| Organization: | Collegiate Baseball |
| Year: | 1992 |
The winner of the 1992 ABCA/Wilson Lefty Gomez Award was former Collegiate Baseball Newspaper editor Lou Pavlovich, Sr.
In 1941, while a high school senior and working evenings at the Daily Review in his hometown of Bisbee, Pavlovich turned out his first sports page when the sports editor went to lunch and never came back. From that day on, he was a sports editor.
Formerly a sportswriter, assistant sports editor and promotion director for the Arizona Daily Star/Tucson Citizen (1957-84), Pavlovich was owner-editor of the baseball publication Collegiate Baseball. The newspaper, the brainchild of the late J.F. "Pop" McKale, covers college, junior college, high school and international (Olympics, etc.) baseball.
Pavlovich won numerous honors throughout his career, including the U.S. Baseball Federation Award, Award of Merit from the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Southern Arizona Baseball Association Hall of Fame Award (sportswriter). While promotion director of the Tucson Citizen, he won many state and national awards, including the High School Opinion Poll, which drew 153,000 metropolitan Tucson students to the voting booths for 12 years.
Most of Pavlovich's civic contributions were youth-oriented, including a host of Little League activities and coordinating Football Fans Night (with the University of Arizona and Tucson Citizen) at which Tucson Youth Football youngsters were the principal participants. Pavlovich also collaborated with Max Spilsbury, former head football coach at Northern Arizona University, in writing the book "Slot T Football."
Named after the great Lefty Gomez, this annual award is presented to an individual who has distinguished himself among his peers and has contributed significantly to the game of baseball locally, nationally and internationally. The Lefty Gomez Award is sponsored by Wilson Sporting Goods.
