Wabash College Athletics

Thomas E. Quackenbush, Jr., the men of Wabash welcome you home, though perhaps Wabash doesn’t look quite the same as it did during your dominant baseball career. We are reminded of a line from your senior questionnaire in which your one hope for the future of the College was that it build a new baseball stadium. Almost 25 years later, mission accomplished!

You were a decorated three-sport athlete and public speaker at Bishop Luers High school in Fort Wayne, but baseball — your first love — is where you shined at Wabash. In your very first start as a freshman — in right field against Indiana University — you went two-for-three, and you would go on to hit .375 in your first season. Records and accomplishments would follow. You hit .336 as a sophomore, .289 as a junior, and .450 as a senior as the team’s starting catcher. Twice you were named the team’s Most Valuable Player and you served as team captain as a senior. By the time you graduated, you owned single-season records for home runs and runs batted in, and you would graduate with 131 hits and 110 RBI — the latter a record that stood for more than a decade.

Your senior year was memorable, to be sure. Playing for Coach Scott Boone, you helped Wabash post a 21-13 record and second place finish in the Indiana Collegiate Athletic Conference — and your team swept the conference champions in a twin bill at Hanover. You were honored as Co-Player of the Year in the ICAC that year, sharing the honor with teammate Kelley House, whom you now join in the Hall of Fame.

You were active on campus, too, playing football for a year, joining Kappa Sigma, and making the Dean’s List as a psychology major and economics minor. Thomas E. Quackenbush, the National Association of Wabash Men remembers well your clutch hitting at the plate, your long home runs, and most of all your leadership of your teammates, and therefore it is with great pride that we induct you into the Wabash College Athletics Hall of Fame. Some Little Giant!