Press-Telegram: Keisser: The Lederer Tree

Hail the Lederer’s! A baseball family if there ever was…

George Lederer probably didn’t think much about the roots he planted in Long Beach sports when he was just a hard-working Dodgers beat writer at the Press-Telegram and later a publicity executive for the Angels.

Those he planted definitely sprouted, to the degree that the Lederer family has as much of a profile in greater Long Beach than other members of the city’s Baseball and Softball Hall of Fame.

Lederer, who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sept. 18, covered the Dodgers from 1958 to 1968 and made it a family experience for his sons Tom, Rich and Gary and daughter Janet, with Tom and Rich recalling a wealth of memories of time spent at the Coliseum and Dodger Stadium while dad was spinning stories in the press box.

...Rich went to USC and became an investment manager by day and baseball stat savant night.

He launched his own baseball blog in 2001 and The Baseball Analysts website in 2003, a site considered one of the cutting edge locations of high-end baseball analysis and commentary. His efforts on behalf of Bert Blyleven’s Hall of Fame candidacy should be realized in the next round of Hall balloting.