The late founding father of youth baseball in Shaker Heights is honored with a plaque at his beloved Lomond field.
By Zachary Lewis
There are 20 words on the memorial to baseball fanatic Tom Fuerst, but only two words are needed to describe the marker itself: home run.
For the late founding father of youth baseball in Shaker and backer of generations of young players in the City, there may be no tribute more fitting or meaningful than the plaque the Shaker Youth Baseball League installed at Lomond Field before its first game in late May.
Simple but moving, the plaque shows a color photo of Fuerst in full catcher’s gear, ready as ever to play and uses his widely-known nickname, “The Commish,” in thanking “A True Friend to Shaker Heights.”
My dad loved baseball, and he loved Shaker, and he would have been absolutely blown away by this.
“Having something permanent there is a really nice gesture,” says fitness trainer Ben Fuerst, Tom’s son. “My dad loved baseball, and he loved Shaker, and he would have been absolutely blown away by this.”
It wasn’t just baseball or Shaker that Fuerst loved, of course. Yes, Fuerst was passionate about the sport. Yes, he spent his retirement from real estate and an earlier jewelry business working as a ticket taker for the Lake County Captains, just to keep hearing the crack of the bat and thump of a good fastball. What he really cared about, though, was children. After helping get SYBL off the ground in the early 1990s, Fuerst spent most of the next 30 years working tirelessly to keep the organization running smoothly and ensuring that the children of Shaker had fun and grew as players.
“For as long as I knew Tom, he loved doing whatever made the game of baseball better for kids,” says Steve Baker, the current president of SYBL. “He totally immersed himself in youth baseball. He was old school, always so much fun to have around.”
The same was true at the Baseball Heritage Museum and League Park in Cleveland, where Fuerst also volunteered in retirement. Bob Zimmer, the museum’s president, said Fuerst gave generously of his time and energy. Fuerst went so far as to organize a clinic with Justine Siegal, the first female coach in men’s professional baseball and founder of a group called Baseball for All. For that reason, the museum created its own tribute to Fuerst after his death in 2021: a memorial fund supporting youth baseball programs all over Northeast Ohio (baseballheritagemuseum.org/tribute-and-memorial-gifts).
Tom Fuerst
“He’d give you the shirt off his back if he thought that would be helpful,” Zimmer said. “I miss him.”
Fuerst gave of himself outside the world of baseball, too. Even after he took ill and needed assistance following surgery, Fuerst kept on giving, helping his fellow veterans as a volunteer at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.
“He just liked helping people,” Ben says. “He always put himself pretty low on the pecking order. He was always fi nding things he could do to help others.”
Choosing to commission an original plaque was just the first thing SYBL got right as it weighed how to honor Fuerst. The other was choosing to install it at Lomond Field. Of all the diamonds in Shaker, Lomond is the one most heavily steeped in Fuerst family lore. It was there that Fuerst organized, coached, and supervised many games, and where he and other coaches encountered generations of budding players trying out for the league.
Most special of all: It was at Lomond that Ben got his first big hit and where he lost his father’s beloved childhood mitt amidst the hubbub following an injury. No wonder Fuerst asked, only half in jest, to have his ashes spread at the park. (They were not.) However, the memorial plaque is a different story.
“They could not have picked a better location,” Ben says.
