By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
This weekend Orel Hershiser got his BGSU degree, and, he joked, a new first name.
As part of commencement weekend, the star baseball player was awarded an honorary doctorate in Leadership Studies.
Though the degree wasn’t to be formally bestowed until the afternoon ceremony, at the 9 a.m. graduation for the College of Arts and Sciences and Firelands, interim Provost Glenn Davis and President Rodney Rogers, referred to him as Doctor Orel Hershiser.
It was good to have a new first name, he said. While the name “Orel” has a long history in his family — he’s Orel Leonard Hershiser IV — and means “eagle” in Slavic languages, none of that mattered in sixth grade where it gave his classmates an opportunity to tease him.
That was said in jest.
“I am totally humbled,” he said.
Hershiser was on hand to speak to graduates, a duty he would fulfill twice more on Saturday.
Receiving the degree brought him full circle in his relationship with BGSU.
He arrived on campus in 1977 from New Jersey, he said, with a partial baseball scholarship to help cover the out-of-state tuition.
But by the time baseball season was underway, his GPA was underwater making him academically ineligible, and his girlfriend had broken up with him.
Despondent, the young Hershiser stuck out his thumb and hit the road, heading back to New Jersey where he’d graduated from high school.
When he ran out of money half way there, he called his parents, who now lived in the Detroit area and they wired him funds to come home.
His father, a former Marine, and his mother a domestic taskmaster, were “beside themselves” at the jam their son had gotten himself into.
“My dad drove me back here to Bowling Green and Bowling Green let me back in,” Hershiser recalled. “They made me go to summer school, and I actually went to class. I didn’t go to the pool hall, I didn’t go to the bowling alley, I actually went to class, and I raised my grade point to a point where I was eligible.”
He then recorded two strong seasons, including a no-hitter against Kent State, with the Falcons. At the end of his junior year he was drafted by the L.A. Dodgers in the 17th round. He had a stellar career, mostly with Los Angeles, including winning the Cy Young Award and being named World Series MVP. He later pitched for Cleveland. He’s since pursued a career in broadcasting and played poker professionally.
It was in 2020 that he became re-engaged with BGSU.
Baseball provided him the platform to help, he told the graduates. Coming out of the pandemic, and facing financial difficulties, BGSU proposed eliminating its baseball program.
Hershiser and some of his team mates along with trustees and other alumni rallied to raise $1.5 million to save the program.
Now, he said, with the leadership of Derek van der Merwe, Vice President for Athletics Strategy the baseball program is not just surviving but thriving, having won the MAC championship in 2024.
And starting next semester the team will playing in upgraded facilities. At Friday’s trustees meeting a $1.5 million donation from trustee Paul J. Hooker to install artificial turf and lights at the field was announced.
That work is overdue, Hershiser said. “That’s the same field that I’ve played on in 1979 when I left here.”
He urged the graduates to return and help BGSU continue its future.
“Come back and give back,” he said. ‘I could have wrote a check, but when I came back to Bowling Green and met you guys and your families and the people up here and others that are here and all the trustees — I’m coming back physically because you feed me. This is a culture. This is momentum. This is a place where Midwest values live, and it’s so fun to be around.
“And it is because of you, the people that you are, that I will continue to come back and give as much as I can.”
