Blue White Illustrated

Joe Bedenk: college baseball's forgotten pioneer P laying in the College World Series is the ultimate goal of every collegiate baseball player, and it's been 40 years since a Penn State team last made an appearance. The coach who took that 1973 team there now has a stadium on campus partly named for him, but the Nittany Lion coach who actually helped start the prestigious College World Series and who in 1957 produced the best baseball team in Penn State history is all but forgotten. That's how history often works, and it is too bad. Joe Bedenk deserves better. After all, he is not only Penn State's winningest baseball coach with 380 victories, 159 losses and three ties stretching from 1931 through 1962, but his 1957 team is the only one of the five Lion teams to reach the College World Series that played in the championship game. With baseball being the school's first varsity sport in 1875, one would think Bedenk would be memorialized with his name on the stadium. Or at least with a statue nearby. However, it is Bedenk's assistant and successor, Chuck Medlar, whose name is attached to the modern-day baseball facility across from Beaver Stadium. That's because one of Medlar's players, Anthony Lubrano, chose to honor his former coach when he donated more than $2 million for the naming rights for the baseball complex that opened in 2007. It's not that Medlar was undeserving. Medlar's 19-year tenure as head coach from 1963-81 is second only to Bedenk's record tenure of 32 years, and his record of 312 wins, 141 losses and six ties is third behind Joe Hindelang. What makes Bedenk and Medlar's records even more impres- sive is that they coached in eras when there were fewer games in a regular season: an average of 15 to 20 for Bedenk and 20 to 25 for Medlar, compared to 50-plus in the past 25 years. While Bedenk took three teams to the College World Series in 1953, 1957 and 1958, Medlar was there with two of his teams in 1963 and 1973. Both have been inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame, with Bedenk part of the inaugural class of 13 in 1967 and Medlar elected in 1980. Those aren't the only similarities between the two men. Both played baseball for Penn State, and both were deeply involved with the football team, too. Bedenk was a right fielder and clutch hitter who batted fifth in 1922-23, but he was an even better football player. As a sophomore starting guard on the 1921 squad, one of Penn State's greatest teams, Bendek was a second-team Walter Camp AllAmerican. In his senior year, he became the school's first interior lineman to be named a first-team AllAmerican. After five years as the head baseball coach and an assistant football coach at Rice and Florida, Bedenk returned to Penn State in 1929 as an assistant to head coach Hugo Bezdek in both football and baseball. When Bezdek retired from coaching after the 1930 season, Bedenk succeeded him in baseball while continuing as the football line coach under another Bezdek protégé, Bob Higgins. Medlar was an outstanding pitcher for Bedenk from 1940-41 and the captain-elect of the 1942 team. Back then, collegiate players were also allowed to play professional baseball in the summer. So, after his junior year in 1941 when he was 7-3 as both a starter and reliever, the Detroit Tigers signed him to a contract and sent him to Beaumont, then a Class A Texas League affiliate. He pitched 64 innings in 17 games, all in relief, for a 2-4 record and .380 ERA. As the 1942 baseball season approached, Medlar dropped out of school to join the Tigers in spring training. The Tigers assigned him to Jamestown, N.Y., in the Class D Pony (Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York) League. He was 5-0 with a .265 ERA after pitching 51 innings in six games, and the Tigers moved him up to their Class A affiliate, Elmira, in the Eastern League. There, Medlar appeared in 20 games and pitched 70 innings for a 4-3 record and 3.73 ERA and was promoted to Buffalo of the Class AA International League, then one level below the majors. (Class AAA leagues were not part of minor league baseball until 1946). Medlar pitched 11 relief innings in seven games with no decisions and gave up no runs. At that juncture, he seemed headed toward the Tigers as a relief pitcher. However, World War II intervened and Medlar went into the Navy, spending time in the Pacific war zone. When he returned to Buffalo after the war, a sore arm ended his career. So he finished his education in 1946 at Penn State and spent 14 years handling the pitching staff before Bedenk's retirement. Meanwhile, Medlar took on added responsibilities in 1946 as the head trainer of the football team. That made him a colleague of Bedenk on the football staff until 1953, and therein lies a historical football footnote to this baseball tale. When Higgins retired as head coach after the 1948 season, Bedenk was

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