Kent among 5 in new class of inductees
The year after Barry Bonds was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, Jeff Kent will be joining his old Giants teammate.
Kent is in the latest BASHOF class, along with former Giants managing general partner Peter Magowan, former Warriors guard Mitch Richmond, former Raiders tight end Raymond Chester and swimming champion Anne Warner Cribbs.
They’ll be honored at the May 16 enshrinement banquet at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. BASHOF has raised nearly $4 million for more than 600 Bay Area youth sports organizations.
Kent and Bonds might not have been close friends, but they were one of baseball’s best 1-2 punches in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Before Bonds won four consecutive National League MVP awards, Kent was the MVP in 2000 when he hit .334 with 33 homers and 125 RBIs.
It was the first season at the Giants’ downtown ballpark, then Pacific Bell Park, and Magowan had a front-row seat as the managing general partner. Magowan led an ownership group that purchased the team in December 1992 from Bob Lurie, who had first tried to sell to Florida interests, and privately financed a facility to replace antiquated Candlestick Park.
Kent played on Cal’s 1988 College World Series team and has assisted with scholarships for female athletes at the university and helped the effort to reinstate the baseball program after it was targeted to be cut after the 2011 season.
Richmond, part of the Warriors’ Run TMC era, which also involved Chris Mullin and Tim Hardaway, was inducted into basketball’s Hall of Fame in 2014. He played three seasons with the Warriors, seven with the Sacramento Kings and 14 in all, averaging 21 points a game.
Chester was the Raid- ers’ tight end in the Super Bowl XV victory over Philadelphia in 1981, the team’s last title in Oak- land. Seven of his 12 NFL seasons were with the Raiders, and he caught 364 passes and scored 48 touchdowns. He played a year in the USFL with the Oakland Invaders.
Cribbs, a graduate of Menlo-Atherton High School, won a gold medal at the 1959 Pan Am Games at 14, and her 400-meter medley relay team won a gold in the 1960 Olympics. With limited opportunities for girls, her competitive swimming career ended quickly, and she went on to co-found the first women’s pro basketball league in the U.S. and lead San Francisco’s bid for the 2012 Olympics.