IOWA SPORTS HALL OF FAME [As reported in the Des Moines Register.]

Hank Severeid is heading toward 71 now and many a milestone lies behind him and a baseball career that has spanned most of his lifetime.

Hank was a catcher, and the records of his era stand as testimony that he was one of the greats. As he squatted behind the plate, through the sweat and strain of many hundreds of contests in organized baseball, he compiled a record that included these unforgettable feats:

He caught no-hit games in the American League on successive days.

From his start in 1909 until he finished out of the 1937 season he caught 2,603 games in the majors and minors.

Hank was a native of Story City, Ia. Born in 1891 in a family that sent four sons into minor league ball, Hank was 18 when he broke in with Burlington in the Central Association. Within two years he was in the majors and he served through 15 campaigns before he finally returned to the minors.

He tossed aside the mask and shinguards for the last time at Galveston in the Texas League in 1937 but he still was in baseball as late as last year as a scout.

Today Hank Severeid steps to the plate once more, to receive his due as a member of The Des Moines Register's Iowa Sports Hall of Fame. He is the forty-fifth Iowan to be inducted into the exclusive group and the tenth baseball standout to be so honored.

Severeid's life has been baseball. As a youngster of 8 he was bat boy for the Story City club. At 14 he was a member of the team and a quite adaptable member.

He became a catcher by chance because the regular catcher failed to show up one day for a game with Roland, the big rival of the area. Hank caught the game and launched a career.

The season was well along when Hank bowed in at Burlington but in the 25 games he caught he handled his assignments without an error and batted .302.

Ottumwa, also of the Central Association, was interested and the 1910 season found Severeid in an Ottumwa uniform. Through 105 games he hit .304 and maintained a .978 fielding average.

Then and now good catchers were something special and the majors were on the lookout. Hank went up to Cincinnati in 1911 as a 20-year-old comer. His real home in the majors, however, was to be St. Louis, where he was one of the standouts in the happier days of the old St. Louis Browns.

Briefly, he wore the uniforms of the Senators and the Yankees, but the flannels of the Browns saw him at his peak.

"There are not five really first class catchers in America ..." wrote an observer in 1922, when Severeid was in his ninth season with the Browns.

"Hank Severeid has the reputation of being able to carry a pitcher through a crisis better than any living backstop, and he is in the game every day, working like Hercules ..."

Some of the writers called Hank the "detective of the diamond" and credited him with catching the message from batter to base-runner with unerring skill. They said he had studied every batter -- "analysed and cataloged him in a cerebral pigeon-hole.

"As an analyst of the hitters, there is not a receiver in baseball who can cope with Severeid," a critic wrote.

Hank's behind-the-plate strategy may have reached the greatest peak ever on May 5 and 6, 1917. It was his third season with the Browns. Ernie Koob was going against the Chicago White Sox and Severeid was catching. Koob beat the Sox, 1-0, and gave them nary a hit.

It was Bob Groom's turn to pitch against the White Sox the following day, in the second game of a double-header. Severeid again was catching. When they jogged to the clubhouse after that one Groom had a 3-0 no-hitter.

Until this day Severeid probably is the only man who ever caught no-hit games on successive days.

Hank was a strong 6-footer who weighed about 175 through most of his career. He respected his physique and did not abuse it. He trained and he played hard, and he didn't like to lose.

When St. Louis writers sized up the stars they compared Severeid with Ray Schalk, the White Sox catcher. Hank won the comparisons.

"An iron physique, tremendous hitting and an uncanny faculty for sizing plays and deciphering signals favor the Brownie in a comparison with the White Sox star," wrote an observer.

They praised his physicue, his durability and his perception. They said he scorned the pitchout, and they summed him up like this:

"Severeid is a blue-blooded thoroughbred and you cannot buy men of this type ..."

Ottumwa reportedly received $2,000 when it sold Severeid to Cincinnati. Three years later the Redlegs swapped him to Louisville of the American Association for a claim on future players. Louisville sold him to the Browns.

At one time Hank held the major league record of .993 for season fielding average. That was in 1921. He reached a batting peak against Detroit on May 31, 1923, when he hammered out three singles and two doubles in five times at bat.

A dozen times in his 28 seasons his batting average was above the .300 mark, with his major league peak at .324 and .321 in 1921 and 1922.

Farther along, when he went to Sacramento and Hollywood in the Pacific Coast league, he hit .359 and .367 in 1929 and 1930.

Hank was 46 years old and still catching, for Galveston in the Texas League, when he hung 'em up for good. ON the last day of the 1937 season he caught a doubleheader.

He played in the World Series with Washington in 1925, catching in one game, and he caught all seven games for the Yankees in 1926. After his playing days he served managerial hitches for Wichita Falls-Long View and San Antonio in the Texas League, Omaha in the Western, Galveston in the Texas and Durham in the Piedmont.

He served a short stretch as coach for Syracuse in the International and was field representative for the Cincinnati farm system. After scouting for the Chicago Cubs in 1943 he joined the Boston Red Sox as scout in 1944.

Hank presumably will be scouting for the Red Sox again this season. He served in that capacity last year, headquartering in San Antonio, where his home is at 404 Garety Road.