GRAND RAPIDS, MI – He played minor league baseball before a storied coaching career that included leading Grand Rapids Community College to four National Junior College Athletic Association championships and induction into its Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame.
Doug “Wabs” Wabeke touched a lot of lives along the way.
“He’s the biggest reason I got into coaching,” Davenport University baseball head coach Kevin Tidey told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press.
“I’ve always said he’s a legend,”
Wabeke, 65, died Saturday, Nov. 25, at his Grand Haven home. He is survived by his wife, Cindy.
His death stunned many in the area baseball community. He was known for daily, early-morning workouts. Tidey called him an “ironman.”
Mike Cupples, a former minor leaguer and Grand Valley State University assistant coach, played and coached with Wabeke.
“He had a love for the game,” Cupples said. “I tried to coach the way he did it.”
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Wabeke pushed players hard. He wanted to win. But he wanted to get the best out of every player, Cupples said.
He liked working with young ballplayers. He’d learn their backgrounds to know where they were coming from.
“He got personal with them,” Cupples said. “He figured out what it took to get them going. That was his process. ... He was a baseball guy: ‘Let’s get dirty together. I want you tough enough if we go to war to make sure you’re behind me still.’”
“There will never be another Wabs,” a friend wrote on GRCC’s Facebook page. “The man had a work ethic for the ages and fun and good times followed wherever he went.”
Wabeke was an all-state shortstop at Zeeland High School, where he graduated in 1976.
Wabeke played for GRCC and Central Michigan University before he signed with the San Francisco Giants in 1980. He played for three organizations, reaching AA, before he returned to West Michigan in 1984. He became head coach at GVSU while also playing for Sullivan’s, an amateur baseball team that went on to win the National Baseball Congress Championship that year.
He then left to study at Miami University in Ohio where he was an assistant coach for a year. He returned to GRCC as an assistant coach and began a 17-year career as head coach at GRCC, known then as Grand Rapids Junior College, during the 1987-88 school year.
He later became co-athletic director.
He coached at Palm Beach State College in Florida from 2018 to 2020.
In recent years, Wabeke, who was tough on umpires as a coach, became an umpire himself. He couldn’t stay away from the game, his friends said.
Dave Greco, who played baseball for Wabeke at the former Grand Valley State College, said many have taken the loss hard. He was asked by family to contact Wabeke’s friends.
“There is not one person that doesn’t have a story how he did something for them without wanting something back. It’s the same thing for everybody,” Greco said.
“It’s like you just lost your best friend – one of them,” he said.
Wabeke had planned to go watch the University of Michigan play Ohio State University on Saturday before he collapsed at his home and could not be revived.
Wabeke would have been the first to buy beers.
“Such a fun guy that loved everybody. There’s not another like him,” Greco said.
Tidey, the Davenport head coach, recalled that Wabeke recruited him when he graduated from Grandville High School. Then, years later, when Tidey got the head coach job at Davenport, he asked Wabeke to be his assistant coach. Tidey knew that Wabeke would bring to the program.
In a colorful response, Wabeke said no. But after he saw the new baseball complex going up, he said he’d give it three years. He stayed seven. He loved to work with the players. Tidey had wondered how Wabeke would handle being an assistant to a former ballplayer.
“He’s a pretty head-strong dude coming in as the assistant and to be honest, he was phenomenal.”
Tidey, a pitcher, said Wabeke taught him to study the game when not throwing. Wabeke set high expectations.
“A guy on, nobody out, we were scoring. His strategizing was off the charts. One of the best I’ve ever seen in that aspect,” he said.
For full obituary, go here.
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