Original story and credit to: Garry Brown, Special to The Republican

Three major leaguers, two stalwarts of regional baseball and Chicopee Comprehensive High School’s 1979 state championship team form the Western Massachusetts Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020.

The hall’s induction ceremony and dinner will take place on Feb. 7 at the Hadley Farms Meeting House, 41 Russell St., Route 9 in Hadley.

In addition, the hall will give its Courage Award to the late Ryan Doyle, of Wilbraham, a Minnechaug Regional High School athlete whose positive attitude and sense of humor inspired family and friends even as he was fighting a cancer that would take his life in June 2018.

The Class of 2020 honorees include:

• Peter Bergeron: A Greenfield High School baseball and football star of the 1990s, he was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the fourth round of 1996 and later traded to the Montreal Expos.

He made his MLB debut in September 1999 and went on to play five seasons with the Expos, often serving as starting center fielder and leadoff hitter. Over an 11-year pro career, he also had minor league stints in the Milwaukee, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh organizations;

• Chicopee Comp’s 1979 team:

The 21-4 Colts gave coach Dan Dulchinos, a member of the Western Massachusetts Baseball Hall of Fame’s first class, a state championship as they marched past Tech, Holyoke, Pittsfield, Lynn English and Acton-Boxboro.

In the state final at Chicopee’s Szot Park, Comp scored 10 runs in the first inning and won 17-6 as outfielder Al Levakis had five hits and scored five runs;

• Harry Dalton: A West Springfield native, Amherst College graduate and former Springfield Daily News sportswriter, he went on to a highly respected career as an MLB executive, serving as general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, California Angels and Milwaukee Brewers.

Dalton is best known for making the trade that brought slugger Frank Robinson to Baltimore and later hiring manager Earl Weaver, both now enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

While with the Brewers, Dalton hired fellow Amherst grad Dan Duquette for a front-office job, and Duquette went on to become general manager of the Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles. Dalton died in 2005 at the age of 77;

• Dan Genovese: A towering figure in regional baseball, he started the Westfield Wheelmen, a team that dressed in replica uniforms of the 1880s and played under the rules of that time. In 2019, at the age of 56, he returned to regular hardball, becoming the everyday catcher for Easthampton Savings Bank, of the Tri-County League.

He also found time to play in two wood-bat leagues and two softball leagues. Genovese is also the author of “The Old Ball Ground,” the story of how baseball evolved in Westfield, and “Rough House,” the story of the early days of professional basketball in the Connecticut Valley;

• Kevin McGurk: He represents both the region’s umpiring community and the Tri-County League. A baseball umpire and football official for several decades, he first served as the Tri-County’s umpire-in-chief and then as its president since 1993.

He was in his 26th year in that role when he died on June 23 at the age of 69. McGurk also had a 40-year career at the Springfield Newspapers, including three decades as a sportswriter;

• Turk Wendell: After outstanding careers at Wahconah Regional High School in Dalton and Quinnipiac University, he was taken by the Atlanta Braves in the fifth round of the 1988 draft.

The Braves later sent him to the Chicago Cubs, where Wendell established himself as a reliable reliever. His next stop was with the New York Mets, for whom he did more outstanding work from the bullpen. He went 22-14 with the Mets and had a 3-1 record in 13 postseason appearances. He was the loser to the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the 2000 World Series when he allowed a 12th-inning run. Wendell always was popular with teammates and fans because of his quirky behavior, including hopping over the foul line to and from the dugout. Late in his career, he told a reporter, “I only wanted a few things out of life – a wife, children, to play baseball and to hunt deer.”

The Western Massachusetts Baseball Hall of Fame was founded in 2013 at the suggestion of Clark Eckhoff, then owner of the Valley Blue Sox of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. The Blue Sox and their current owner, Fred Ciaglo, continue to oversee plans for the yearly inductions, which began in 2014.

Ciaglo heads the hall of fame committee, with William Bathel, Richard Bedard, Garry Brown, Pete Brown, Heather Ciaglo, Mark DiFranco, Terri Earle, Jim Hagan, Vernon Hill, Joe McCarthy, Steve McKelvey, Mike Trombley, Christopher Weyant and Frank Weyant.

Rich Tettemer, a veteran broadcaster for WWLP-Channel 22, will serve as master of ceremonies at the induction dinner. For tickets, ($50, or $450 for a table of 10), visit valleybluesox.com or call 413-533-1100.

Garry Brown can be reached at geebrown1918@gmail.com