The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
1983 - 2013
The claim: Born and schooled in Fort Wayne. Eric Michael Wedge was born on 27 January 1968 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, played in the city's Wallen Little League, and attended Northrop High School, where as a freshman he played on Northrop's 1983 state champion baseball team. A Fort Wayne catcher in a state title game is already a complete local story; Wedge's is only its first chapter.
The playing and the pivot: Wedge caught at Wichita State and was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the third round of the 1989 major league draft. His playing career was short, parts of four professional seasons behind the plate with the Boston and Colorado organisations, ended by the ordinary arithmetic of a catching prospect who did not hit enough. The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 2017, treats the pivot as the career: he managed in Cleveland's minor league system from 1998, winning manager of the year honours at three levels, and in 2003 Cleveland made the 35-year-old Fort Wayne native its manager.
The honour: Wedge managed Cleveland for seven seasons and Seattle for three. His monument season is 2007: Cleveland went 96-66, won its division for the first time since 2001, reached the American League Championship Series, and Wedge was named the American League Manager of the Year, at 39 among the youngest winners of that award. Indiana had already claimed him in January of that same year, inducting him into the Indiana High School Baseball Hall of Fame. The leg prints his line as the record gives it: a Fort Wayne-born player who reached the majors briefly and the manager's office permanently, and who stands, with the TinCaps men of the team histories, at the head of the city's baseball names.
Sources:
- Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, Eric Wedge (inducted 2017): the Fort Wayne birth, the Northrop graduation of 1986, the 1989 draft, the Cleveland and Seattle managing record and the 2007 award.
- Baseball-Reference Bullpen, Eric Wedge: born 27 January 1968 in Fort Wayne; the 2007 division title and ALCS.
- Eric Wedge biography, awards record: the 1983 Northrop state champion team and the Indiana High School Baseball Hall of Fame induction of January 2007.