Wayne Norton dedicated much of his adult life to helping create opportunities for young people in baseball that he didn’t have growing up.
The efforts of Port Moody's "Mr. Baseball" were honoured Wednesday, Oct. 25, when he was named to the 2024 induction class of the BC Sports Hall of Fame in the builder/coach category.
Norton died in January 2018 after a three-year battle with ALS.
His widow, Trudy, attended the announcement at BC Place, along with their daughter, Elizabeth, as well as other family and friends.
Trudy Norton said Wayne's place in the BC Sports Hall of Fame is the ultimate recognition of the role he played in building a foundation of baseball excellence in the province by founding Baseball BC and then the National Baseball Institute, along with keeping an eagle eye on emerging talent as a scout for Major League teams like the Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners.
It's an accomplishment, Trudy said, that was driven by his tireless desire to create opportunities for young baseball players he didn't have when he was rising through the sport's ranks. And it was built on a bedrock of the support and encouragement he got from coaches he played for from his youthful days on the diamonds in Maillardville to playing college ball in Spokane, Wash.
"He was always looking for ways to develop baseball players and help mentor them," Trudy said. "He wanted to fill in the gaps of what wasn't there when he was younger."
Elizabeth Norton said her father's legacy will be "his loyalty to the sport and his unwavering love of the game."
Wayne Norton first hit baseball's radar when scouts were impressed by the young outfielder who helped his Coquitlam team win provincial championships in 1957 and 1959.
Norton headed to Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., on a baseball and basketball scholarship. That's where he was spotted by New York Yankees scout Eddy Taylor, who offered the young outfielder a pro contract for $7,500.
Norton was assigned to the Yankees' minor-league affiliate in St. Petersburg, Fla. In 1962, he attended his first big-league spring training camp, with the Kansas City Athletics, where he got the chance to bat against legendary Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax.
He popped up to the backcatcher on Koufax's first pitch.
Norton didn't stick in the Majors, but he went on to play 1,206 games in 11 seasons with minor league teams like the Birmingham Barons and Vancouver Mounties.
Along the way he was part of history when the Barons first allowed Black players in 1964 and he crossed base paths with greats like Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron and Tony La Russa.
When Norton was with the Mounties, he befriended team owner Nat Bailey, who even helped him purchase the Port Moody property where he built the family home that Trudy still lives in.
"I went to Nat saying I had an opportunity to buy some land but I didn’t have any money," Norton told the Tri-City News in a 2017 interview. "So he loaned me the downpayment."
But it was after Norton hung up his glove when he really started having an impact on baseball.
Two years after managing Canada's national junior team to the 1975 Pan Am Games in Mexico City, Norton launched Baseball BC to help advance the development of players and coaches in the province. He even wrote the organization's first coaching manuals that are still the standard across the country.
In 1986, Norton founded the National Baseball Institute in Vancouver that became the incubator for some of the sport's biggest Canadian stars, like Major Leaguers Larry Walker, Justin Morneau and Ryan Dempster.
He said it was "probably the best thing I ever did in baseball."
Norton's keen eye for emerging players landed him scouting gigs with the Baltimore Orioles and Seattle Mariners, where he helped sign players like Greg Halman, Alex Liddi, Phillippe Aumont and Michael Saunders.
Tom McNamara, who was the Mariners director of amateur scouting from 2008-16 and is now a special assistant to the general manager of the Kansas City Royals, once said of Norton, "I never had to worry about having Canada covered."
The BC hall honour is just the latest of several for Norton.
He was recognized by his hometown with its second-ever sports award in 2015 and the following year he was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.
In 2018, the diamond at Westhill Park was renamed the Wayne Norton Baseball Diamond.
After Norton was diagnosed with ALS in 2015, he helped raise money and awareness of the motor neurone disease that also took the life of legendary first baseman Lou Gehrig and is now nicknamed after him.
Just months before Norton died, he was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Mariners game, before they played Cleveland.
"This will be a first for me," he told the Tri-City News. "It's a nice honour. I just feel very good about it."
Joining Norton in this year's list of inductees at the BC Sports Hall of Fame is longtime broadcaster Don Taylor, who lives in Anmore.
- with files from Gary McKenna, Tri-City News
