WICHITA, Kan. — The Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame announced their latest class of inductees Monday.
They include:
1933 Wichita Waterworks
Kansas’ first state baseball championship was won in 1867 by Leavenworth with the team awarded a silver baseball that today is in the Kansas State Historical Society’s vault in Topeka. By 1933 the sport had grown to become true a statewide event with a 32-team state tournament in Wichita.
During this depression era, the promotional genius of Hap Dumont became apparent as there were 40 teams wanting the 32 slots. Dumont’s staged a playoff that started three days before the state tournament. Mixed in was another playoff for the Wichita city championship in which Wichita Waterworks beat the Wichita Stockyards team two games to none to enter the state tournament.
About a third of the players in the state tournament were former professionals like Max Thomas, who had pitched five seasons with the Kansas City Blues and would return to the high minors to finish a 19-year minor league career.
Pitching for Waterworks, Thomas stuck out 15 in his start against the Stockyards then won four more games in the tournament, five victories within 14 days.
The toughest competition for the Water team was the all-black Arkansas City Beavers, whose lineup was sprinkled with active Kansas City Monarchs.
Waterworks won the state championship in five games, winning $1,799 (equal to $41,000 today) as its prize. With city and state companionships in a two-week stretch, Wichita Waterworks is among the best amateur teams in Kansas’ history.
Willie Ramsdell
“Willie the Knuck” Ramsdell was born in tiny Williamsburg but schooled in Chanute. His full name was Jess Willard Ramsdell after the state’s legendary boxing champion.
Out of high school, Ramsdell pitched for the state’s Ban Johnson champion before starting his professional career in 1938. He then would spend four seasons in Class D in the West Texas-New Mexico League where the air was so thin, he would recall, that his curve wouldn’t break. When his manager suggested he take up the knuckleball, his career took off.
After six years in the minors, Ramsdell was still in Class C when World War II shut down most of minor league baseball. He then came to Wichita and pitched three summers for Cessna and Coleman while working defense jobs. After the War he returned to organized baseball and was an All-Star in the Texas League.
At age 31, Ramsdell finally made the majors, with Brooklyn. Over the next five years he would pitch for the Dodgers, Cincinnati and the Chicago Cubs, compiling a record of 24-39 but with an earned run average of 3.83.
In 1951 he lost a league-leading 17 games with Cincinnati, but in five of those the powerless Reds were shut out. He ended his career back in high minors including Hollywood, where he appeared in the movie “Kill the Umpire” with William Bendix.
Ramsdell returned to Kansas as player-manager for the Iola Owls but quit after three weeks when his team had compiled a 2-17 record. He died at age 53 in Wichita and is buried in Kiowa. A charter member of the Sandlot Baseball Hall of Fame, he spent his post-baseball career raising cattle.
Don Carlile
Together with his brother Bob (Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2008), Don Carlile was the driving force in making the Liberal BeeJays one of the top summer programs in the nation.
From 1955 until 1991, he held positions ranging from Chairman of the Board to General Manager of the BeeJays. His primary contribution throughout those years was working with college coaches and major league scouts to get top talent to come to Liberal.
In 1984, he received the Jack Carlile Director of the Year Award, which was named after his father. Don was an active member of the American Baseball Coaches Association for over 30 years, attending their annual meetings on a regular basis. The National Baseball Congress awarded him the first Raymond “Hap” Dumont Award for an individual in the summer of 1985.
In 1993, Don formed the Topeka Capitals with the assistance of Jim Callaway, then President of Southwestern Bell and a former Bee Jay. Carlile was the director and president of the Jayhawk league for many years.
Don was very active in the Kansas Democratic Party. In 1961, he was President of the Kansas Young Democrat Party and was also treasurer of the party for many years.
During his active years in Kansas politics, he worked in the successful gubernatorial campaigns for George Docking, Robert Docking, Joan Finney and Kathleen Sebelius. Governor Robert Docking appointed Don to the Water Resources Board in 1969, where he served as a director and ultimately became chairman until 1978.
Don was an entrepreneur and owned several businesses in Liberal. In 1991, he moved to Topeka when Governor Finney appointed him as Director of Transportation of the Kansas Corporation Commission where he served for seven years.
Don continuously championed the needs of Western Kansas’ agriculture, highways, and oil and gas industries through his various associations with national, state and local political representatives. In addition, Don made the acquaintances of four US Presidents and was active in the campaigns of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
Carlile died in 2010 in Topeka at the age of 82.
Randy Wetzel
A longtime administrator at Great Bend High School, Randy Wetzel worked as an NCAA Division I baseball umpire for 35 years. Wetzel umpired Missouri Valley Conference and Big 12 baseball. He officiated basketball in the KCAC and Jayhawk Conferences and football in the MIAA, RMAC, KCAC and Jayhawk Conferences.
Wetzel umpired the 2011 College World Series, during which he met former President George W. Bush who threw the ceremonial first pitch.
