Larry Sheets. Photo: Baltimore Orioles
Not many people can say they played in high school for two coaches who are in the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame.
But that is what Staunton native Larry Sheets accomplished in the late 1970s – and he did so in two sports with coaches at different schools.
Then in 1985-1986 at a higher level, he played for Earl Weaver, the former Baltimore Orioles manager who went into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.
Sheets, a graduate of what is now Staunton High, was part of the basketball dynasty that was created by the late coach Paul Hatcher. A rugged 6-foot-4 rebounder, Sheets was a senior on the 1978 team that lost in the playoffs to Harrisonburg and future Virginia All-American Ralph Sampson.
“I will say this until I die, the most impactful athletic events that I ever played in,” Sheets, 66, said in a telephone interview about facing Sampson several times as Valley District foes. The Blue Streaks went on to win state titles in 1978, and 1979, with 7-foot-4 Sampson.
Among the former college coaches who came to watch Sampson face Staunton included Dean Smith of North Carolina, Terry Holland of Virginia, Larry Farmer of UCLA and Lou Campanelli of JMU.
“There is no reason to be nervous. They didn’t come to watch you,” Hatcher said to his players before one game against Sampson, according to Sheets.
The other VBSL Hall of Fame coach that Sheets played for was Ray Heatwole, the long-time former baseball coach at Turner Ashby High. A lefty slugger for Staunton, Sheets played under Heatwole with Harrisonburg American Legion Post 27 in the summer of 1977. An assistant coach was Bob Scott, also a long-time assistant at TA under Heatwole.
Hatcher and Heatwole, who won three state titles at TA, are also in the Bridgewater College Hall of Fame.
Sheets was drafted out of Staunton High in the third round in 1978 by the Baltimore Orioles, made his MLB debut with the club in 1984 and was the Orioles MVP in 1987 when he hit 31 homers in a lineup that included future Hall of Famers Cal Ripken Jr. and Eddie Murray.
While playing in the minors, Sheets struggled with the demanding lifestyle and stopped playing at times, enrolling at EMU and spending his winters playing basketball for the Royals. He eventually graduated from the Harrisonburg school in the mid-1980s.
When Sheets became the head baseball coach at Gilman, a private high school in Baltimore, one of the first people he contacted was Heatwole – requesting some coaching material. “We talk about once a month,” Sheets said of Heatwole, who was the also the head coach at Bridgewater, JMU and for a year at Spotswood High, in 1995. Heatwole went into the Virginia Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2023, followed by Curt Kendall (Bridgewater) the next year and the late Brad Babcock, the ex-JMU coach, in 2025.
Sheets has been the coach at Gilman for 17 years, and among his notable alums is his son, Gavin, 29, who broke in with the Chicago White Sox and is now with the San Diego Padres, and Ryan Ripken, the son of Cal who played in the minors with the Orioles and Washington Nationals.
Is it more stressful to watch his son than when he played? “Absolutely, it is hard to watch. Chicago was such a tough … at the beginning with (manager) Tony LaRussa, it was okay. It went south pretty quickly,” said Sheets, who saw Gavin play in person in San Diego last season.
The White Sox lost 21 games in a row at one point in 2024 under then-manager Pedro Grifol. The Orioles, in 1988, lost their first 21 games while Sheets was part of the club.
Gavin Sheets signed with the Padres before the 2025 season, and his father feels the Wake Forest product has a chance to see regular time at first base this coming season under rookie manager Craig Stammen, a former Washington pitcher who played in the minors in Woodbridge.
The other child of Sheets, daughter Lauren, played field hockey at Georgetown and is now a lawyer in Washington, D.C. She went to Garrison Forest in Maryland for high school and won a gold medal in the 2002 Junior Olympics.
“I definitely did grow up in that baseball family,” she told the Hoya.com in 2006, when she was a junior for Georgetown.
The former Oriole outfielder/DH, who also played for the Detroit Tigers, Seattle Mariners and in Japan, also coached three years in the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League.
In the travel ball era, Sheets encourages his Gilman players to get reps with teams in the summer – with another coach. “I don’t want to be their coach in the summer,” said Sheets. “I want them to hear another voice.”
Weaver returned for his second stint at the Orioles manager during the 1985 season – the first full year in the majors for Sheets. Weaver stepped down for good after the 1986 season, a year that Sheets hit 18 homers in 112 games for the Birds. His best season came the following year and he ended with 91 career homers. His son has 65.
Notes
The first homer in the Majors for Sheets came on 28, 1984, at Fenway Park in Boston against right-hander Rich Gale. Chris Gale, the son of Rich, pitched at the University of Virginia and played indy ball before becoming a scout for the Orioles and Cleveland. While with the Orioles, he signed Tyler Wilson, a native of Lynchburg who also played for the Cavaliers and eventually for Baltimore. Sheets had an RBI double to score Jay Buhner (yes, of “Seinfeld” lore) in his last at-bat in the Majors, on Sept. 1, 1993, for Seattle against the Minnesota Twins. His last homer came on Sept. 25, 1990, for Detroit against Seattle off Mike Jackson. Former Orioles outfielder John Shelby also played in that game for the Tigers.
Sheets and Ripken were drafted the same day by the Orioles in 1978. They both began their minor league careers with Bluefield in the Appalachian League.
While in college, Sheets played for Shenandoah in the Rockingham County Baseball League. Since he had played in the minors, Sheets was not eligible to play baseball at EMU. He was an assistant coach with the Royals in 1982, before playing later that year for Single-A Hagerstown in the Baltimore system.
The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball, by John W. Miller, was named the best baseball book of 2025, as it won the CASEY Among the former Baltimore players interviewed for the book was Ken Dixon, a native of Monroe who pitched at Amherst County High and for the Orioles from 1984-1987. “He was tough on me, but he talked to me like a man,” Dixon told Miller of Weaver. A teammate with Sheets in 1984 with the Orioles was center fielder Al Bumbry, a native of Fredericksburg who played baseball and basketball at Virginia State. Bumbry’s son, Steve, played at Virginia Tech and in the minors for the Orioles from 2009-2013.
Former Virginia Tech baseball standout and MLB alum Chad Pinder was named the manager of Triple-A Charlotte in the Chicago White Sox system. He played at Poquoson High and at Triple-A Rochester in the Washington system for part of the 2023 season. Miller School alum Adam Hackenberg, who also played in the RCBL, spent part of last season with Charlotte as a catcher.
