Hooper Reed Funeral Homes

Those (Hillsborough) students would hurl racial slurs, throw rocks and spit at him," recalled Dori Reed Blanc, one of Mr. Reed’s two daughters. "My father could have easily been bitter and harbored ill will. Instead, he persevered and focused on his goals."Today, that same field is named in his honor."So the lesson here is if something bad happens to you … learn from it," Blanc said told a congregation of roughly 350 on Saturday at St. Lawrence Catholic Church. "Find strength from it, and one day in God’s time, there will be a positive outcome."Blanc’s story highlighted a 90-minute "Home Run Celebration" for Mr. Reed, who died in a Tampa rehabilitation facility Dec. 30 at 86. A multisport athlete at Middleton and Florida A&M, Mr. Reed returned to his hometown and evolved into one of the most revered high school baseball coaches in bay area history.In addition to coaching at Middleton and Hillsborough, Mr. Reed co-founded Belmont Heights Little League, which produced four World Series teams from 1973-81 and a handful of future big-league players.Saturday’s mourners included former major-leaguers Gary Sheffield, Carl Everett and Jason Romano, all of whom played for Mr. Reed at Hillsborough, where he coached for roughly a quarter-century before retiring in 1997. Tony Saladino, whose 38-year-old Hills­borough County prep baseball tournament has earned national acclaim, also attended, as did Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.They were joined by dozens of Mr. Reed’s former coaching peers and school administrators, as well as several members of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, to which Mr. Reed belonged. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Carl Hinson, a statistician for Mr. Reed in the mid-1970s, was among four eulogists. "The rules were for everybody. He didn’t care if you were a superstar, third-stringer, second-stringer," Hinson said."I mean, this is the 1970s. John Travolta’s hanging out doing Saturday Night Fever. We all wanted long hair, but we didn’t have long hair, we had short hair. No short hair, you didn’... (Tampabay.com)