It started simply enough.
Bob Sullivan was a standout baseball player in Grand Rapids, a shortstop. And his talent-rich amateur team, amid a local union dispute, lost its sponsorship. Sullivan stepped up and paid the freight. And the rest is history.
Sullivan, who became synonymous with some of the best baseball players to come out of the Grand Rapids area and Michigan, including Mickey Stanley, Kirk Gibson and Willie Horton, and who spent many years as a local scout for the Detroit Tigers, died Feb. 18. He was 96.
His name adorns Bob Sullivan Field, the historic Grand Rapids ballpark, formerly known as Valley Field, that opened in 1937 and lays claim to hosting more than 75 future major-league players. The field has been undergoing a major restoration project in recent years, which thrilled Sullivan.
“We are sad that he will not be able to see the renovated ballpark, but we hope that the last few years brought joy to him ― to see the ballpark that he loved activated, and that he was able to see so many old friends, players and employees at some of our events,” Fans of Valley Field said in a Facebook post announcing Sullivan’s death last week. “He touched many, many lives.”
Sullivan grew up a standout athlete in Grand Rapids, as an all-city swimmer and a ranked Golden Gloves boxer, according to his online obituary. But baseball was his first love.
He started on his high school varsity baseball team at Grand Rapids Catholic Central as a freshman, and continued to rise up the amateur ranks, even while working overnights at a local gas station.
Sullivan was drawn early to the business world, which would take him to great acclaim ― and kept him working right up until his 96th birthday last December. But he never could quit baseball. When he first sponsored the elite local amateur team and renamed them the Grand Rapids Sullivans, he continued to play.
Within four years, he named himself the manager, and he held that role for more than 50 years, mentoring several generations of the city and state’s best baseball prospects.
“So many great players,” Sullivan said during a YouTube interview with Terry Lowery, director of baseball operations for Fans of Valley Field, last summer.
And so many championships.
Sullivan’s obituary said the Grand Rapids Sullivans won 40 city majors title, 27 United Baseball League titles and 30 Michigan National Baseball Congress titles, plus four national and six international championships.
“I just wanted to win too bad. … I didn’t want to get beat at anything,” Sullivan said in the YouTube interview last summer. “That’s the way I was raised, not to lose. To win, be a winner.”
If you were a standout baseball player in Grand Rapids, you probably played for the Sullivans, or maybe played against the Sullivans, or definitely at least played at Sullivan Field. Stanley, a Grand Rapids native and member of the 1968 World Series champion Tigers, said Sullivan put him on his path to the major Leagues. Horton, a Detroit native, played one summer for the Sullivans, staying at the local YMCA.
Former Tigers Gibson and Dave Rozema had connections to Sullivan, as did Hall-of-Famer Jim Kaat, as well as former Tigers pitcher and Baltimore Orioles manager Phil Regan.
Stanley and Regan were in attendance in 2013 when Sullivan was presented the Gerald R. Ford Award by the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame during a Grand Rapids ceremony. Other former players gave video tributes.
Nearly 250 former Sullivans players signed professional contracts.
“He’s done so much for this area,” Regan, who grew up in Wayland, south of Grand Rapids, said at the 2013 award ceremony, according to a report at MLive.
“What he created with Sullivan’s, really, every kid coming out of high school wanted to play for his team.”
Baseball was just one part, albeit a big part, of Sullivan’s life. He had a successful business career, founding Sullivan’s Riverview Furniture and Floor Covering. Sullivan also owed several local bars, including the Shamrock and Bavarian Inn, and built and owned six hotels. He also spent 25 years on the planning commission and zoning board in Grand Rapids, and counted the late President Ford among his good friends.
Sullivan spent more than three years in the Marine Corps Reserve and also had other sports ventures, bringing professional football (Grand Rapids Shamrocks, then later Blazers) and basketball (Grand Rapids Tackers) to the city where he was born and where he lived his entire life. Sullivan is a member of the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame and the Michigan Golden Gloves Hall of Fame.
Sullivan was preceded in death by wife Mary Joan, and is survived by daughters Therese Seeley and Catherine Sullivan, as well as a granddaughter and several nieces and nephews.
Sullivan’s family and friends are planning a public celebration of life, with details to come.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Ex-Tigers scout, who molded many of state’s top prospects, dies at 96
Reporting by Tony Paul, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
