A popular website for baseball fans this time of year is baseball-reference.com. Apart from hosting the game Immaculate Grid, the database also has history and stats of professional baseball, with documentation down to the high school attended by professional players.
Edison High School is listed on that site.
While baseball-reference.com relies mainly on the stats of the players, the Northeaster dug into the stories of these baseballers and where they went after their time at Edison.
Coach Pete Guzy
It all starts with the coach
Six players in total made it into professional baseball after graduation. While each of these players have different stories, most were coached by physical education teacher Pete Guzy.
“I was lucky to play for him,” Charley Walters, class of 1965, said. “He was organized, he could identify talent and he was a leader.”
Guzy began teaching at Edison High school in 1935. He also started coaching football that year. He would also coach hockey and eventually baseball.
“He was a no-nonsense guy,” Walters said in a phone interview. “If you weren’t dedicated, you weren’t going to do very well for Pete.”
Whether he coached them in football, baseball or hockey, five of the six players from Edison who played professionally had Guzy at the helm. He was the first member inducted to the Edison Hall of Fame in 1983.
Walt Dziedzic, left, and Dick Dank kiss their Louisville Slugger baseball bats in the dugout after both hitting home runs at Nicollet Park in 1950. (Hennepin County Library)
Walt Dziedzic
Walt Dziedzic is one of the better-known names on this list, though not for his baseball accolades. The First Ward council member of 22 years started out winning the state baseball championship in 1949.
After graduating in 1950, Dziedzic joined the Dodgers organization, then out of Brooklyn, N.Y. Baseball-reference.com shows five teams that Dziedzic played for from 1951 to 1955. He ventured from as near as Sheboygan, Wis., to Bakersfield, Calif., and Hornell, N.Y.
The former police officer and Art-A-Whirl® co-founder played most of his games at catcher. Dziedzic caught 178 games, while splitting the other 61 games at first base and in the outfield. He had a .275 batting average, amassing 38 home runs and driving in 223 runs over 251 total hits.
Joseph Hanzlik
On Nov. 8, 2019, Joseph “Joe” Hanzlik was inducted into the Edison Hall of Fame. He was in the class of 1970, part of a team that year that won the Twin City and District titles.
He was elected to the All-City team in 1970, mostly due to his two complete game no-hitters thrown. He would move on to professional baseball from there.
Hanzlik was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 44th round of the 1970 MLB draft as a pitcher. He alternated between rookie level and A-ball from 1970-1973, playing for the Gulf Coast League Twins, in Sarasota, Fla., and teams in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., Charlotte, N.C. and Geneva, N.Y., all Twins affiliates.
He ended his career with 320 innings pitched with a 4.28 ERA, winning 22 games and losing 26. He struck out 304 batters, including 19 in one game.
Tony Jaros swinging his bat in 1940. (Hennepin County Library)
Tony Jaros
Before he served “Greenies” at his River Garden bar on Marshall Street, Tony Jaros played professional baseball with the New York Giants and St. Louis Cardinals organizations.
While Jaros was also a decorated basketballer, playing for the Chicago Stags and Minneapolis Lakers, he spent his summers playing for the Minneapolis Millers, St. Cloud Rox, Sioux City, Iowa, Soos and Omaha, Neb., Cardinals.
The Minneapolis Millers in AAA baseball in 1946 were associated with the New York Giants, now the San Francisco Giants, only one step away from the major leagues at the time.
Record keeping is somewhat incomplete for a majority of his professional baseball career, but from what is available, Jaros spent most of his time at first base. He hit 38 home runs, drove in 175 runs, with 174 runs and stole 26 bases.
The multi-sport athlete excelled in basketball, football and baseball while attending Edison. The yearbook in 1940 lists one of his biggest accomplishments as driving in 11 runs in a “memorable game with Washburn.”
Dan Petrowitz receives the award for making the 1975 High School All-American team. (Hennepin County Library)
Dan Petrowitz
Dan Petrowitz was a pitcher for the Tommies, making the All-City Team in 1974 and 1975. According to the 1976 yearbook, Petrowitz made the High School All-American team, the first player from Minnesota to accomplish the feat.
The 2005 inductee to the Edison High School Hall of Fame was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 35th round of the 1975 draft; he played in the organization for the next two years.
He split his time between the Elizabethton, Tenn., and Wisconsin Rapids Twins, pitching to a 3.68 ERA, recording five wins and five losses over 32 games in total.
Bottom right, a Charley Walters rookie card from 1969. (Topps)
Charley Walters
The only member of Edison High School to have reached the majors, Charley “Shooter” Walters, sports columnist with the Pioneer Press, played for the Minnesota Twins in 1969.
“Assistant principal Hal Younghans called me up one night,” Walters said. “The Twins had a two-day tryout camp in 1965 in Metropolitan Stadium. Hal called me at 9 p.m. that night and he told me to go to the camp.”
He impressed the scouts and was offered $400 a month to play minor league baseball by Joe Haynes, the executive vice president of the Twins.
He finally cracked the major leagues in 1969. That spring, Walters received his nickname “Shooter,” which he uses at the Pioneer Press.
“In the fourth or fifth inning of a spring training game, I blew Al Kaline away,” Walters said. “Then I struck out Willie Stargell in a later game. Bob Allison came up to me and called me “Big Shooter,” which the St. Paul paper took and ran with.”
Walters pitched six games for the Twins in 1969. He totaled six and two-thirds innings, giving up six hits, four earned runs and struck out two.
Overall, between his time with the Twins and minor league baseball, he pitched 691.2 innings to a 3.60 ERA. He pitched 23 complete games, winning 43 of the 169 he played in, while losing 34.
“The biggest strikeout was Al Kaline,” Walters said. Kaline is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., known as “Mr. Tiger.” When Walters struck him out, Kaline was in year 17 of his 22 years with the Detroit Tigers. “I was 22 when I did that.”
Top right, Ron Wojciak swinging at a pitch in the 1964 College World Series. (National Collegiate Athletic Association)
Ron Wojciak
Not mentioned on baseball-reference.com is Ron Wojciak, only because he didn’t play any professional games, though he was signed by the Minnesota Twins.
Wojciak was part of the class of 1961. He is enshrined in the Edison Hall of Fame and played college baseball with the University of Minnesota Gophers.
In 1964, the Gophers won the College World Series. Wojciak was named to the All-Tournament team as the catcher.
Wojciak was signed by the Twins in 1965 and played for the Orlando Twins in Florida, hitting for a .250 batting average over 59 games.
That would be Wojciak’s only year with the Twins — he died in 1966 due to lung cancer. The Columbia Heights Athletic Boosters give the annual Ron Wojciak award to an athlete from Columbia Heights who is attending the University of Minnesota in his honor.