Hank Greenberg Invitational Hitting Home Runs Against Cancer

This Year's Honorees

Lou Brock

Hank Greenberg Lifetime Achievement Award

Lou Brock received Major League Baseball's highest honor in 1985 when he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

• He is ranked 23rd on the All-Time Hit list with 3,023 Lifetime Hits.
• He is ranked 2nd All-time Stolen Base Leaders with 938 Lifetime Stolen Bases.
• He is named one of the Top 100 Players of the 20th Century.
• He holds the World Series highest batted average record at .391 in 21 or more World Series games.
• He batted .375 in six All-star Games
• He batted over .300 seven times in his career.
• His statue is mounted in the pavilion at Busch Stadium in St. Louis by the St. Louis Cardinals
• He appeared on five Sports Illustrated Magazine Covers.
• His star is imprinted in the St. Louis Walk of Fame in his name.

Lou's major League Baseball's career expanded nearly 20 years, the first three years with Chicago Cubs and the last 17 years with the St. Louis Cardinals. He holds numerous World Series and Major League Baseball Records.

Lou Brock is the only player in the history of Major League Baseball to have an award established in his name while still an active player. "The Lou Brock Award" is granted each year to the National League Player with the most stolen bases.

Lou Brock has received many honors and awards. He has been recognized for his achievements on and off the baseball field. In 2002, he received the prestigious Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Award. Brock has been inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame in the state of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri. He was a Math major at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and holds Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Washington University (St. Louis, MO), Southern University (Baton Rouge, LA), Missouri Valley College (Marshall, MO), and Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri.

Lou Brock now serves on a bank board and as Chairman of the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors of a publicly traded company. He has owned and operated various businesses, which include the ownership of a top Major League Baseball License, as well as retail concessions in Chicago O'Hara Airport and St. Louis International Airport. He has served a broadcast analyst for ABC TV Monday Night Baseball, St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox and has served as a spokesperson for several national corporations, which including Major League Baseball. Brock holds a USA patent for sneakers, and an umbrella hat, the Brockabrella.

Lou Brock, the seventh of nine children, was born in El Dorado, Arkansas. He grew up in Collinston, Louisiana on a cotton plantation as a share cropper. After elementary school Lou attended Union High School in Mer Rouge, Louisiana where he played baseball, basketball and participated on the math and chemistry teams. Based upon his B+ high school GPA, Brock received an academic scholarship to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA.

After the first semester at Southern University, Lou lost his academic scholarship when he received a C+ rather than the required B grade point average. Facing the realization that he no longer had the funding to remain a student at SU Lou Brock heard an inner voice that spoke "tryout out for the baseball team". Rather than depart Southern University, Brock obeyed the voice and volunteered to retrieve baseballs for the college team. One day after passing out from exhaustion, the coaches rewarded him for his effort by giving him five batting practice swings. While still weak, he promptly hit three of the five balls over a short right field fence and was given a full athletic scholarship on the spot. At Southern University, Lou was selected by the United States Olympic Committee to play on the USA Pan-American Baseball team and led Southern to the NAIA World Series Championship. After his junior year at SU, he entered into major league baseball and became one of the greatest players in the history of major league baseball.

Lou Brock is an ordained minister, along with his wife Jacqueline. Today he still submits to the inner voice and founded Voice of the Pro Athletes of Faith, where they conduct inner man coaching seminars and provide the inner man speaks scouting report for people of all walks of life. As a way of "giving back" he established the Lou Brock Endowment Scholarship Fund at Southern University that provides scholarships for college-bound low income, needy high school students.

Lou Brock is a spring training instructor for the current St. Louis Cardinals and is considered one of Major League Baseball's finest Ambassadors.

Paul Carey, Michigan Sports Hall of Fame & Tiger Broadcaster

Dick Schapp Memorial Award for Media Excellence

Paul Carey grew up in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. He attended Central Michigan University and graduated with a B.A. degree from Michigan State University in 1950. His professional broadcast career spanned six decades. It began in August 1949 when he was an original member of the WCEN announcing staff in Mt. Pleasant. Paul was part of the first broadcast of a Central Michigan University football game. His career was interrupted in 1950 with the outbreak of the Korean War where he served in the 4th Infantry Division as a weapons squad leader staff sergeant. After returning from service in October 1952, Carey resumed his announcing and sportscasting duties at WCEN. In April 1953, Paul moved to WKNX-Radio and TV in Saginaw, where he became radio program director and the afternoon disc-jockey.

