Erik Hanson: 2026 Inductee

Execution of the “now” has always been Erik Hanson’s manner of deed. During over three decades at elite-level competition – first as a pitcher in Major League Baseball followed by a now hall of fame career in amateur championship golf – staying even-keel, whether on the mound or with a lob wedge 45 yards from the flagstick, is where Erik’s mind has always been. What matters is each pitch, each shot, one at a time.

Erik made use of that mindset over a decade on MLB rosters, as a starting right-handed pitcher, mostly for the Seattle Mariners. Arriving on the team in 1988, Erik soon shared the dugout with Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, and both Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr. He was an All-Star with the Boston Red Sox in 1995. And before all that, he travelled internationally on the U.S. Collegiate National Team as a starting pitcher.

After officially retiring from baseball in 2000 at the age of 35, Erik, now 60, assumed the calendar schedule of living in Kirkland, Wash. and Scottsdale, Ariz., and began building a golf career resume that now includes 12 combined PNGA and WA Golf championship titles. He has also qualified for 17 USGA national championships, including the 2015 U.S. Senior Open. And he has earned a roster spot in 13 PNGA Lamey Cups, and a combined 22 Hudson and Senior Hudson Cup teams.

For efforts like those and others, Erik will be inducted into the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame in 2026, which recognizes the game’s brightest stars from the region who have excelled at the highest level of golf competition. The PNGA conducts induction ceremonies every other year to honor individuals who have been nominated by the media and golfing public and then selected by the PNGA Hall of Fame Committee.

The honor is one which Hanson never envisioned 25 years ago.

“It’s something that I never even thought of,” said the 6’6” former major leaguer, who had dreams of basketball growing up. “To be part of the names that are there, I never really thought of myself as being part of that class. It’s really quite an honor to be associated with some of those people.”

Erik’s complex journey from an assortment of sports – from basketball to baseball to golf – spans decades. He was born and raised in Kinnelon, a humble suburban town in Northern New Jersey, which a crow would fly some 2,800 miles from Kirkland to reach. Attending The Peddie School in his home state, Erik spent much of his upbringing playing basketball, wanting to follow the path of his even-taller older brother who played collegiately at Penn State. Erik homed in on hoops, while trying out quite a bit else.

“Kids didn’t specialize back then,” he explained of high school athletics in the 1970s. “You didn’t really know what you wanted to be good at.”

As such, he played soccer in the fall to practice footwork, while filling his spring time with track and field, both sports he envisioned would help in basketball.

Erik had previously played baseball prior to arriving at Peddie but stopped once he got there, having not grown as fast as other kids around him. But he soon reached 6’2” by his third year and caught the attention of Llewellyn Watts, a geometry teacher and former MLB pitcher, who noticed Erik’s athleticism while scorekeeping one of his basketball games. Watts convinced Erik to give baseball another go. Erik soon grew to 6’6,” a transformation that suddenly found him capable of throwing 90+ mile-per-hour pitches.

And just like that, Peddie baseball enjoyed an undefeated season with Erik on the mound, and the athlete was drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1983. The ball club sent three scouts equipped with binders to Erik’s house to negotiate a contract, a process that was ultimately unsuccessful after Erik’s dad suggested a price the Expos considered was too high.

“The scouts quietly closed their binders and said, ‘Well, this is really good coffee,’” Erik recalled of that discussion. “In other words, it was over with.”

So, Erik committed to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., to continue baseball, where, almost to foreshadow the future golf part of his life, he was housed in a dorm named for Arnold Palmer and roomed with soon-to-be PGA TOUR winners Billy Andrade and Len Mattiace. Demon Deacon baseball enjoyed success during Erik’s time there, and after his travels on the U.S. Collegiate National Team roster, he was drafted in the MLB again in 1986. This time, the Mariners called his name, a ball club that could’ve been in a different galaxy as far as he was concerned.

“I knew nothing about the city,” he said. “I’d never been to Washington state or any of the states surrounding there other than maybe California.”

After bouncing around Double and Triple-A ball in the ensuing years, he was initially called up to The Bigs in 1988, where he eventually piled up 56 wins as a Mariners pitcher. He began to like things in the Pacific Northwest, and met his West Seattleite wife, Laura, in 1990; the two married in 1992.

“I loved it in Seattle,” he said. “It was such a great city throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.”

The Cincinnati Reds traded for Erik prior to the 1994 season, in a deal that coincidentally brought Mariners Hall-of-Fame player and today’s Manager Dan Wilson to Seattle for the first time.

By then, golf still wasn’t quite on Erik’s radar. But in Cincy, Erik learned then-Reds Manager Davey Johnson had a stipulation for his starting rotation.

“He wanted his starting pitchers to play golf,” Erik said. “Because of the correlation and camaraderie [to pitching].”

He began to see how it wasn’t unique to the Reds’ bullpen. When he was traded to Boston a year later, he witnessed firsthand how fellow pitchers Roger Clemens and Tim Wakefield were also golf practitioners. Even while playing elsewhere, he joined Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Wash., in 1996, where he sharpened his game during the offseasons, lowering his Handicap Index to a 2. He purchased a housing plot on Greyhawk Golf Course in Arizona in 1998 and still spends his winters at the house he built there.

After a few years in the Toronto Blue Jays system, Erik eventually retired in 2000. Resuming the Mariners routine schedule he once had, he spent most of the year in Kirkland, while spending the winter months further south in the desert.

Retired from baseball, Erik was left with what he referred to as a “competitive void.” He thought about joining a basketball league, but wear and tear on his body from years in The Show swayed him against doing so. He considered entering the finance world – making use of his studies at Wake Forest – but the condition of the stock market was poor at the time.

