ANNVILLE, Pa. - Former Haverford baseball standout Chaon Garland '91 has been named one of the 19 inductees to the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) Hall of Fame Class of 2020.
For three years, Garland was one of the most dominant pitchers to ever play at Haverford College. He never got the opportunity, however, to pitch his senior year. Instead of taking the mound at Class of '16 Field with his Haverford teammates, Garland was pitching in the Oakland Athletics minor league system. Garland became the first Haverford player to be drafted by a Major League Baseball (MLB) team when the A's selected the right-hander in the third round of the 1990 draft.
Standing six feet, five inches tall, the imposing Garland put up some impressive numbers in his collegiate career. He compiled 17 wins, 210 strikeouts, 9.34 strikeouts per nine innings, 20 complete games and three shutouts in 214.1 career innings. Garland departed Haverford with nearly every pitching record, as those marks stood for almost 25 years before Tommy Bergjans, an eighth-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers, graduated from Haverford in 2015.
Garland's sophomore and junior seasons were nothing short of spectacular. He went 14-7 with a 3.03 ERA in 143 innings pitched. Pitching in front of scores of professional scouts during his junior year, Garland impressed, striking out 85 batters in 70 innings and winning four MAC games in-a-row. During those two seasons Garland earned a pair of All-MAC and All-Mid-Atlantic Region selections. He became the second Haverford player to earn All-America accolades and remains one of just two first-team selections (Bergjans) from Haverford.
The right-hander went on to play four seasons in the A's farm system, progressing to the Double A level. In 1992, Garland played for Single A Modesto and led the California League in ERA and strikeouts before being called up to Double A Huntsville. He was on the 1995 spring training roster for the Houston Astros during the MLB players' strike. The Philadelphia-era native was inducted into Haverford's Thomas Glasser '82 Hall of Achievement in 2010. He currently resides in Park City, Utah with his wife Melissa and their two sons Bryson and Taylor.
Haverford's history with the MAC goes back to a 1912 meeting of the then-named Middle Atlantic States Collegiate Athletic Association (MASCAA). The Fords attended the gathering but did not participate in a MASCAA event until 1914. Haverford is officially listed as a MASCAA/MAC member from 1945-46 through 1992-93, when 10 schools left the league to form the Centennial Conference.