Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Harvey Araton, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and longtime Sports of the Times columnist, covered the full range of local, New York, national and international sports in 40 years at the Staten Island Advance, New York Post, Daily News and New York Times.
The author of nine books, including Driving Mr. Yogi and When the Garden Was Eden, Araton was the 2017 recipient of the Curt Gowdy Award for excellence in sports journalism, given at the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Tony Rafaniello won 511 games – almost 200 more than the next highest total among Staten Island high school basketball coaches – over 38 seasons at Monsignor Farrell, New Dorp, and Moore Catholic.
Rafaniello, whose teams won five Staten Island High School Basketball League championships – two at Farrell, and three more at New Dorp – was also the lead architect behind the creation of the SIHSL Tournament, highlight of the Staten Island sports calendar.
Walt Hameline coached the Wagner College football team to the 1987 NCAA Division III national championship, as well as a Lambert Cup, five ECAC titles, two Northeast Conference championships; and, after overseeing the program’s move to Division I, the school’s first and only FCS playoff victory.
Hameline’s 223 victories, all at Wagner, put him in the top 50 in college football history, fifth among FCS coaches. The 2012 FCS National Coach of the Year is a member of the New Jersey Sportswriters’ Hall of Fame.
Tony Canzoneri, a five-time world boxing champion – winning titles as a featherweight, lightweight and junior-welterweight – was among the best pound-for-pound fighters in his prime, which coincided with the height of the fight game’s 1930s popularity.
Canzoneri fought 18 world champions and six Hall of Famers on his way to a 141-24-10 record that propelled him into the World Boxing Hall of Fame, the International Hall of Fame, and the Ring Magazine Hall of Fame.
Herb White was named New York City’s top high school player in 1935, after hitting .365, .420 and .553 at Tottenville High School. An outstanding defensive catcher, he hit for a .310 average over five seasons in the Yankee organization, but spent the next five years in military service during World War II.
With his best baseball behind him, White found a career on the Fire Department, coached the Wagner College baseball team, and was named to the Staten Island Advance All-Century Team.
Herb White, a cousin of Hall of Famer Matty White, was days from finishing his Army enlistment and getting back to baseball when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The next time – and the last time – he played pro ball was in 1946, when he hit .500, drove in three runs and scored two in five games with the Kansas City Blues, the Yankees’ Triple-A farm team.