Written for the LSWA
Joe Scheuermann was a 27-year-old assistant baseball coach at Tulane when he came to Natchitoches in June 1990 to present his father, “Rags,” for induction in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
Curveballs are a part of baseball, and “Rags” delivered a dandy one that night. During his acceptance speech, he announced his retirement as Delgado Community College’s baseball coach.
Thirty-five years after following in his dad’s footsteps on City Park Avenue and with 1,207 victories on his record, Joe Scheuermann will join his dad to become the fourth father-son combination to be inducted into the LSHOF.
That culminates the Class of 2025 Induction Celebration in Natchitoches June 26-28. Information about the seven events over three days is available at LaSportsHall.com.
While most assume it was a done deal that Joe would replace “Rags” at Delgado, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The younger Scheuermann came back to New Orleans and soon met with then-Delgado president Dr. James Caillier. “I don’t want to have this job because I’m Rags Scheuermann’s son,” Joe Scheuermann told his future boss.
Later that summer, he became the second head coach of what is now the oldest junior college program in any sport in Louisiana.
In Joe Scheuermann’s first game as head coach in February 1991, the Dolphins faced Bishop State College from Alabama.
“The (Bishop State) head coach was Cleon Jones,” Scheuermann remembered. He asked the World Series champion from the 1969 “Miracle Mets” to autograph his lineup card.
Though the reins had been handed down, it was still hard for the new head coach not to look over his shoulder and in the grandstand. “The first 4-5 years I was more worried about making my dad happy than I was about being a coach,” he said. “I coached too much with exterior emotion. The last two years of his life I started to relax a little bit.”
“Rags” passed away in April 1997, a week shy of his 74th birthday.
Joe Scheuermann was preparing for his 16th season at Delgado when his program – and the entire city of New Orleans – was dealt a body blow named Hurricane Katrina.
The Scheuermanns, with their house and campus under water, evacuated to New Roads. A few days later, in Baton Rouge, he met with Delgado’s chancellor, Alex Johnson.
With the college in financial straits after a lost semester and significant rebuilding costs, the message about the spring 2006 season was simple – “We can’t fund it.” The only way to have a season, and save the program started three decades earlier by his father, was to raise the money himself.
Scheuermann got that program-saving donation from a longtime supporter and friend, and the task of resuscitating a season – and a ballpark, since Kirsch-Rooney Stadium had also been inundated with several feet of flood waters – began.
“I was looking at whether I should transfer,” said Kyle Beerbohm, a sophomore on the 2006 team. “We came back late in the fall and helped with cleanup and putting the field together. Pitchers were putting up a fence during (batting practice). It was definitely a wild fall and early spring.”
Added Scheuermann: “The fact we played the year after Katrina is probably my proudest moment. It would have been easy for Delgado not to have athletics, but it made them realize how important athletics is for the college.”
One year later, the Katrina freshman class would lead Scheuermann to his first-ever trip to the Junior College World Series, 22 years after “Rags” made his only trip.
“If you ask that ’07 team, they expected to win,” Scheuermann said. “If you expect to win, you win. You can’t hope for anything.”
In the district championship game in Missouri, Scheuermann recalled, “We won it on a guy that missed first base on a double that scored the go-ahead run. When that happened, we realized we were going to win this thing.”
Omaha, Nebraska, is the goal each year for LSU and other NCAA Division I programs. On the NJCAA Division I level, it is Grand Junction, Colorado.
“Once we got to the World Series, people bought into our program,” Scheuermann said. “Your kids remember the experience and they pass it down the line … Our expectations became Grand Junction.”
Delgado rattled off three straight trips to Grand Junction from 2014-16 and then returned for a fifth time under Scheuermann in 2023, finishing fifth.
In May 2024, Scheuermann won his 1,178th game to pass the late Tony Robichaux, a 2022 LSHOF inductee, and become the winningest college coach in Louisiana history. But that’s not how he sees it.
“I broke the junior college record for wins in Louisiana,” said Scheuermann, who played at Tulane the same time as Robichaux played at then-USL. “Every game I’ve won was at the junior college level. Tony Robichaux did it at the Division I level. That’s not the same.”
But, he added, “It’s something I will always share with him.”
On April 13 of this year – coincidentally, what would have been “Rags” Scheuermann’s 102nd birthday – Scheuermann registered his latest milestone, career win No. 1,200.
Another milestone happened in January – his 50th Sugar Bowl, for whom he has worked part-time leading up to the annual game since serving as a mail courier as a teenager.
It was there he first met longtime Tulane sports information director and future LSHOF member M.L. Lagarde, who served as a media liaison.
