Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame to induct five legends
Two baseball players and two football stars headline the eighth Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame class to be inducted Saturday night at Thunder Valley Casino Resort.
Each will be in attendance. Boxer Diego Corrales of Oak Park will be inducted posthumously. Corrales held super featherweight and lightweight world titles before he was killed in a car crash near his Las Vegas home.
Trevor Matich and Gerald Willhite were a classic late-bloomer stories, rising from unsung high school athletes to college stars to first-round picks who enjoyed long NFL careers, Matich as an offensive lineman and Willhite as a running back.
Randy Lerch and Fernando Vina were baseball stars as teenagers, at Cordova and Valley, respectively, and carried it right into the Major League ranks.
Matich received more than 50 scholarship offers when he was a senior at Rio Americano High School in 1979, playing for coach Max Miller. During an intense recruiting process, assistant coaches from Cal and BYU came to blows while at coach Miller’s house.
Matich was a star center for the 1984 BYU team that won a national championship and played 12 years in the NFL, starting with New England and ending with Washington before embarking on an Emmy Award career as a broadcaster.
Willhite was more of an accomplished wrestler at Cordova High, graduating in 1977. He did not play football at Cordova, though his younger brother Kevin later did and became the national player of the year in 1981. Gerald did as a boy help save the life of his brother, carrying him through a Rancho Cordova field after Kevin suffered an alergic reaction, and rushing him to safety.
Gerald Willhite grew into his 5-foot-10, 200-pound frame at American River College and then at San Jose State. He was a first-round pick of the Denver Broncos in 1982 and caught John Elway’s first winning touchdown. Willhite played in Super Bowl XXI, a loss to the Giants. He contributed more than 3,400 yards of offense with the Broncos and popularized the backward flip in the end zone.
The left-handed Lerch went 24-2 as Cordova’s ace in 1972 and ‘73 under coach Guy Anderson, including 13-0 as a senior. He went 60-64 over an 11-year Major League career with the Phillies, Brewers, Expos and Giants.
Lerch recently wrote “God in the Bullpen” about his challenges of alcoholism and overcoming it.
Vina was an exceptional infielder and hitter at Valley, Cosumnes River College, Sacramento City College and Arizona State. He played 12 Major League seasons, starting with Seattle and finishing with Detroit. He is a member of the Arizona State and Brewers Hall of Fame.
Corrales, the boxer from of Oak Park, died in a motorcycle accident in 2007. He was 29. Corrale went 33-5 as a boxer as a super featherweight and lightweight.