4 Selected for County Hall of Fame : Carew, Messersmith, Morris and Spanks to Be Inducted

Former Angels Rod Carew and Andy Messersmith, sprinter Eddie Morris and softball player Carol Spanks have been selected for induction into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame, the hall’s board of directors announced Saturday.

They will be honored at the annual induction banquet Feb. 15 at the Disneyland Hotel. They join 36 members enshrined over the past seven years.

Carew won seven American League batting championships during a 19-year major league career that concluded with seven seasons (1979-85) with the Angels. He had 3,053 hits, 13th on the all-time list, and a lifetime batting average of .328. Carew, who played second base and first base, lives in Anaheim Hills and operates a baseball school.

Messersmith is one of the few pitchers to win 20 games in a season in both the American and National leagues. A former Western High School star, he won 20 games for the Angels in 1971 and again in 1974 for the Dodgers. His challenge of the reserve clause in a baseball playing contract became a milestone verdict in professional sports labor relations. He lives in Soquel, Calif., in the Santa Cruz area.

Morris won seven Southern Section gold medals as a sprinter at Huntington Beach High School in the late 1930s. He won the state championship in the 220-yard dash three straight years and the national junior AAU titles in the 100 and 220 in 1940. His best times that year were 9.5 seconds in the 100 and 20.6 in the 220, which were faster than the winning times in the NCAA championships that year. Morris’ Olympic dreams were ended by artillery wounds he suffered in the South Pacific during World War II. After a career in the oil industry, he is retired and lives in the state of Washington.

Spanks played on four national championship softball teams with the Orange Lionettes between 1958 and 1975, a period in which they finished second six times. While still a UCLA student, she began her career with the Buena Park Lynx and went on to make the Amateur Softball Assn.’s All-American team 13 times.

Spanks is softball coach at Cal Poly Pomona and also coached the United States’ gold-medal winning team in the 1987 Pan-American Games. Spanks, a longtime Tustin resident, also is an outstanding amateur golfer.

Voting for the inductees is conducted among the board of directors, sports writers and inductees from previous years. Winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ralph Clark Award for civic contributions by an athlete away from sports and the Woody Dietch Award for inspirational performances will be announced in the coming weeks.