In June 1956, Paul Carey began a 36-year association with WJR-Radio in Detroit. He was a staff announcer, assistant sports director, and the creator and host of the Michigan High School Football and Basketball Scoreboard programs for 35 years. He was a member of the Associated Press all-state and ratings panels for 20 years and produced the Detroit Tigers' radio network from 1964-1971.

Paul was play-by-play announcer for the Detroit Pistons on WJR for six seasons - 1969-1973, 1975-1976, and 1981-1982.

Paul was, perhaps, best known as Ernie Harwell's partner on Detroit Tiger radio broadcasts for 19 seasons, from 1973 through 1991.

In 1992, Paul was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame and, among other honors, he was named Michigan Sportscaster of the Year six times. He received Distinguished Service awards from the Michigan High School Coaches Association and the Detroit Catholic League. Paul was given a Centennial Award from Central Michigan University, the Unsung Hero of Sport Award, the Lowell Thomas Award, and the Big Ed Award from the Detroit Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. He is in the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan Hall of Honor and is an honorary member of the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association, the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association and the Detroit Tigers Alumni Association.

Adam Bremen

Barry Bremen Memorial Inspiration Award

Barry Bremen Biography

Taken from an Obituary Published in The Record/Herald News on July 7, 2011

Barry Bremen, a Detroit-area businessman whose fun-loving, gate-crashing stunts led him to shoot layups before NBA All-Star games, accept an Emmy Award for best supporting actress and flee from veteran baseball manager Tommy LaSorda, died of cancer at age 64 on June 30, 2011. It was Barry who introduced Dick Schaap to the Michigan Jewish Sports Foundation and the Hank Greenberg Memorial Golf Invitational.

Sometimes called the "Great Impostor," Barry became known to millions during the 1980s for sneaking onto professional courts and fields wearing chicken suits, as well as player and umpire uniforms - capers that required such accomplices as baseball player George Brett and golfer Jack Nicklaus.

Some of his more famous exploits included being chased off the field by Tommy LaSorda, then the Los Angeles Dodgers manager, during 1986 All-Star game warm-ups and slipping onto the stage to accept an Emmy award in 1985 for Betty Thomas of "Hill Street Blues" before she could make her way to the microphone.

Barry Bremen, beloved husband to Margo and a father of three, was an enthusiastic amateur athlete who ran a successful merchandising business in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Friends say he began his career as the Great Impostor in 1978 while attending a Detroit Pistons game. He casually made his way toward the visiting Kansas City Kings bench and grabbed the warm-up suit of a Kings benchwarmer, getting some floor time in the final minutes of his team's rout of the lowly Pistons.

The get-up reappeared a few months later on Mr. Bremen's 6-foot-3-inch frame in the NBA All-Star game. After an air ball and a couple of clunkers, players started feeding him the ball. His hard work, love of the game and charm endeared himself to many professional players. "They always have a good time pulling something off against the establishment," Barry told The Associated Press in 1997. "That's why it has been so successful."

Bremen's list of stunts included shagging flies in a New York Yankees uniform before the 1979 All-Star game in Seattle; showing up at home plate dressed as an umpire before a 1980 World Series game in Philadelphia between the Phillies and Royals; dressing and performing as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader; and playing a practice round with Fred Couples and Curtis Strange at the 1985 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills, Michigan.

He found his way by invitation onto the late-night sets of Johnny Carson and David Letterman and became a subject of a "Jeopardy!" question. Barry told the AP he "retired" from gate-crashing because he didn't want to be mistaken for the real nuts, who run onto sports fields for attention or worse.

Sports reporter and author Jeremy Schaap said at the memorial service that he admired Mr. Bremen's "absolute refusal to take no for an answer" and his ability to see padlocks and velvet ropes not as obstructions but as "provocations."

"His stunts made him famous, but his heart made him special," Schaap said. "Ultimately, ironically, the Great Impostor was the most genuine of men, and we will all miss him."