HARLAND BEERY
Harland Beery was the face of baseball in the Pacific Northwest for many years as the state and national commissioner of Casey Stengel baseball, as a long-time sports writer that covered the one year of the ill-fated Seattle Pilots for the Everett Herald, and as an owner-manager of the Bremerton Cruisers semi-pro baseball team.
Beery, who was assistant sports editor at the Kitsap Sun from 1977-92, died Oct. 5 at the age of 84 after a long battle with cancer.
Beery’s accomplishments are too vast to list, but he did enough to be inducted into two Hall of Fames – Tacoma-Pierce County Oldtimers Baseball-Softball Association and Kitsap Sports – and may one day yet be elected to the Washington Sports Hall of fame of which he was on the executive committee.
He was a honored member of the Kitsap Athletic Roundtable (he was given a lifetime achievement award), for 33 years was the secretary of the Seattle Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America and along with J.Michael Kenyon of the now defunct Seattle P-I served as Major League Baseball’s first official scorer for Seattle Mariner games at the Kingdome.
A Seattle Pacific University Alumni Board member for 20 years, Beery also spearheaded the effort to get Snohomish’s Earl Averill elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975 by baseball’s Veteran’s Committee.
Those accomplishments and the spirit of Beery will be remembered Nov. 22 at a memorial service to be held at the east Bremerton Sylvan Way Baptist Church at 2 p.m. You are invited to pay your respects.
