June 15, 1973: Legendary Coach Warren Fry Retires from Sporting Duties

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

June 15, 1973: The Boyertown Area High School legendary coach Warren Fry has retired as a physical education teacher, athletic director and football and baseball coach. His outstanding career won him a home in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown; his accomplishments as Boyertown’s baseball coach placed him in the Scholastic Division of the prestigious organization with a record of 424 wins and 51 losses, 19 league championships and four undefeated seasons.

The highlight of his illustrious career was engineering the defeat of the future MLB Rookie of the Year Jon Matlack, when he was a pitcher for the West Chester High School team. Fry’s 1973 baseball team, his last one, was the most spectacular of all with a 17-0 record, outscoring opponents 106-17 and shutting them out in eight games. Warren Fry coached the Boyertown Legion baseball team from 1953 to 1959, and his Boyertown High School football teams also had a winning record.

Fry went way back in baseball. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was a bat boy for the Philadelphia Athletics during the Connie Mack era, when he met and got autographs from such super stars as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb.

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