The next president of the Baseball Hall of Fame will be another person from inside the game, though he’ll be much younger than the last full-time president named by the Hall.
On Monday, Josh Rawitch was announced as the HOF’s next president.
We are pleased to announce that Josh Rawitch has been named the next President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Welcome to Cooperstown, Josh! https://t.co/oITJYvXdO8 pic.twitter.com/oWDbhGm4FI
— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) June 28, 2021
He’ll be replacing Tim Mead as Hall of Fame president, who announced his decision to step down in April. Mead, the former Angels VP of communications, only took the job two years earlier. Jeff Idelson, Mead’s predecessor, has served as the Hall’s interim president since Mead’s resignation.
Rawtich will take over on September 9th. He’s been the Diamondbacks’ SVP of content and communications for the last six years, and has worked in the front offices for both Arizona and the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he eventually became the team’s VP of communications. He also briefly worked as a beat writer for MLB Advanced Media.
Based on the Hall of Fame’s release, it seems like Rawitch’s experience in international affairs of the game played a significant role in him getting the gig.
In 2018, Rawitch received the prestigious Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence, given annually to an industry executive who excels in promoting the game. A bilingual Spanish-speaker, he has overseen baseball media relations efforts across the world, including in Mexico, China, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Dominican Republic, and has also served as a venue press chief at three iterations of the World Baseball Classic, most recently in South Korea. Over an eight-year period through 2019, Rawitch helped organize fundraising auctions during MLB’s Winter Meetings that have raised more than $1.6 million for various charitable causes.
Rawitch will be taking over at a precarious time for the Hall, with the pandemic wiping out last year’s induction ceremony of Derek Jeter, Marvin Miller, Ted Simmons, and Larry Walker. No one got in during the balloting last year, so that ceremony was simply rolled over to this year (and moved from late July to September 8th, the day before Rawitch takes over). If the Hall if able to return to its regular schedule next summer, with a full induction ceremony, Rawitch’s job will be somewhat easier rather than if no one is voted in again (or if health regulations rear their head again).
