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The Buena Vista School Board is considering a policy change that will allow the baseball field at Parry McCluer High School to be named after famed professional baseball player and manager, and PMHS graduate, Charlie Manuel.
The policy currently allows for school facilities to be named for a person only after that person has been deceased for at least 10 years, said Superintendent Tony Francis in a phone call with The News-Gazette.
At a Buena Vista School Board meeting on Aug. 27, Mac Felts, a former School Board member and representative of the Parry McCluer High School Athletic Hall of Fame, urged the Board to change its policy so that the baseball field, which is currently unnamed, could be named in honor of Manuel.
The School Board’s attorneys, Francis told The News-Gazette after the meeting, “helped us draft a policy and an application form that would serve the division … We also have a policy committee made up of two School Board members. They reviewed the updates before it went to the Board at the last meeting. The School Board would have to vote to adopt a new School Board policy.”
The Board is expected to vote on the new policy at the next meeting, on Sept. 26.
Manuel was an athletic star at Parry McCluer High School, playing four different sports and captaining the baseball and basketball teams. He went on to play extensively in minor league and major league teams in the U.S., before moving to Japan and playing in the Nippon Professional Baseball league from 1976 to 1981.
Upon returning to the U.S. baseball scene, Manuel served as a coach and manager for the Cleveland Indians and the Philadelphia Phillies. As manager of the Phillies, he led the team in 2008 to a World Series victory, only the second for the franchise. The next year, the team won the National League Championship Series.
According to Felts’ public comments at August’s School Board meeting, Manuel sends a financial contribution to the PMHS Athletic Hall of Fame every year, supporting its yearly fundraising events. It is this dedicated support of his alma mater’s athletics program, in addition to his place in professional baseball history, that ought to earn him the honor of being the baseball field’s namesake, Felts said.
“If they adopt that policy at the September School Board meeting,” explained Francis, “then the Hall of Fame could submit the application for the baseball field to be named for Charlie Manuel.”
