The American Baseball Coaches Association is pleased to announce its four-member ABCA Hall of Fame class of 2016! Bob Babb, Augie Garrido, Sam Riggleman and Ray Tanner will be inducted during the ABCA/Diamond Hall of Fame/Coach of the Year Banquet at the ABCA Convention on Jan. 8, 2016 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Induction to the ABCA Hall of Fame is the highest honor bestowed by the organization. The ABCA was founded in 1945 and the Hall of Fame began in 1966.
Tickets to the ABCA Hall of Fame/Coach of the Year Banquet must be purchased in advance and will be available beginning Sept. 1.
Bob Babb
Bob Babb has established Johns Hopkins baseball as one of the best programs in NCAA Div. III over his 36 years as head coach. Babb’s entire head coaching career has been with Johns Hopkins, which he has led to a 1042-383-13 record since 1980, good for a .729 winning percentage.
Babb’s Johns Hopkins teams have made 19 NCAA Tournament appearances and went to the College World Series three times, including a runner-up finish in 2008. During Babb’s tenure, the Blue Jays have captured 10 Middle Atlantic Conference Southeast League titles, 13 Centennial Conference championships and seven University Athletic Association titles.
Babb ranks in the top five among active NCAA Div. III coaches in both winning percentage and total wins. He also ranks in the top 10 all-time in NCAA Div. III in both categories. Babb earned his milestone 1,000th victory in 2014, becoming just the ninth NCAA Div. III coach to accomplish the feat. His teams have never had a losing record.
Johns Hopkins has crested the 40-win mark three times under Babb’s leadership – getting 40 wins in 2004, 42 in 2008 and a school-record 44 in 2010. Both the 2008 and 2010 teams reached the College World Series. The 2004 team opened the season with a then-NCAA record 33-game winning streak.
In 1989, the Blue Jays finished third at the NCAA Division III World Series, the program’s first trip to the final eight.
Babb was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996. He played baseball for the Blue Jays from 1974-76 and participated in the first NCAA Div. III Tournament in 1976.
A 1977 graduate of Johns Hopkins, Babb served as an assistant baseball and football coach at Hopkins for two years before becoming head baseball coach. Babb continued to serve as assistant football coach at JHU until 1998.
Babb has served on several ABCA committees. He is currently Chair of the Editorial Committee and serves on the Playing Rules Committee.
Augie Garrido
The winningest baseball coach in NCAA history, Augie Garrido has led his teams to 15 appearances in the NCAA Div. I College World Series, with five national championships during 47 seasons as a collegiate head coach.
As head coach of Texas since 1996, Garrido has guided the Longhorns to Omaha eight times, including CWS titles in 2002 and 2005 and runner-up finishes in 2004 and 2009. Texas most recently qualified for the College World Series in 2014. Garrido has seven Big 12 regular-season titles and five tournament crowns on his resume.
Prior to Texas, Garrido coached at Cal State Fullerton for 21 seasons over two stints (1973-87, 1991-96) and was head coach at Illinois for three seasons (1988-90). In Cal State Fullerton’s first season competing in NCAA Div. I, Garrido led the team to the 1975 College World Series. The Titans won three national titles under Garrido’s leadership: 1979, 1984 and 1995. His overall record at Cal State Fullerton was 929-391-6 (.703) and he netted seven CWS appearances, one national runner-up finish and three national crowns. At Illinois, Garrido’s teams advanced to the NCAA Tournament twice and posted an overall record of 111-57 (.661).
Garrido became the all-time winningest coach in NCAA Div. I history with his 1,428th career win on June 9, 2003, and moved past Gordon Gillespie as the winningest coach across all divisions with win number 1,894 on March 25, 2014. Through 47 seasons, Garrido’s record stands at 1,950-919-9 (.681), an average of 41 wins per season.
Graduating from Fresno State in 1961, Garrido played three seasons for the Bulldogs, earned All-Conference honors and played in the 1959 College World Series. He is one of only 11 men to both play and coach in the CWS.
Garrido played six seasons in the Cleveland Indians organization before accepting his first coaching position at Sierra High School in Tollhouse, Calif., in 1966.
