Eastern assistant athletic director for special projects Dave Kidwell was all smiles after seeing his “Reunion Saturday” celebration come to fruition with the retirement of Marty Pattin’s No. 19 jersey and the honoring of the 1964 and 1999 baseball teams.

“I don’t think I’ve ever watched the Weather Channel as much as I did this week,” he said. “Every morning, every night, I was just saying ‘Please stay away rain,’ because early on, it was predicted.”

But the weather forecast was wrong, as temperatures hovered around 70 degrees for most of the afternoon with hardly a cloud in sight. The celebration of Eastern baseball’s past brought out easily the largest crowd of the season to Coaches Stadium.

The first 250 fans at the game received Marty Pattin T-shirts in honor of former Major League All-Star and Panther great Marty Pattin, who became the fourth Eastern athlete to have his number retired during a ceremony between games of the Panthers’ doubleheader against Jacksonville State.

All 250 T-shirts were gone well before the 1 p.m. first pitch.

“It’s a great weekend for fans to get out and enjoy Panther baseball and softball and have Marty Pattin back,” said Barbara Burke, Eastern athletic director. “He’s one of the finest players to go through this program. It’s absolutely exciting.”

Kidwell was pleased with the turnout from former Panthers at the ceremony. He said it was tough to get commitments from so many former players, but said roughly half of both the 1964 and 1999 squads were able to be there.

Overall, there were 11 players from each squad present for the ceremony.

The 1999 team, which went to the NCAA Regionals, included current Eastern assistant coach Sean Lyons, and current head coach Jim Schmitz, who also coached the team.

“It’s really cool, especially with the team they have now,” said Keith Laski, a left fielder for the ’99 team who attended the ceremony. “They’re very, very good. We were never ranked as high as they were. They can go far. I hope they go past regionals.”

While the honors for the 1964 and 1999 Panther teams were a proud moment for the program, the day belonged to Pattin.

Most of the crowd was there to see the Charleston native and namesake behind Marty’s Bar, which was called Walt’s before Pattin came along.

“This (1964) team was a non-scholarship team,” said Bill McCabe, coach of the ’64 squad. “The owner of Walt’s, before it became Marty’s, put some of our athletes to work bussing tables and those were our scholarships right there.”

Both Kidwell and Burke acknowledged it is a rarity for a number to be retired, with Pattin’s No. 19 being only the fourth in the history of Panther athletics.

Burke said retiring numbers of more athletes is something that will be looked at in the future.

“We just want to make sure we do it right because it’s a great honor,” she said. “We’re going to take our time and due diligence in making these decisions.”

Kidwell, who, along with Schmitz presented the idea of retiring Pattin’s number to Burke, said there has been discussions of other athletes getting their jerseys retired but would not give any details about whom or when.

“I don’t think we’re ready to publicly discuss anyone,” he said. “I just think that if you retire a number, that’s probably just about the ultimate honor you can give someone. There’s going to be discussions about others, but it’s going to be very, very limited.

“It’s not something the department is just going to do on the whim; it’s going to require a lot of discussions with a lot of people to make sure that person is truly deserving, and we don’t want to cheapen what it is to other people.”

Collin Whitchurch can be reached at 581-7944 or cfwhitchurch@eiu.edu.

Former Eastern pitcher Marty Pattin looks at a plaque featuring a jersey with his number during Saturday’s retirement ceremony at Coaches Stadium. Pattin led EIU to the 1964 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics World Series, and pitched for 1

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