Dr. Gail Hopkins Inducted Into WCC Hall of Honor
March 6, 2010
Click on the above video for a post-ceremony interview with Dr. Gail Hopkins.
LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Dr. Gail Hopkins, Pepperdine's first All-American in baseball and its first player to make the Major Leagues, was officially inducted into the West Coast Conference Hall of Honor on Saturday morning during a ceremony at the Orleans Hotel.
Hopkins is believed to have the distinction of being perhaps the only Major Leaguer to go on to earn both a Ph.D. and M.D. He has had a long, distinguished career in medicine and currently has a practice in Parkersburg, W.V.
This was the WCC's second-ever Hall of Honor ceremony. Basketball great Doug Christie was Pepperdine's first inductee last year.
The other seven inducted on Saturday were Brandi Chastain (Santa Clara), Bo Kimble (Loyola Marymount), Zuzana Lesenarova (San Diego), Anja Suomalainen (Saint Mary's), Joe Etzel (Portland), Jeff Brown (Gonzaga), and Bob St. Clair (San Francisco).
Hopkins was a 1963 All-American who graduated from Pepperdine in 1966 and also served as Pepperdine's head coach for one season in 1968. Later that year, he was called up to the Majors for the first time, and had a seven-year career with the Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Dodgers. He finished his playing career in Japan. He had already begun his medical studies during his baseball career, and transitioned into that after his retirement from baseball. He is currently a member of Pepperdine's Board of Regents.
He was previously inducted into the inaugural Pepperdine Athletics Hall of Fame Class in 1980.
During his acceptance speech, Hopkins credited the late Henry Barnhart, an alum and long-time ambassador for the school, with pointing him toward Pepperdine.
"My life completely changed by taking a car ride with Henry Barnhart," he said. "All I never knew was growing up in Long Beach. But Barney was a teacher, a coach, a mentor and a friend. He called me and said he was coming by to pick me up. He explained to me that I didn't have go to any of these other places, and that I should go to school here. He talked me into going to school at Pepperdine, and that changed my life."
Hopkins originally came to Pepperdine to play basketball, but he said he took one too many elbows to the head from Sterling Forbes, who was an All-American for the Waves. Instead, Hopkins focused on baseball, "where a short, fat guy could excel."
He reminisced about his baseball teams at Pepperdine, which advanced to the 1962 and 1963 NCAA District 8 Playoffs. He said one of his teams was ranked in the top 10 despite having just 13 players on the squad, and that team held many of the school records until the 1992 national championship team came along. He thanked his former coach, Gary Marks, who was in attendance at the ceremony.
Hopkins met his wife at Pepperdine, and both of his children also graduated from the school. He thanked his wife, Carol, because they went through his baseball career together, and they both worked their way through medical school together, and that he was "eternally grateful to Pepperdine, where I met her."
Hopkins ended his remarks by reciting George Pepperdine's motto, taken from The Bible: "Freely ye received, freely give." He said he has tried to stay involved with Pepperdine, and asked others to do so at their institutions. That while sports were the reason why they were there, what's more important is to do something good in the world, and just as Barney mentored him, people should look for others to help.
