It won't be all golfing and socializing for celebrity participants in the 30th annual Danny Thompson Memorial benefit golf tournament this August at Sun Valley.
Major league baseball legends attending the tournament will gather for three hours to present a "Legends for Youth" baseball clinic for up to 150 Sun Valley-area boys and girls ages 6-17 at Hailey's Founders Field.
For the first time, members of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association in cooperation with the Thompson golf tournament will teach baseball fundamentals at each station at Founders Field.
Clinic times are 9 a.m. to 12 noon Thursday, Aug. 24. Check-in begins at 8:15 a.m. The free clinic is limited to the first 150 boys and girls. Call Chris Timme at 726-1049 (ctimme@dtmgolf.com) or David Nelson at 208-867-1379 to sign up for the one-day clinic.
Among big leaguers scheduled to attend the Aug. 24 clinic are Brooks Robinson, Bobby Grich and Paul Hartzell.
Robinson, 69, of Little Rock, was called the "Human Vacuum Cleaner," for his defensive play. Baseball's all-time greatest third baseman was named to the Hall of Fame in 1983 after a matchless 23-year career with the Baltimore Orioles.
The friendly 6-1, 190-pounder from Arkansas had numerous major league fielding records including a .971 fielding average, best ever for a third sacker. He batted .267 with 2,848 hits in 2,896 games from 1955-77, all with the Baltimore Orioles—a major league record.
The 18-time All Star won the Golden Glove each year from 1960-75 and was baseball's Most Valuable Player in 1964 with career-best .317 with 28 homers and 118 RBI. He starred on the four-time AL pennant-winning Oriole teams that won World Series titles in 1966 and 1970, losing only one game.
Hartzell, 52, a 6-5, 200-pound right-handed pitcher from Pennsylvania and Lehigh University, started his big league career with the California Angels in 1976 and played on four different teams through 1984.
Grich, 57, a Michigan native, played 17 American League seasons for Baltimore and the California Angels from 1970-86 and logged a .266 career batting average in 2,008 games. The 6-2, 190-pounder was a six-time All-Star and four-time Golden Glove winner at second base.
Georgie Fenton, Danny Thompson golf tournament director, said, "We wanted to do something different to mark this 30th year and something that involved local kids."
The Thompson golf tournament attracts over 200 participants from the national and regional worlds of politics, business and sports. It is held Thursday through Saturday, Aug. 24-26 on the Sun Valley and Elkhorn golf courses.
In 29 years, the Thompson Memorial has raised $7,927,500 for cancer research, split between University of Minnesota Leukemia Research Foundation and Mountain States Tumor Institute (MSTI) of Boise. Last year's proceeds were $622,000, third highest ever.
The tournament is named for Danny Thompson, a Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers infielder who died of leukemia in 1976 at 29. Co-founder of the tournament was Idaho's Harmon Killebrew, a Hall of Fame baseball slugger.
Robinson, Grich and Hartzell are all celebrity participants in this year's meet.
