Selection Committee
A nine-member Michigan Baseball Hall of Fame Selection Committee determines each year’s class of Michigan Baseball Hall of Famers. These committee members were selected for their expertise spanning the range of the Michigan baseball landscape, representing the different facets, levels and generations of the game.
Joe Block
Joe Block is the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates, joining the team after four years in the Milwaukee Brewers radio play-by-play booth. Hailing from Roseville, Michigan, and a graduate of Michigan State University, Block joined the Brewers in 2012 after working for more than 10 years in TV and radio in the NBA, Major League Baseball, and Minor League Baseball, which included stops in Los Angeles; New Orleans; Jacksonville, Florida; Great Falls, Montana; Billings, Montana; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Charleston, South Carolina. Block is a devout baseball historian and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
Gary Gillette
Gary Gillette is a historian and consultant who has written, edited or contributed to dozens of baseball periodicals, books (including Total Baseball and Baseball Prospectus), encyclopedias (including the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia), and Websites (including Baseball-Reference.com and ESPN.com). As founder and chair of the nonprofit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, Gillette led the successful campaign to restore the historic site, one of only five remaining Major Negro League home ballparks. In 2006, Gillette founded the Detroit Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He served on SABR’s board of directors from 2009 to 2012 and was the 2021 recipient of the Tweed Webb Award for Lifetime Achievement from SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee. Gary lives on the East Side of Detroit with his wife Vicki.
Fred Heumann
Fred Heumann was Sports Director at WLNS-TV in Lansing from 2003-2019. A native of Detroit and graduate of Central Michigan University, he served as the scoreboard operator at Tiger Stadium from 1979-1988. Concurrently, his television career began at WJIM-TV in Lansing in 1980, moving shortly to WILX-TV in Jackson, WJRT-TV in Flint, and then 17 years in Detroit reporting and anchoring at three different television stations and six different radio stations. In total, he has over 30 years of experience covering Michigan sports. In 2007, Heumann was married in front of home plate following a Lansing Lugnuts game.
Mario Impemba
Mario Impemba served as the Detroit Tigers’ lead TV play-by-play announcer on Fox Sports Detroit from 2002-2018. After graduating from Michigan State University in 1985, Impemba moved up through the Minor League ranks to the Anaheim Angels in 1995. Impemba has been well recognized for his work, receiving the 2006 Emmy Award for sports play-by-play, the 2011 Michigan NSSA Sportscaster of the Year Award, and the 2013 Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association Ty Tyson Award for excellence in sports broadcasting. In the offseason, he delivers the call of the MHSAA football and basketball state championships.
Bill Killian
Bill Killian played four years of both baseball and basketball at North Park College, earning his master’s degree from Ohio State University before arriving at Ferris State University in 1987, where he served as a volunteer assistant for the baseball team from 1988-1992. Killian taught in the physical sciences department at Ferris State while also working as a pro scout. He currently serves as Special Assistant to the Head Coach for Central Michigan University men’s basketball.
Geoff Kimmerly
Geoff Kimmerly is in his second decade working for the Michigan High School Athletic Association, serving as Communications Director and senior editor of MHSAA.com. He previously served as Prep Sports Editor at the Lansing State Journal from 2000-11 and is in his 25th year as part of the selection committee for the Dean Shippey Capital Diamond Classic. Among his MHSAA duties, Kimmerly maintains the state’s high school record books for baseball and all other MHSAA-sponsored sports and has served on the national high school record book committee.
Rich Maloney
Rich Maloney was a three-year letter-winner and two-time captain at Western Michigan, where he is a member of the WMU Athletic Hall of Fame. After serving as an assistant coach at WMU from 1992-1995 and as head coach at Ball State from 1995-2003, he served as head baseball coach for 10 seasons at the University of Michigan, leading the Wolverines to three Big Ten conference championships. Maloney returned to Ball State in 2013, winning the MAC regular-season championship in 2022 and the tournament championship in 2023. Overall, he has won over 1,000 games in over 30 seasons as a head baseball coach.
Tim Staudt
Tim Staudt is the “Dean of Sports,” broadcasting and reporting on sports in the Mid-Michigan region for 45 years, the longest streak in Michigan on-air broadcasting history, news, sports or weather. A graduate of Michigan State University, Staudt served as Sports Director at WJIM-TV in Lansing from 1970 through 1980, when he assumed his current role as Sports Anchor at WILX-TV. He is also the host of “Staudt on Sports” on The Fan 730 AM, a morning sports talk show dating back to March 1993, and the author of several books, including “Tales of the Magical Spartans: A Collection of Stories from the 1979 Michigan State NCAA Basketball Champions.”
Mark Uyl
Mark Uyl is the Executive Director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA), where he has served since 2004. He has umpired at the NCAA Division I level for 22 years, working primarily in the Big Ten Conference and arbitrating at eleven NCAA Regionals, six Super Regionals and the 2014 and 2017 College World Series. Uyl was the sole American umpire selected to work the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Prior to joining the MHSAA, he was a teacher, coach and athletic director at Caledonia High School and Middleville-Thornapple Kellogg High School. Uyl was a four-year starter and team captain at Calvin College as a first baseman from 1993-1996.