Dan Schneider, pitcher for the University of Arizona Wildcats in 1962.
Fifty-seven years after Dan Schneider threw his last fastball for the Arizona Wildcats, the first one-and-done athlete in school history was elected to the UA’s Sports Hall of Fame last week.
It is a long overdue and well deserved award for the Rincon High School grad, a consensus first-team All-American in 1962, going 13-1 with a school strikeout record of 186 that has stood for 57 years.
The 6-foot 2-inch lefty was the centerpiece of the first team in UA history — any sport — to be ranked No. 1 in the nation.
Schneider was so good in 1962 that the Milwaukee Braves paid him a $100,000 bonus to leave school. At the time, he was one of the five highest-paid “bonus babies” in MLB history. He went on to pitch 117 games in the big leagues over five seasons.
Technically, Schneider wasn’t “one-and-done.” Freshmen were not allowed to play varsity baseball in 1961, so Schneider went 5-0 for the Arizona freshman team.
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His long wait to get into the UA sports Hall of Fame reflects on the productive history of Arizona baseball, as well as the school’s overall success in sports the last 60 years.
The Class of 2019 includes seven former athletes, including 2007 Jim Thorpe Award winning football cornerback Antoine Cason. Sometimes you get lost in the shuffle, as Schneider did. He will be the 36th baseball player inducted into the UA sports Hall of Fame.
Editor's note: This section has been updated to remove a reference to Dave Stegman, who was inducted into the UA hall of fame in 1981.
