We’re proud to be a part of the effort to get long-deserved recognition for a local sports legend, Reggie Harris – a two-sports star at Waynesboro High School in the 1980s, who earned a basketball scholarship from Virginia Tech, and was also a first-round MLB Draft pick out of high school by the Boston Red Sox.
Nominations for the Virginia High School League Hall of Fame are open through Thursday, Oct. 1.
Harris, a two-time All-State selection in baseball, and a first-team All-State basketball player in his senior year, 1986-1987, is long overdue for inclusion in the Hall.
“He led us to the state playoffs in all four years of his varsity career,” his baseball coach, David Huffer, wrote in a letter of recommendation for Harris. “In his senior year, he led us to the Virginia AA state baseball championship. In the championship game, he pitched a two-hitter with 14 strikeouts. The opposing coach told me that they had played against AAA and AAAA teams in Southwest Virginia and had not seen anyone like Reggie.”
Harris was named the state Gatorade Player of the Year after his senior baseball season, finishing his four-year high school career with a 24-3 win-loss record.
On the hardwood, Harris averaged 18.5 points per game over his four-year varsity career, finishing second in the Valley District in scoring as a junior (21.0 points per game) and leading the district in scoring as a senior (23.1 points per game).
Harris is still, four decades, the school’s all-time leading scorer, with 1,664 career points.
“As a basketball player, Reggie was a combination of speed, strength, power and skill. His athleticism was seldom matched by few that he competed against,” said Larry Leonard, Harris’s basketball coach at WHS. “Although he was our go to guy, he made the players around him better. Reggie was a team player who led by example. In his career, Reggie never missed practice or a game, which was an example of his passion and dedication to the game.
“In my 42 years of coaching – high school and college – at all levels, Reggie Harris was the best athlete that I have had the privilege to coach,” Leonard said.
A couple of months after graduation, Harris had a tough choice to make – basketball at Virginia Tech, which was recruiting him with the promise that he could play both sports, as the school had allowed another local two-sport star, Dell Curry, to do, or signing with the Red Sox as a first-round pick.
Other first-round picks in the 1987 MLB Draft: future Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr. (first) and Craig Biggio (22nd) went ahead of Harris (26th).
Other names from that first round included Jack McDowell (fifth; went on to win the 1993 AL Cy Young); Kevin Appier (ninth; 169 career MLB wins); Delino DeShields (12th; 13-season MLB career, 24.4 career bWAR); Travis Fryman (30th; 223 career MLB homers).
“I was all packed up and going to Virginia Tech. Already had my classes set up. I got there on a Friday. Classes started on a Tuesday,” said Harris, who signed for a $92,500 bonus – 2026 inflation value: $272,761.
First-round picks get a lot more in terms of their bonuses these days – for reference, the 26th pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, Carter Beck, an outfielder, got a $2,684,100 bonus from the Atlanta Braves when he signed this summer.
By the end of his third season in the Red Sox farm system, in 1989, Harris was getting the attention of rival organizations, including the one that would take him, via the Rule 5 Draft, the defending World Series champion Oakland A’s.
Harris, at the precocious age of 21, made 16 appearances in the bigs in 1990, with one start, going 1-0 with a 3.48 ERA in 41.1 innings, with 31 Ks and 22 bases on balls and a 1.11 WHIP, for the A’s, who went 103-59 in the regular season, repeated as American League champs, then lost in a four-game sweep in the 1990 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
A shoulder injury that developed in his sophomore season, in 1991, would linger for the remainder of his career, but Harris would gut it out all the way through 2006 – his career numbers have him having appeared in 506 games across the minors and MLB over 19 seasons.
His local legend is still something that people who saw him talk about all these many years later.
“In basketball, Reggie filled gyms. In baseball, he shut down elite competition,” said a former teammate, Donnie Lafferty. “He competed against some of the best athletes our region produced and consistently elevated everyone around him. For many of us growing up, Reggie Harris was more than a teammate — he was a regional sports icon. People still talk about him today in coffee shops, at family gatherings, in barbershops, and in living rooms across our community. That kind of lasting presence is rare.”
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Chris Graham
