Deacon Sports Xtra: Erik Hanson Inducted into the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame
3/14/2024 9:00:00 AM | Baseball
WINSTON SALEM, N.C. – Erik Hanson earned induction into the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame for his outstanding baseball career, but started as a basketball star for The Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, coached by Wake Forest grad Al Lozier, who was a Demon Deacon basketball player during the Bones McKinney era.
The recruiting process for Hanson revolved around basketball, but even with Lozier being his high school coach and despite the Demon Deacons being in the midst of three-straight 20-win seasons under Carl Tacy, Hanson never really considered Wake Forest. Then everything changed.
"It goes back to my advisor and basketball coach at Peddie," Hanson said. "Al Lozier was my advisor all four years in high school at Peddie. I went to a private boarding school and he was my basketball coach from the last three years on the varsity.
"And that's what I thought I was going to do in college and beyond was basketball. He always talked about it, but I really never had Wake Forest on my map to play basketball even though they were very good. Carl Tacy had a great program, but then baseball came out of nowhere."
Lozier convinced Hanson to play baseball his junior year at Peddie, but the team had a pair of experienced pitchers in front of him, so he spent most of that season at third base.
"It was my first year playing baseball in two or three years, though I played a lot of little league and all that stuff," Hanson said. "But when he talked me into going, when we went through tryouts my junior year and all that and made the team. We only played twice a week. So we basically had two seniors pitching and I played third base and hit fourth or fifth in the lineup.
"So I probably pitched, if I can recall, about two or three games and it was usually against lesser opponents and I threw probably about 80 miles an hour. I always had a good curveball, like I did in little league, but it was mediocre high school pitching."
After a successful senior season on the hardwood, Hanson went ahead and tried out for the baseball team while he was still sorting out his college choices.
"A lot of seniors graduated," Hanson said. "So I started throwing in the gym right after our winter break and coach (Llewellyn) Watts stops me after throwing three pitches and calls a scout — a local scout that lives near the campus that he knows to come over with a radar gun."
The radar gun showed that Hanson had suddenly started throwing in the low-to-mid 90s.
"I hadn't picked up a ball in nine months — wow," Hanson said. "So I ended up going undefeated that year, pitched all three games in the state championship and we won 1-0, 2-0 and 1-0.
"I think I had a 0.30 ERA and punched out like 140 guys in 70 innings or so. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I had a really good year and in my first game I had two scouts. And then my second game I had about four or five scouts. And the third game I had that doubled again, and then it was like 15-20 scouts."
Playing for a private boarding school, the stands weren't exactly filled with fans and parents, but instead packed with Major League Baseball scouts to watch Hanson pitch.
"So those are the only people in the stands," Hanson said. "But I ended up winning the state championship, 1-0 and threw a one-hitter. And they were telling me that if you want to go on to the level beyond college, the best chance is probably going to be baseball. I was flabbergasted."
So instead of playing basketball at the collegiate level, Hanson began the recruiting process all over again as a baseball player, after being selected in the seventh round of the 1983 MLB Draft.
"My dad told every team not to waste the draft pick at all," Hanson said. "I probably would've been drafted in the mid-to-late first or early second round out of high school. But it was interesting because my first two years in high school I did not play baseball. I did track and field to try to get better at basketball. I swam in the summer to try to get better at basketball. I played soccer for 10 years to try to get better at basketball. So baseball was not on my radar at all.
"Coach Watts, a professional pitcher for the St. Louis Browns, was always trying to get more and more athletes to go out for baseball."
So while Hanson and his parents put together an expansive recruiting trip, Lozier advised them to include a stop by Wake Forest.
"I know you really well," he told Hanson. "I think it's a campus and a school that might fit you. Just put it on the list, see what you think."
So the trip includes stops at Old Dominion, Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Duke, Clemson, Georgia, South Carolina and Georgia Tech — they went everywhere, and Hanson found himself a highly-sought prospect.