Then, one morning, the still-scratch golfer read the newspaper.

“I saw this ad to play on the Cascade Tour as an amateur” he recalled. “To come play with the pros if you have a Handicap of 2 or less.”

A hundred dollars later, Erik started in his first tournament at Vicwood Golf Links in Lacey (now part of Hawks Prairie Golf Club). In a bout of beginner’s luck, he shot an opening round 70 that left him tied for the lead of the 36-hole mini-tour event.

“I’m like, ‘What? That is unbelievable,’” he recalls thinking of that score. “I called my dad after that night and said, “I have the same feeling right now as I did when I won a game in the big leagues.’”

He didn’t win that tournament but left it feeling encouraged over playing a game that didn’t constitute his livelihood, which remains the primary reason why he has never turned professional. He played out the rest of that Cascade Tour season and soon began to sign up for Washington Golf and PNGA championships, sensing a natural affinity with such competition. He also delved more into the history of the game, particularly its amateur level. Enjoying practicing and playing, he was also delighted over the camaraderie it brought.

“You get to know a lot of guys,” he said.

Eventually, he won the first of his nine PNGA championships at the 2002 Men’s Mid-Amateur, held that year at Canterwood Golf and Country Club in Gig Harbor, Wash., a win that cemented the place he felt he had in competitive amateur golf. Two years later, he won the 2004 Northwest Open, competing against the region’s PGA Professionals, outdueling PGA Professional Jeff Coston in doing so.

“I think back years later like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did that,’” Erik said humbly.

He won the Oregon Open in 2005, again besting PGA Professionals in doing so. It was that win where Erik discovered what the game truly provided him in addition to just a recreational activity.

“Tournament golf gives me a sense of purpose,” he explained, adding how plenty of other career amateurs he had spoken to and played with felt the same way.

That sense of purpose eventually carried him to his dozen wins between PNGA and WA Golf championships, while playing out of Kirkland and representing Sahalee. At the height of his success, he estimated that he practiced his game for about four hours daily.

How did his decade-plus of playing one of the hardest positions in professional sports help him pick up the game? Sure, the elite athleticism his former profession demanded was nice to have, but not as much as the stability of the “six inches between your ears” as he’s always heard.

“You have to think one pitch at a time, and you can’t let what just happened bother you” the All-Star ball player explained. “You have to stay even-keel, and focus on execution each pitch. You can’t start thinking about facing Rickey Henderson when the eighth and ninth hitters are up, because next thing you know, you’ll be facing Rickey Henderson while the eighth and ninth hitters are on base.”

He continued, in golf terms, “You can’t think about your tee ball on 17 at TPC Sawgrass while you’re teeing off on 14.”

Many competitive golfers avoid checking where they stand on leaderboards, with Erik certainly included in that class. When debriefing with playing partners over drinks or lunch in the clubhouse following a round, no golf-related discussions are had beyond each player offering their numerical score as an icebreaker.

Indeed, when he won the 2022 PNGA Senior Men’s Amateur, Erik didn’t even know where he stood throughout the week or how much he may have been leading by entering the final round. Only when he was in the final group on the last day did he realize he was near the top of the leaderboard. In what he thought was a close final round, Erik won the championship by 12 shots.

When he looks back on his Hall-of-Fame golfing endeavors, he has undying gratitude for the game and the level of competition it allowed him to still have. He likens the Northwest golf community to a fraternity of sorts and knows there’s no place he’d rather play. More recently, injuries have slowed his pace, to the point where he only plays a couple times per week, but Erik feels content with what he may or may not have left on the course.

“I felt like I about reached my potential,” he said. “People would ask me, ‘Why don’t you turn pro?’ I’m like, ‘You don’t realize that I did this in another sport, and you have no idea how good that top end of the pyramid is.’”

Erik Hanson is a PNGA Hall of Famer, and his entry gives him the distinction of being the first ex-major leaguer to earn the honor.

If his goal was to excel while wearing either a Rawlings or FootJoy glove on his left hand, the right-hander did just that.

Accomplishments

• PNGA Men’s Mid-Amateur Champion – 2002
• PNGA Men’s Mid-Amateur Runner-up – 2007, 2018
• PNGA Master-40 Champion – 2007, 2010, 2015, 2017
• PNGA Senior Men’s Amateur Champion – 2022
• PNGA Senior Men’s Amateur Runner-up – 2021
• PNGA Men’s Amateur Semifinalist – 2004, 2005
• PNGA Men’s Senior Team Champion – 2016, 2017, 2018
• Northwest Open Champion – 2004
• Oregon Open Champion – 2005
• Washington Open Runner-up – 2007, 2013, 2016
• Senior Washington Open Champion – 2024
• Senior Oregon Open Runner-up – 2018
• Washington Men’s Amateur Runner-up – 2002
• Washington Men’s Mid-Amateur Champion – 2019
• Washington Men’s Mid-Amateur Runner-up – 2010, 2015
• Washington Senior Men’s Amateur Runner-up – 2020
• Washington Senior Men’s Amateur Champion – 2022
• Washington Senior Men’s Four-Ball Champion – 2022
• Seattle City Amateur Champion – 2015
• Royal Oaks Invitational Champion, Jr./Sr. Division – 8 times
• Pacific Coast Amateur Morse Cup Team – 2 times
• Hudson Cup Team Member – 13 times
• Senior Hudson Cup Team Member – 9 times
• WA Golf Senior Men’s Player of the Year – 2016, 2022
• PNGA Senior Men’s Player of the Year – 2022
• PNGA Lamey Cup Team Member – 13 times
• Qualified for USGA Championships – 17 times
• Inducted into Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame – 2024

Inducted into Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame – 2026