Harris County-Houston Sports Authority Inisder
New class of Houston sports Hall of Fame inductees announced
Dec 7, 2018, 7:19 am
George Foreman heads the latest Houston Hall class. Gary Miller/Getty Images for Houston Sports Awards
The Harris County – Houston Sports Authority Insider will take you inside Houston Sports each Friday because #WeAreHoustonSports!
It was a perfect Saturday morning and the putting green at Champions Golf Club was packed. Some were getting in a little work. Others were waiting for a special moment.
In the middle of the green, Jack Burke Jr had his head down, showing a member how to stroke through the ball. He took another stroke and the ball slipped into the hole.
He turned around and - with Champions green and white balloons blowing in the wind - was welcomed to the 2019 Houston Sports Hall of Fame Class by Chairman of the Houston Sports Hall of Fame selection committee John McClain, and Harris County – Houston Sports Authority CEO Janis Burke.
The 95-year-old Burke joins Houston Oilers Luv Ya Blue quarterback Dan Pastorini, two-time world heavyweight champion and Olympic gold medalist George Foreman and A.J. Foyt, one of the best drivers ever to slip into a race car.
It's hard to top last year's inaugural class of Earl Campbell, Hakeem Olajuwon and Nolan Ryan – Houston's 34s – so we cast a wider net for the 2019 Houston Sports Awards and are celebrating a lifetime of Houston sports, one decade at a time, February 6 at the Hilton Americas.
And it just so happens that Burke, Foyt, Foreman and Pastorini highlight four of those decades as they mark anniversaries of some iconic milestones.
For Burke, who graduated from St, Thomas High School, that means celebrating the 70th anniversary of his first professional win – the 1949 Metropolitan Open. He went on to win 17 PGA TOUR events, including both the Masters and PGA in 1956. And it doesn't stop there. The World Golf Hall of Famer also played on five Ryder Cup teams, captained two Ryder Cup teams and Champions, the club he co-founded with Jimmy Demaret, hosted the 1967 Ryder Cup.
For our 60th Anniversary celebration, it was a no brainer as 1958 was the year that AJ Foyt Made his Indianapolis 500 debut. He would go on to win Indy four times, the first ever to accomplish that feat. He won at every level and is the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Already a member or International Motorsports Hall of Fame, The Auto racing Hall of Fame, The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame, and countless others, AJ Foyt was genuinely thrilled to recognized by his hometown.
"I'm glad to be in the Hall of Fame here,'' he said. "I was born and raised here and I guess this is where I'm gonna die, but it's great to be here and Houston's been a good town for me.''
50 Years, the golden anniversary. Fitting, since it was 1968 that a kid from the 5th ward in Houston would take home a gold medal at the Olympic games in Mexico City. That kid, George Edward Foreman, would go on to become a boxing legend. Foreman was a two-time heavyweight champion, and has been inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame as well as the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Of course if you ask anyone under the age of 30, Big George is best known for his George Foreman Grill.
When Foreman was surprised with the Hall of Fame news, he admitted he wasn't sure he would ever amount to much, let alone become an iconic boxer and Hall of Famer.
"What a tremendous opportunity to have walked the streets of Houston, Texas, where I thought nothing much would become of me, I really didn't,'' Foreman said. "And now to be mentioned in the Sports Hall of Fame in Houston, it really is probably the most important award I've ever received."
It has been said many times that if Earl Campbell was the heart of the Luv Ya Blue Oilers, then Dan Pastorini was the soul.
The first-round draft pick in 1971, Pastorini was the charismatic leader of Bum Phillips' rough-and-tumble team that created an electric movement with its 35-30 win over Miami on Monday Night Football on November 20, 1978. His best season was in 1978 when he threw for a career-high 2,473 yards and 16 touchdowns.
"It means the world,'' Pastorini said of the honor. "Last year, when I had the opportunity to present to Earl it was quite thrilling for me because the 34s (Campbell, Olajuwon and Ryan) should be in there. But to represent the Luv Ya Blue years and our teams back then is very special to me. We don't really have an identity in this city, except for the love and the respect we have from the Luv Ya Blue fans and they keep us alive.
". . . This now gives us permanency in the city. It'll be something we can take our grandchildren to and say – We were here; we were part of this great history of the city of Houston."
Robert Brazile, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame earlier this year, was the first to call and congratulate, just moments after Pastorini was notified. Both were very emotional and looking forward to reuniting in February.
# # #
If you love Houston sports, you might want to purchase a ticket for the 2019 Houston Sports Awards Golden Ticket Raffle.
There are only 500 tickets available and the winner will get a pair of season tickets to all Houston Astros, Houston Rockets, Houston Dynamo, Houston Dash and Rodeo Houston home games/events during the 2019-20 season. The winner will also receive tickets to two Texans home games and to the Academy Sports + Outdoors 2019 Texas Bowl.
Raffle tickets can be purchased for $100 per ticket and that enters you into the drawing for all the above-mentioned tickets.
All proceeds from Golden Ticket sales benefit Harris County – Houston Sports Authority Foundation and the winner of drawn at the Houston Sports Awards Wednesday, February 6, 2019 at the Hilton Americas. Winners do not need to be present to win. To enter go to https://houstonsportsawards.com/golden-ticket-raffle/
Most Popular
SportsMap Emails
Are Awesome
Listen Live
A lockout appears unavoidable! Photo via: Wiki Commons.
Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.
“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity as a problem, while at the same time MLB is working to address a revenue decline from regional sports networks. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has never had a salary cap because its players staunchly oppose one.
Despite higher levels of luxury tax that started in 2022, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets have pushed payrolls to record levels. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015.
After signing outfielder Juan Soto to a record $765 million contract, New York opened this season with an industry-high $326 million payroll, nearly five times Miami’s $69 million, according to Major League Baseball’s figures. Using luxury tax payrolls, based on average annual values that account for future commitments and include benefits, the Dodgers were first at $400 million and on track to owe a record luxury tax of about $151 million — shattering the previous tax record of $103 million set by Los Angeles last year.
“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”
Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2026, and management lockouts have become the norm, which shifts the start of a stoppage to the offseason. During the last negotiations, the sides reached a five-year deal on March 10 after a 99-day lockout, salvaging a 162-game 2022 season.
“A cap is not about a partnership. A cap isn’t about growing the game,” union head Tony Clark said Tuesday. “A cap is about franchise values and profits. ... A salary cap historically has limited contract guarantees associated with it, literally pits one player against another and is often what we share with players as the definitive non-competitive system. It doesn’t reward excellence. It undermines it from an organizational standpoint. That’s why this is not about competitive balance. It’s not about a fair versus not. This is institutionalized collusion.”
The union’s opposition to a cap has paved the way for record-breaking salaries for star players. Soto’s deal is believed to be the richest in pro sports history, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal with the Dodgers signed a year earlier. By comparison, the biggest guaranteed contract in the NFL is $250 million for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Manfred cites that 10% of players earn 72% of salaries.
“I never use the word `salary’ within one of `cap,’” he said. “What I do say to them is in addressing this competitive issue that’s real we should think about whether this system is the perfect system from a players’ perspective.”
A management salary cap proposal could contain a salary floor and a guaranteed percentage of revenue to players. Baseball players have endured nine work stoppages, including a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that fought off a cap proposal.
Agent Scott Boras likens a cap plan to attracting kids to a “gingerbread house.”
“We’ve heard it for 20 years. It’s almost like the childhood fable,” he said. “This very traditional, same approach is not something that would lead the younger players to the gingerbread house.”