William Arce
American baseball coach (1925–2016)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Benjamin Arce Jr. was an American baseball coach and manager in college baseball and European baseball.[1][2][3] He was the founding athletic director at the Claremont Colleges in California.[4] The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags baseball stadium is named after him.[4]
| Bill Arce | |
|---|---|
Arce at the 1971 Haarlem Baseball Week | |
| Born: June 24, 1925 Oakland, California | |
| Died: March 7, 2016 (aged 90) Pomona, California | |
| Member of the Netherlands | |
 Baseball Hall of Fame | |
| Induction | 1985 |
Medals | |
Arce was the head coach of the Claremont baseball team from 1958 to 1979, compiling a win–loss record of 446–354–16 (.556) and leading the Stags to Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships in 1970, 1971, and 1975.[4] He was one of the five finalists for the baseball coach of the year award by the American Association of College Baseball Coaches in 1975[5] and was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame 1976.[6] He won the American Baseball Coaches Association's Lefty Gomez Award in 2001.[7][4]
After retiring in 1983,[4] Arce spent his summers and sabbatical leaves developing baseball internationally. He was the first American baseball coach to provide baseball instruction in Belgium (1962), Sweden (1962), Czechoslovakia (1969), Yugoslavia (1979),[8] and China (1980).[9] In 1985, he founded International Sports Group, a non-profit organization that conducts international coaching clinics.[4]
Arce led a team with many Claremont players, the California Stags, to play in the Haarlem Baseball Week tournament in the Netherlands, winning it in 1966.[10] He was named the best coach of the tournament in 1963 and 1971.[11] Arce also managed the national teams of both the Netherlands (1971) and Italy (1975) to the European Baseball Championship.[8] Arce was also on the coaching staff for the U.S. national collegiate team in 1970[12] and for USA Baseball in 1976 and 1978. He later coached France in the 2003 European championship.[11] Arce was inducted into the Netherlands Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985.[13]
Personal life and death
Arce was a veteran of World War II, having fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944.[8]
Arce died on March 7, 2016 in Pomona California at the age of 90.[4][14] He was married and had three children, nine grandchildren, and four great grandchildren.[1]