Three years later, Garrido’s collegiate coaching career would begin at San Francisco State in 1969. He coached at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo from 1970-72 before moving on to Cal State Fullerton in 1973.
Garrido has served as a clinician at multiple ABCA Conventions, including leading off the clinics on several occasions.
Sam Riggleman
In his nearly four decades as a college baseball coach, Sam Riggleman has become one of the most successful in NAIA history. Riggleman ranks ninth in among active NAIA coaches with 1,004 career victories and became the 19th NAIA head coach to reach 1,000 wins in 2015.
Since taking the reins of the SAU program in 2005, Riggleman has guided his alma mater to a 358-190 (.653) record with three regular season conference championships, two conference tournament titles and five NAIA National Tournament appearances. Riggleman’s squad was runner-up in the 2007 NAIA World Series. That season, Spring Arbor went 48-5, had a 36-game winning streak and Riggleman was honored as the NAIA Baseball Coaches Association National Coach of the Year for the second time.
The long-time mentor has amassed a 1,004-639-2 record over nearly four decades. Prior to his arrival at Spring Arbor, Riggleman served three seasons as the skipper at Dallas Baptist University where he led the Patriots to two appearances in the NAIA World Series, highlighted by a runner-up finish in 2000. He earned his first NAIA Baseball Coaches Association National Coach of the Year that season.
Riggleman spent five seasons at Bethel College before making the move to Dallas Baptist. He also had a seven-year stint at Southern Illinois University from 1988-94. He started as the pitching coach at SIU before taking over the role of head coach his final four years. After getting his start in coaching at John Wesley College, Riggleman spent nine seasons as the head coach at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
Riggleman’s resume also includes coaching the U.S. National Team that traveled to Cuba in 1991 and serving as the head coach for a 2001 NAIA All-Star team that traveled to the Czech Republic. Riggleman has also coached several future Major Leaguers.
Riggleman was recipient of the Ethics in Coaching Award at the 2011 ABCA Convention in Nashville. He is also recognized as developing the Montana Leadership Institute at Spring Arbor University, an annual one-week retreat that focuses on athletic and spiritual leadership development in SAU student-athletes.
Ray Tanner
Ray Tanner went out on top as a coach, finishing his quarter century as a collegiate baseball skipper with what’s arguably the greatest three-year postseason run in NCAA Div. I baseball history from 2010-12.
Tanner’s University of South Carolina Gamecocks established NCAA records with 22 consecutive postseason wins and 12 consecutive wins in the College World Series from 2010-12. The Gamecocks won back-to-back national championships in 2010 and 2011 before finishing second in 2012. South Carolina’s 30-4 (.882) NCAA Tournament record marked the fifth best three-year postseason record in NCAA history.
Following the 2012 CWS runner-up finish, Tanner was named South Carolina’s Athletic Director and has since led the Gamecocks’ Athletic Department in one of its most successful eras.
The 2012 season was Tanner’s 25th year as a collegiate head coach. He posted a 738-316 record at South Carolina with a .700 winning percentage that ranked second all-time among SEC coaches. His career record was 1,133-489-3 (.699).
In all, Tanner led South Carolina to six College World Series appearances, three SEC championships, six SEC Eastern Division titles and 13 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances along with the two CWS titles.
Tanner began his collegiate coaching career at his alma mater, NC State, serving as assistant coach for three seasons (1985-87) before leading the squad from 1988 through 1996. Tanner led the Wolfpack to seven NCAA Tournament appearances as head coach and finished with a 395-173-3 record. His 395 coaching wins rank second in school history.
Tanner arrived on the Raleigh campus in the fall of 1976, playing four years as a shortstop and third baseman. He earned All-Atlantic Coast Conference honors his senior season and still ranks among the Wolfpack’s all-time leaders in several categories.
Tanner served as a coach with USA Baseball five times, including in 2003 as head coach for the USA National Baseball Team. The club finished with a 27-2 record, the best record for a U.S. National Team (.931 winning percentage) and won a silver medal at the 2003 Pan American Games.
