Dave Potter, Steve Roadcap and Danny Sheaffer.

Each inductee was presented with a commemorative certificate and a baseball signed by the honorees.

Cummings, a South Charleston graduate, was an all-state pitcher for the Black Eagles who was eventually signed by the St. Louis Cardinals. He never got to the big leagues, but had a successful minor league career, including throwing a no-hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies' Triple-A affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. In 2008, the final season of his pro career, Cummings was an International League all-star and was a member of the United States' bronze medal team at the Summer Olympics in Beijing that summer.

"What really made me good in sports is the competition," Cummings said. "People would talk about this player and that player. ... I was always trying to outdo them or be better than them to get my name recognition."

Ledger was a coach for over three decades, most of those spent at Williamson High. His Wolfpack played for a Class AA state championship in 1979. Ledger, a Man High School graduate, was also a longtime high school basketball official.

"Family is very important to me," Ledger said. "Remember to hug and kiss your family."

Nesselrodt is known in Beckley as the head baseball coach at WVU Tech, a position he has held for 14 seasons. After playing two seasons at Davis & Elkins College, he served as the school's head coach from 1994-2001, where he was named the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year in 1995. He then spent seven seasons as an assistant to legendary Cal Bailey at West Virginia State before starting his career at Tech. Nesselrodt has also been a successful coach in the Shenandoah Valley League summer college wooden bat league.

"They (Davis & Elkins) offered me a coaching job at 23 years old and I said, 'I'd much rather do that than work,'" Nesselrodt joked. "That first year I made, I think 1,700 bucks, and the next year they gave me 12 grand with an admissions job and teaching five classes. And they said I would get benefits. I said, 'I'll take them. I don't even know what they are, but I'll gladly take them.'"

Potter is one of the most recognizable names in West Virginia American Legion baseball. He has led Post 94 South Charleston to multiple state American Legion championships and is now the Legion's state baseball director. He coached South Charleston in many memorable games against the Post 32 Beckley Bash in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

"(Williams) and I have been friends for years and this means a lot to me," Potter said. "I'll never forget it the rest of my life."

Roadcap was a longtime Minor League manager who made a name for himself in West Virginia as the manager of the Huntington Cubs of the Appalachian League for the 1990 and 1991 seasons. The Pennsylvania native has lived in the Charleston area since he and his wife were married in 1989. After an extensive coaching career, Roadcap got into scouting, a position he currently holds with the Cincinnati Reds.

"I hear a lot of you say, 'Cincinnati Reds' — that's not all my fault," Roadcap joked about the struggling franchise.

Sheaffer was a first-round draft pick of the Boston Red Sox in 1981 who went on to catch and play third base for four Major League teams over a 10-year span. He then embarked on a 16-year coaching career, including seven (2013-2019) with the Princeton Rays. His son David was a catcher for the West Virginia Miners in 2014 and has played five Minor League seasons, most recently in the Seattle Mariners organization.

"One thing that I've learned by managing and when I look at my players, regardless if I was managing rookie ball or if I was managing Triple-A, is every player that I had is someone's son," Sheaffer said. "... Everybody was important to me, because everybody was somebody's son."

Receiving special mention were Greg Crist, Dave Gorby and Darren McGuffin of the Courtside with Coach Crist podcast, which broadcast the event live.

Email: gfauber@register-herald.com; follow on Twitter @gfauber5