"When you get drafted that high, they don't even have to recruit you," Hanson said. "They just tell you that if you come here, you're taken care of. So I'm like, wow, that's great.
"But I got to Wake Forest and as soon as I drove on campus, there was, I don't know — it was like an epiphany."
The approach from the staff hit the right tones and the Wake Forest campus reminded Hanson of Peddie.
"It had a Quad and a chapel and all the dorms and buildings surrounding it and all the architecture was uniformed and it was all in one place and there was no city attached to it," Hanson explained. "It wasn't downtown, it was small.
"It just seemed like a perfect fit for me. So when I met up with (Marvin) "Skip" Crater and pitching coach Bob Cox, and the athletic director, Gene Hooks. I met up with them and with my parents and they showed us around campus and they showed us the baseball field, Layton Field, which wasn't much of anything, but they were on their way to potentially building an upgraded stadium there really soon."
Although Hanson had visions of becoming a major league pitcher, he kept one eye firmly on his academics, and Wake Forest had a lot to offer him in that department.
"I was thinking of the education you get — it was just second to none," he said. "Wake Forest was going to be a real challenge for me and not only in the classroom, but on the field as well. We're going to be facing all the ACC opponents and that was going to be really tough as a pitcher.
"I think that's what you really want to do. You want to face really tough opponents to try to get you better. And it showed my freshman year when I first got there. Skip Crater said if you come here, you're going to be our ace and you're going to be facing top-20 competition."
Instead of being the third-or-fourth pitcher in the rotation for other teams, Hanson was immediately tabbed as the ace of the rotation, but was also told they wouldn't burn him out.
"That's amazing," Hanson said. "How warm their greeting was — there was no high pressure sales pitch. I ended up making my decision right then and there and had to call the coaches at Georgia Tech, Georgia, South Carolina and Clemson saying that I'm not coming. My parents really had no effect on it. I looked back at Al and he was right. He knew me. He knew what I was looking for and I have no regrets at all."
It didn't take long for Hanson to become acclimated to Wake Forest socially, academically and athletically.
"I knew I was in the right spot as soon as I made the decision," he said. "I had the advantage of being away from home at a private boarding school for the last four years. So I wasn't going to miss home. I was in a situation where they're going to challenge me in every respect, in the classroom and on the ball field because I was really way behind everyone without playing baseball.
"I was basically learning on the job for the first year or two until my junior year. One of the best moments was in the ACC championship against No. 1 Virginia punching out 18 batters.
"We were playing down at Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament. And yeah, I mean that was probably one of the highlights. It showed the potential of what I could do."
Between his sophomore and junior seasons at Wake Forest, Hanson was selected to play with Team USA.
"I was MVP of that team," he said. "I was 5-1 with a 1.41 ERA, and preseason All-American coming up my junior year — your big draft year for baseball. And unfortunately, one of my teammates during batting practice was shagging and came flying into me and blew out my knee and I missed almost all my junior year. So my draft status went way, way down."
While he had been taken by the Montreal Expos out of high school, Hanson was selected in the second round of the 1986 Major League Draft by the Seattle Mariners.
"At first I didn't know anything about Seattle, the Mariners or the organization," Hanson said. "When I was drafted there, I took it as a positive because they sent me right to AA. So I started at the third level of professional ball, and a lot of that had to do with how I did on the USA team and how I was doing prior to the knee injury. But also, the fact that they were an organization that was fairly new at the time. They were probably 10 years old and haven't really even had a .500 season yet. So they were drafting a lot of pitchers."
The trajectory of the organization changed just a year later when they selected Ken Griffey Jr. with the first pick of the 1987 MLB Draft.
"There's a reason why they had the first pick," Hanson said. "So that's the way you kind of look at it. It's kind of like we're in an underdog situation and trying to build something out of it. And we did. Matter of fact, the Mariners got better every year all the way through 1995 when they first made their first playoff run.
