UC Riverside Athletics Hall of Fame
Don Edwards helped in the development of the first Highlanders baseball teams back in the mid 1950s, and became the team’s head coach prior to the 1960 season. In 1966, Edwards offered John Lowenstein, who would go on to a 15-year Major League Baseball career, the first athletics scholarship in school history.
That same season Edwards and Assistant Coach Gary Adams came up with the idea to host an annual tournament featuring major Division I-caliber teams. Originally called the Riverside National Intercollegiate Baseball Tournament, Ohio State, UCLA, BYU, Mississippi State, Yale, Wyoming and Washington all traveled to UC Riverside in the spring of 1967 to play in what would eventually become known as the Riverside Baseball Invitational (RBI) Tournament.
In 1976 Edwards coached the US National Team in the Pan American Games and in 1994 he was elected to the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame.
