Cy Greenlaw Recipients continued

George Grant

George Grant was a twosport star at Stadium High School and University of Washington. Born March 13, 1938, in Everett, Grant graduated from Stadium in 1956 and UW in 1960.

Grant was a three-year letter winner in both baseball and basketball at UW, and he was also a team captain in both sports. He earned MVP honors on the baseball diamond with a batting average of .389. He received all-state recognition in high school and all-conference honors in college and spent three years playing in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.

Grant was the star shortstop on Stanley’s Shoemen of Tacoma and the Seattle Cheney Studs in 1956 and 1960, respectively, as each team claimed a national amateur baseball title. He went on to lead the Tacoma Plywood team to the national AAU Basketball championship in 1971, where he was named Tournament MVP. That makes him one of the few athletes to have made key contributions to national championship teams in multiple sports.

Grant was named among the 100 Best Athletes of the Century in Tacoma and the Top 60 in the history of the Washington Huskies. And he isn’t through adding to his list of achievements, as he’s continued to play shortstop in dozens of senior slowpitch softball games per season long into his eighth decade.

Dick Zierman

Dick Zierman was born on January 22, 1938 and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1956 where he was elected President of the Varsity Letterman’s Club his senior year. Dick was an all-around athlete for the Abes, competing on the football and basketball teams while also finding time to contribute to the track team’s success as well. In football, Zierman played end for Coach Norm Mayer’s team along with teammates Doug McClary, Herm Magnuson, Jerry Williams, Jim Jones and Harry Harper, the team’s leading rusher and scorer. He also coached and played in a recreation departmentsponsored flag football league and won five championships.

In addition to Dean’s Tavern, Dick Zierman also played slowpitch for Glo-Worm, West End Tavern, Players, Hi Hat, Schlitz, Wested Tire and with powerhouse Heidelberg for five seasons.

1953

His senior season, Dick and teammates Tom Knight (880-yard run) and Dwayne Rader (Mile run) shared tricaptain responsibilities on the track team, coached by John Sharpe. In fact, the trio competed at the state meet and lettered all three years for the Abes. As a senior, Dick won the Tacoma City League high jump championship, clearing 6’4” and qualifying to compete at the state track and field championships on the Washington State University campus in Pullman. Dick also ran the 120 High Hurdles and occasionally ran the half mile when Chuck Gilmur, the field events coach, asked him to fill in if a teammate was missing. At 6’4”, Dick was a valuable commodity on the basketball floor for the Lincoln five and he also played on the Bernie’s Men’s Wear AAU hoopsters club of 1958–59 in addition to playing for Western State’s 1972 County League championship team.

A football official for 21 years, Zierman’s allaround athletic skills were most evident on the diamond after high school. He played baseball, fastpitch and slowpitch softball and was a pitcher, catcher and outfielder. After playing for the Bernie’s City League baseball entry in 1957 he turned to slowpitch where he enjoyed considerable success as a sponsor, player and coach.

Slowpitch teams that Ziggy (aka Z-man) played for included the Glo-Worm, West End Tavern, Dean’s Tavern, Players and Hi Hat Cabaret teams, Heidelberg (five years), player-coach for Schlitz, and player-coach for Wested Tire, crowned the 1976 Western Washington League Champions.

Among his individual honors, he was a member of Fort Ord’s Army fastpitch championship club, MVP in the 1966 Metro Invitational, MVP of the Heidelberg Invitational in 1972, and was named to fourteen all-star teams as a player.

Dick’s love for outdoor activities was not restricted to the ballfields as golf, fishing and hunting were a close second. In fact, when in doubt, he could often be tracked down at the Brunswick Tavern in Othello. One of his proudest moments was twice being elected Washington State President of Pheasants Forever.

In 1973 Dick joined the Pierce County Parks & Recreation Department overseeing the maintenance of the entire Sprinker Recreation Center complex and subsequently retired from Pierce County as the Superintendent of Facilities Maintenance after 27 years. He was the first person, along with his Sprinker maintenance crew, to put ice in the Tacoma Dome and manage it during the 1987 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships.

Married to Beverly for 55 years they own EZ Auto License & Title in Spanaway.

Mary Jane Bramman Cooper

Mary Jane Bramman Cooper really was a girl in a boy’s world on the sandlots of Iowa. As a child aged 9–15, she honed her skills in sandlot hardball games playing against the best boys on the block.

To hear Mary Jane tell it, “My baseball days began on the sandlot. In the late 40’s I was fortunate to have a friend ask if I wanted to play ball with them. Our team was made up of working women and housewives… we were a motley crew! Annie Kauzlarich was a homemaker who pitched two games back-to-back with a no-hitter in regional play. She was short and stout and couldn’t run so she had to hit a triple to get on base—but she sure could pitch!”

“Mainly, I want to say how it was no comparison to the opportunities young girls have today. Once when we played in a tourney in Bremerton and the game went late, we had to drive for hours to get home because the Narrows Bridge was down. That made for a late night with work in the am. Nowadays I thoroughly enjoy watching the girls play

on television. How different things are!”

From 1942–1951, Cooper played fastpitch for teams in Iowa, Texas and Western Washington. Between the years of 1948–1951 she played in four Washington State Tournaments, three regional tournaments and several invitational tournaments, representing the Sumner Maids-Sumner Athletic Club in 1948 and 1949, the Tacoma Fuelerettes in 1950 and Pacific Mutual Fuels in 1951. Her team-high batting average always landed somewhere between .350–.400, and she helped lead her teams to three state tournament championships playing shortstop and centerfield. Cooper’s playing career ended in 1952 when she started to raise her family, but she found her way back into the game as a fastpitch coach in the early 1960s. She also received a plaque honoring her as the “Most Loyal Fan” of her grandson’s games, emblematic of her desire and commitment to support the sport any way she can. Born on May 18, 1923, Cooper is a native of Davenport, Iowa, and graduated from Clinton High School in 1940. She was inducted into the Fastpitch Softball category of the Tacoma-Pierce County Baseball-Softball Oldtimers Association in 2008.