"We traded for Randy Johnson and Brian Holman and Gene Harris, which were, but we've also had some draft picks that were up and coming, Tino Martinez and Mike Schooler, and we signed this guy, free agent guys like Omar Viscal and Edgar Martinez, and we traded for Jay Buhner traded an old veteran for Jay."
Returning to the mound in August of 1986, Hanson rapidly moved his way through the Mariners' minor league system.
"I started out in AA again the next year because I only pitched a month in AA the year before. I pitched about two-thirds of the year there and did very well," he said. "Got to the point where I went from feeling like I was above my head in AA to being able to be effective for 98 percent of the hitters. It's kind of funny because when you get called up to AAA, the 2 percent that you struggled with are the ones going up to AAA too, and that goes on and on at every level. I went to AAA at the end of 1987 and the team was in the playoffs."
After a rocky start to the 1988 campaign, Hanson found a groove and found himself in the major leagues before the end of the season.
"In 1988, I started out in AAA since I had pitched a month or month and a half in AAA and started off really poorly actually, I was 0-5 with a 9.00 ERA," he said. "I was up in Calgary. It was freezing, just everything was bad. I didn't pitch well, and I was about a start away from going back down to AA and I had a good game. So then the next game, I had another good game, and then the next game I had another good game.
"As the weather warmed up, so did I. I had a really, really good AAA season and broke the record for strikeouts, and I ended up being 12-7. I was 12-2 the last 14 games. I threw a no hitter in there and then I finally earned my call up to the big leagues at the end of 1988."
He was part of the building blocks for a Mariner organization that won an astounding 116 games in 2001.
"We were the building blocks of the Mariners organization for the 90s, and it's kind of the same way I felt at Wake Forest when we were, some of us that came, went to Wake Forest to play baseball, started to build a program that George Greer took to another level," Hanson said.
Hanson played for four teams in his eleven-year MLB career, finishing with an 89-84 record with a 4.15 ERA. He struck out 1,176 batters against just 504 career walks. He won 18 games in 1990 for the Mariners and earned an All-Star nod in while going 15-5 for the Boston Red Sox in 1995.
The recruiting process for Hanson revolved around basketball, but even with Lozier being his high school coach and despite the Demon Deacons being in the midst of three-straight 20-win seasons under Carl Tacy, Hanson never really considered Wake Forest. Then everything changed.
"It goes back to my advisor and basketball coach at Peddie," Hanson said. "Al Lozier was my advisor all four years in high school at Peddie. I went to a private boarding school and he was my basketball coach from the last three years on the varsity.
"And that's what I thought I was going to do in college and beyond was basketball. He always talked about it, but I really never had Wake Forest on my map to play basketball even though they were very good. Carl Tacy had a great program, but then baseball came out of nowhere."
Lozier convinced Hanson to play baseball his junior year at Peddie, but the team had a pair of experienced pitchers in front of him, so he spent most of that season at third base.
"It was my first year playing baseball in two or three years, though I played a lot of little league and all that stuff," Hanson said. "But when he talked me into going, when we went through tryouts my junior year and all that and made the team. We only played twice a week. So we basically had two seniors pitching and I played third base and hit fourth or fifth in the lineup.
"So I probably pitched, if I can recall, about two or three games and it was usually against lesser opponents and I threw probably about 80 miles an hour. I always had a good curveball, like I did in little league, but it was mediocre high school pitching."
After a successful senior season on the hardwood, Hanson went ahead and tried out for the baseball team while he was still sorting out his college choices.
"A lot of seniors graduated," Hanson said. "So I started throwing in the gym right after our winter break and coach (Llewellyn) Watts stops me after throwing three pitches and calls a scout — a local scout that lives near the campus that he knows to come over with a radar gun."
The radar gun showed that Hanson had suddenly started throwing in the low-to-mid 90s.