Lagarde “sat me down and said ‘what do you want to do?’ ” Scheuermann recalled. Those conversations led to an opportunity to work Tulane events, beginning in high school.
“I really thought I would work in (athletic) administration,” he said.
After stepping away from baseball for a couple of years in middle school, Scheuermann began attending now-defunct Redemptorist High School, where baseball coach Wilfred “Skeeter” Theard convinced him to return to the game.
“Coach Theard said, ‘You need to play.’ Skeeter took a liking to me and kind of taught me the game a little bit.
“He kind of got me back on path. I started to enjoy myself with baseball a little bit.”
In 1980 – the school’s last year on its Uptown campus and known as Redemptorist – the Rams won the Class 2A state baseball title.
“Joe was more like the player/coach,” said Tommy Mathews, his teammate at Redemptorist, Delgado and Tulane. “He knew more about the game than we did. He was more focused, talking to Skeeter about situations of the game. We were just teenagers playing the game.”
Scheuermann went on to play for his dad at Delgado for two years, and his performance in American Legion ball following his freshman year and then as a sophomore with the Dolphins led Tulane assistant Mickey Retif to take notice.
“Delgado gave me the avenue and the desire to play,” said Scheuermann. “Academically, I got my feet on the ground and was able to get into Tulane.”
After playing for the Green Wave in 1983 and 1984, Lagarde, baseball coach Joe Brockhoff and athletic director Hindman Wall gave Scheuermann a unique opportunity to stay at Tulane, splitting time between the sports information office and baseball staff.
Scheuermann would spend six years as an assistant under Brockhoff at Tulane, helping the Green Wave reach the NCAA Tournament three consecutive times from 1986-88, before heading to Delgado.
How has he gotten to this point? By being himself and convincing other families to do exactly what he did – starting your path on the two-year college level.
“Nobody understands how beneficial it is to go to junior college as an athlete,” Scheuermann said. “We’ve been able to convince Mom and Dad that Delgado isn’t a trade school.
“I’ve placed over 400 kids in four-year programs and continue to get their baseball skills developed and get their education.”
One of them was Sean McMullen, who played at Delgado in 2011 and 2012 before becoming a two-year starter at LSU.
“You never looked there,” McMullen said of Delgado. “(Scheuermann) sat me down and said, ‘How about you give us a shot … If you come here and perform, I will put you in touch with where you want to go.’ I trusted him.”
McMullen became a Pied Piper of sorts for the Dolphins, helping to recruit many of the key local pieces in the program’s three consecutive trips to Grand Junction.
“I told them, if you want to play (Division I) baseball, come here,” McMullen said. “If you hate it, you can leave and just go to college. But nobody does that. This is family. This is different.”
Not one of Scheuermann’s former players has played a day in the major leagues, which may be even a bigger credit to the coaching job he has done in 35 years.
“We’ve been able to do this with blue collar guys,” he said. “We don’t … recruit nationally.”
That itch for administration never left. Scheuermann added the title of athletic director at Delgado in 2013, has been a part of the staff at NCAA baseball regionals at LSU for decades, and this year served as an NCAA liaison for the Hattiesburg Regional.
As Delgado’s AD, he led the fundraising efforts to build the Gayle and Tom Benson Athletic Complex, which opened last fall, steps from the left field foul line at Kirsch-Rooney.
Scheuermann already is a member of the NJCAA Baseball Coaches and the All American Amateur Baseball Association halls of fame. Tulane’s athletic hall of fame will honor him in September with its career achievement award.
Joe and “Rags” join the trio of Archie, Peyton and Eli Manning; “Dub” and Bert Jones, and Glenn and Billy Hardin as the only fathers and sons enshrined in Natchitoches.
“Archie texted me and said ‘welcome to the fraternity,’ ” Joe Scheuermann said. “When Archie Manning sends you that, it kind of hits home.”
As much as Joe Scheuermann has followed in his father’s footsteps, there’s one thing he won’t do – go on stage at the Natchitoches Events Center and announce his retirement.
“I get asked all the time, when are you going to get out?” Scheuermann said. “I’m 62, I feel great, I enjoy coaching.
“I remember my dad saying, ‘You’ll know when it’s time.’ I really don’t feel it’s time yet. It’s an occupation but I do it more for the kids and the school.”
New Orleans native Lenny Vangilder has been a part of the team behind Crescent City Sports since it originated in 2008 as NewOrleans.com, and before that spent 20 years leading publicity teams for Tulane athletics and Fair Grounds Race Course. An LSWA past president, he has received more than 35 national and state awards for writing, publications and broadcasting.
–LaSportsHall.com–
