AURORA | Steve Eaton, a longtime local baseball institution, is set to be inducted into the Colorado Dugout Club Hall of Fame at its annual banquet.
Eaton is part of the seven-member Class of 2019 to be honored by the Dugout Club Jan. 18 at the DTC Marriott Denver. The organization has been inducting some of Colorado’s top players and coaches into its Hall of Fame since 2010.
A good portion of Eaton’s lengthy, wide-ranging baseball career has been spent in Aurora, where he starred on the diamond at Aurora Central High School in the 1970s (and earned a spot in the school’s Hall of Fame, the Aurora Central Legends Club) while the Colorado State graduate later spent nearly a decade coaching baseball (and football for a short time) at Gateway.
After a detour on a very successful career as a coach at nearby Chaparral, Eaton has returned to Aurora again as the head coach at Cherokee Trail. He took over for the school’s original coach, Allan Dyer, prior to the 2018 season and guided the Cougars to a 16-8 mark and a berth in the 2018 Class 5A Championship Series, which helped him share Centennial League Coach of the Year honors with Arapahoe’s Jim Dollaghan.
The Dugout Club banquet is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. with a social hour ahead of dinner and the induction ceremony. Veteran sportscaster and current Colorado Rockies’ radio color man Jerry Schemmel is the featured speaker.
Tickets run $40 per person and can be purchased at coloradodugoutclub.org or by emailing CDCCA Business Director and HOF Chair Mike Letofsky at m.letofsky@comcast.net.
Courtney Oakes is Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at 303-750-7555 or sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. FB: Sentinel Prep Sports
2019 COLORADO DUGOUT CLUB HALL OF FAME INDUCTION CLASS
STEVE EATON, Lloyd Garcia, Les Layton, Nate Obey, Greg Riddoch, Joe Strain, Lesley “Les” Tapia