"I hadn't picked up a ball in nine months — wow," Hanson said. "So I ended up going undefeated that year, pitched all three games in the state championship and we won 1-0, 2-0 and 1-0.
"I think I had a 0.30 ERA and punched out like 140 guys in 70 innings or so. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I had a really good year and in my first game I had two scouts. And then my second game I had about four or five scouts. And the third game I had that doubled again, and then it was like 15-20 scouts."
Playing for a private boarding school, the stands weren't exactly filled with fans and parents, but instead packed with Major League Baseball scouts to watch Hanson pitch.
"So those are the only people in the stands," Hanson said. "But I ended up winning the state championship, 1-0 and threw a one-hitter. And they were telling me that if you want to go on to the level beyond college, the best chance is probably going to be baseball. I was flabbergasted."
So instead of playing basketball at the collegiate level, Hanson began the recruiting process all over again as a baseball player, after being selected in the seventh round of the 1983 MLB Draft.
"My dad told every team not to waste the draft pick at all," Hanson said. "I probably would've been drafted in the mid-to-late first or early second round out of high school. But it was interesting because my first two years in high school I did not play baseball. I did track and field to try to get better at basketball. I swam in the summer to try to get better at basketball. I played soccer for 10 years to try to get better at basketball. So baseball was not on my radar at all.
"Coach Watts, a professional pitcher for the St. Louis Browns, was always trying to get more and more athletes to go out for baseball."
So while Hanson and his parents put together an expansive recruiting trip, Lozier advised them to include a stop by Wake Forest.
"I know you really well," he told Hanson. "I think it's a campus and a school that might fit you. Just put it on the list, see what you think."
So the trip includes stops at Old Dominion, Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Duke, Clemson, Georgia, South Carolina and Georgia Tech — they went everywhere, and Hanson found himself a highly-sought prospect.
"When you get drafted that high, they don't even have to recruit you," Hanson said. "They just tell you that if you come here, you're taken care of. So I'm like, wow, that's great.
"But I got to Wake Forest and as soon as I drove on campus, there was, I don't know — it was like an epiphany."
The approach from the staff hit the right tones and the Wake Forest campus reminded Hanson of Peddie.
"It had a Quad and a chapel and all the dorms and buildings surrounding it and all the architecture was uniformed and it was all in one place and there was no city attached to it," Hanson explained. "It wasn't downtown, it was small.
"It just seemed like a perfect fit for me. So when I met up with (Marvin) "Skip" Crater and pitching coach Bob Cox, and the athletic director, Gene Hooks. I met up with them and with my parents and they showed us around campus and they showed us the baseball field, Layton Field, which wasn't much of anything, but they were on their way to potentially building an upgraded stadium there really soon."
Although Hanson had visions of becoming a major league pitcher, he kept one eye firmly on his academics, and Wake Forest had a lot to offer him in that department.
"I was thinking of the education you get — it was just second to none," he said. "Wake Forest was going to be a real challenge for me and not only in the classroom, but on the field as well. We're going to be facing all the ACC opponents and that was going to be really tough as a pitcher.
"I think that's what you really want to do. You want to face really tough opponents to try to get you better. And it showed my freshman year when I first got there. Skip Crater said if you come here, you're going to be our ace and you're going to be facing top-20 competition."
Instead of being the third-or-fourth pitcher in the rotation for other teams, Hanson was immediately tabbed as the ace of the rotation, but was also told they wouldn't burn him out.
"That's amazing," Hanson said. "How warm their greeting was — there was no high pressure sales pitch. I ended up making my decision right then and there and had to call the coaches at Georgia Tech, Georgia, South Carolina and Clemson saying that I'm not coming. My parents really had no effect on it. I looked back at Al and he was right. He knew me. He knew what I was looking for and I have no regrets at all."
It didn't take long for Hanson to become acclimated to Wake Forest socially, academically and athletically.