Wetzel attended Great Bend High School, Barton Community College and received degrees from St. Mary of the Plains College and Kansas State University. Upon graduation, Wetzel coached basketball at Ell-Saline High School in Brookville, winning a state championship in his three years. He then spent three years at Russell High School, followed by three years as an assistant coach for the Seward County Community College men’s basketball team. Wetzel then served as an assistant for the University of Texas-Pan American (now University of Texas Rio Grande Valley).
When he returned to Great Bend is when he got into officiating. Wetzel worked more than 120 Big 8/Big 12 tournament games before retiring in 2014. In 2018, he was elected to the Kansas Collegiate Officials Hall of Fame. He retired from education in 2021.
Dennis Hurla
One of the most successful high school coaches in Kansas history, Dennis Hurla’s Bishop Ward team won ten state championships, including six in a row from 2003-08. During that time, the Cyclones won a state record 45 consecutive games.
Over a 20-year career, Hurla won 352 games, nine league titles and made 17 state appearances. He was named the Kansas Association of Baseball Coaches 4A coach of the year in 2005 and 2007. The American Baseball Coaches Association named him regional coach of the year in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Hurla retired from Bishop Ward in 2016. The field there is now named Dennis Hurla Diamond. He is currently an assistant baseball coach at Kansas Christian College in Overland Park where his son Tony is the head coach.
Steve Jeltz
Steve Jeltz was born in France to a military family who moved to Lawrence. He became a standout baseball player at Lawrence High School and the University of Kansas.
In three seasons at KU, Jeltz set the Jayhawks’ career stolen base record with 65. In 1980, Philadelphia drafted him in the ninth round. He made his debut with the Phillies in 1983 and was their regular shortstop from 1986-89.
On June 8, 1989, Jeltz hit two of his five career home runs in a game against Pittsburgh, despite not starting the game. A switch-hitter, Jeltz hit one homer from the right side of the plate and one from the left side.
In 1990, Jeltz played his last MLB season with Kansas City.
After retiring as a player, he became a bail bondsman and bounty hunter before entering the construction business. Jeltz is active in youth baseball and assisting military veterans.
Shane Dennis
Born in Fort Scott, Shane Dennis was a standout athlete at Uniontown High School, which did not field a baseball team. He was all-state in both football and basketball. He once scored 52 points and had 17 rebounds in a single game and set a 1A state record by scoring 90 points in the 1990 1A tournament, including 33 points in the championship game.
During the summer, Dennis pitched for an American Legion team in Fort Scott, winning 28 games over three years and striking out 418 hitters in 222 innings.
Dennis came to Wichita State in 1991 and became a midweek starter, posting a 5-1 record with a 2.66 earned run average as a freshman for a Shocker team that went to the College World Series final.
As a sophomore, Dennis won 13. He struggled as a junior but bounced back to go 9-2 as a senior with a 1.35 ERA. He was named Missouri Valley Conference Pitcher of the Year and first team All-American by the American Baseball coaches Association and by Collegiate Baseball. Dennis’s career marks for ERA, starts, strikeouts and innings pitched are ranked in the WSU top ten.
Following his senior season, Dennis was drafted in the seventh round by San Diego and pitched four seasons in the Padres organization. In 1996, he was the Padres minor league pitcher of the year.
In 1997, Dennis pitched the first of two seasons for the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japan Pacific League. He returned to the Padres organization to play his final season for Triple-A Las Vegas in 1999.
While at Wichita State, Dennis majored in radio/television journalism and served as color commentator on Shocker women’s basketball broadcasts. In 2001, he returned to Wichita as play-by-play voice for the Double-A Wichita Wranglers before going back to Wichita State as director of baseball operations for 12 years.
Dennis is now part of the WSU baseball broadcast team and hosts a daily sports show, The Shane Dennis Show, on a Wichita radio station.
Dennis’s father, Don, pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox and was inducted into the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003.
Neil Allen
Neil Allen was born in Kansas City and was drafted by the New York Mets out of Bishop Ward High School in the eleventh round of the 1976 Major League Baseball draft. Allen made his debut with the Mets in 1979. He became their closer and saved 67 games over the next four years.
In 1983, Allen was traded to St. Louis for Keith Hernandez. The Cardinals used him as a starter that season and he went 10-6 with a 3.70 earned run average. In 1984, Allen returned to the bullpen and was sent to the Yankees in midseason.
Following the 1985 season, Allen was traded to the Chicago White Sox, who converted him back to a starter. The following season, Allen was 7-2 with a 3.82 ERA. In 1987, he returned to the Yankees and finished his major league career with Cleveland in 1989.
Over 11 major league seasons, Allen won 58 games and saved 75 with an ERA of 3.88.
Post retirement, Allen began a career as a pitching coach. After a brief stint in an independent league, he worked in the Toronto, Yankees and Tampa Bay organizations. He was bullpen coach with the Yankees in 2005 and Minnesota’s pitching coach from 2014-17. During that time, Allen coached Twins’ All-Star closer Glenn Perkins and up-and-coming star Jose Berrios.
The reception and banquet will be held at noon Saturday, Feb. 1, at LaVela, located at 6147 E. 13th St. N., and the cost is $30 per person.