Quartet selected for Hall of Fame

Black Sox greats Jarrad Martin, Travis Wilson and Patrick Shannon and double international captain Leslie King have been inducted into Softball New Zealand’s Hall of Fame.

The quartet’s inclusion was confirmed at the Softball New Zealand (SNZ) annual meeting in Lower Hutt on Saturday.

Martin played for the Black Sox for more than 15 years and captained the team to the world title in Christchurch in 2004.

The Taranaki product played in six world championships between 1996 and 2013 - a record shared with Mark Sorenson, Thomas Makea, Nathan Nukunuku and Brad Rona. All five have four gold medals.

Martin was inducted into the World Softball Hall of Fame in 2016 and is still involved in elite softball as assistant coach of the New Zealand Junior Black Sox.

Wilson, a talented infielder and high average hitter, played with Martin on the 1996 world champion team - topping the side’s bat- ting averages - before a decadelong professional baseball career in the United States. He later returned to softball, playing on the Black Sox’s silver medal-winning team in Canada in 2009.

Shannon, a power-hitting catcher with a distinctive, open batting style, played on four world championship squads, winning gold medals in 2004 and 2013 - the latter with his twin brother Heinie, a left-handed pitcher.

King, an American who became a naturalised New Zealander, was a world-class shortstop and catcher.

She was a White Sox regular from 1987 and helped the team to a silver medal in 1990 - their last time on a world championships podium.

King, who was also a New Zealand Football Ferns goalkeeper, now lives in her native United States.

She captained her adopted country at the Fifa women’s football World Cup finals in China in 1991 and returned to New Zealand to captain the White Sox to a win the Sydney Olympic Games qualifying tournament in 1999.