AVON — George Spiroff’s father died when he was a sophomore at Southview High School. His mother had died when George was 5.
He wound up living with his grandparents, Matt and Betty Nicoloff, but the young man would never have lacked for a place to call home.
“I offered to take him in,” said Bill Gast, Spiroff’s baseball coach at Southview. “I wouldn’t have hesitated to let him live with me and my kids. That was how nice he was. I never heard anyone say a bad word about George.”
Spiroff died Sunday night at his home in Avon, shortly after playing catcher in two Roy Hobbs Baseball League games for players over 30. He was 49.
Spiroff was an outstanding baseball player for three varsity seasons at Southview and for four years at Kent State University. He was a .420 hitter in high school and an All-Northeast Ohio and all-state first-team pick in 1977. He also played basketball for the Saints.
At KSU, Spiroff was All-Mid-America Conference first team in 1980, second-team All-MAC in 1981 and an honorable mention Division I All-American in ’80. He played summer baseball in the Cape Cod League.
Spiroff batted .400 over his final two years with the Golden Flashes, frequently drawing comparisons to another All-American catcher from Kent State — Thurman Munson.
Those accomplishments earned Spiroff an induction into the Lorain Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.
“It knocked my socks off,” Gast said about hearing the news of Spiroff’s death. “He was a hell of a nice kid. Good worker. Leader. He was respected by everybody.”
Spiroff was the 10th player selected in the ninth round of the 1981 Major League Baseball draft, by the San Francisco Giants. He spent two years in the Giants’ organization, playing in Great Falls, Mont., and Fresno, Calif., before retiring from professional baseball because of a shattered knuckle on his throwing hand sustained in a collision at home plate.
He returned to the Cleveland area and worked for the United States Postal Service, while starring in amateur baseball in Akron and Cleveland.
“I was in touch with him from time to time,” Gast said. “I would visit him at the post office in Westlake, where he worked, and talked about old times.”
Before his induction in the Lorain HOF, Spiroff was inducted along with college football coach Lou Holz into the Varsity “K” Athletic Hall of Fame at Kent State in 1990. He was voted into the Greater Akron Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003.
He helped the Akron A’s win four Roy Hobbs Senior League national championship. He also coached the junior varsity at Avon High School for two seasons, 2003-04.
Contact Steve Byrne at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.

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