"I knew I was in the right spot as soon as I made the decision," he said. "I had the advantage of being away from home at a private boarding school for the last four years. So I wasn't going to miss home. I was in a situation where they're going to challenge me in every respect, in the classroom and on the ball field because I was really way behind everyone without playing baseball.
"I was basically learning on the job for the first year or two until my junior year. One of the best moments was in the ACC championship against No. 1 Virginia punching out 18 batters.
"We were playing down at Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament. And yeah, I mean that was probably one of the highlights. It showed the potential of what I could do."
Between his sophomore and junior seasons at Wake Forest, Hanson was selected to play with Team USA.
"I was MVP of that team," he said. "I was 5-1 with a 1.41 ERA, and preseason All-American coming up my junior year — your big draft year for baseball. And unfortunately, one of my teammates during batting practice was shagging and came flying into me and blew out my knee and I missed almost all my junior year. So my draft status went way, way down."
While he had been taken by the Montreal Expos out of high school, Hanson was selected in the second round of the 1986 Major League Draft by the Seattle Mariners.
"At first I didn't know anything about Seattle, the Mariners or the organization," Hanson said. "When I was drafted there, I took it as a positive because they sent me right to AA. So I started at the third level of professional ball, and a lot of that had to do with how I did on the USA team and how I was doing prior to the knee injury. But also, the fact that they were an organization that was fairly new at the time. They were probably 10 years old and haven't really even had a .500 season yet. So they were drafting a lot of pitchers."
The trajectory of the organization changed just a year later when they selected Ken Griffey Jr. with the first pick of the 1987 MLB Draft.
"There's a reason why they had the first pick," Hanson said. "So that's the way you kind of look at it. It's kind of like we're in an underdog situation and trying to build something out of it. And we did. Matter of fact, the Mariners got better every year all the way through 1995 when they first made their first playoff run.
"We traded for Randy Johnson and Brian Holman and Gene Harris, which were, but we've also had some draft picks that were up and coming, Tino Martinez and Mike Schooler, and we signed this guy, free agent guys like Omar Viscal and Edgar Martinez, and we traded for Jay Buhner traded an old veteran for Jay."
Returning to the mound in August of 1986, Hanson rapidly moved his way through the Mariners' minor league system.
"I started out in AA again the next year because I only pitched a month in AA the year before. I pitched about two-thirds of the year there and did very well," he said. "Got to the point where I went from feeling like I was above my head in AA to being able to be effective for 98 percent of the hitters. It's kind of funny because when you get called up to AAA, the 2 percent that you struggled with are the ones going up to AAA too, and that goes on and on at every level. I went to AAA at the end of 1987 and the team was in the playoffs."
After a rocky start to the 1988 campaign, Hanson found a groove and found himself in the major leagues before the end of the season.
"In 1988, I started out in AAA since I had pitched a month or month and a half in AAA and started off really poorly actually, I was 0-5 with a 9.00 ERA," he said. "I was up in Calgary. It was freezing, just everything was bad. I didn't pitch well, and I was about a start away from going back down to AA and I had a good game. So then the next game, I had another good game, and then the next game I had another good game.
"As the weather warmed up, so did I. I had a really, really good AAA season and broke the record for strikeouts, and I ended up being 12-7. I was 12-2 the last 14 games. I threw a no hitter in there and then I finally earned my call up to the big leagues at the end of 1988."
He was part of the building blocks for a Mariner organization that won an astounding 116 games in 2001.
"We were the building blocks of the Mariners organization for the 90s, and it's kind of the same way I felt at Wake Forest when we were, some of us that came, went to Wake Forest to play baseball, started to build a program that George Greer took to another level," Hanson said.
Hanson played for four teams in his eleven-year MLB career, finishing with an 89-84 record with a 4.15 ERA. He struck out 1,176 batters against just 504 career walks. He won 18 games in 1990 for the Mariners and earned an All-Star nod in while going 15-5 for the Boston Red Sox in 1995.
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