CARTHAGE ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME
Don Welke, a native of Harvard, Ill., lettered four times in baseball between 1961 and 1965 and played on two Carthage campuses. After graduation, Welke coached at the high school level in Tigerton, Wis., before landing at Eastern Michigan University as a graduate assistant coach. He later served as the baseball and men’s basketball coach at Concordia College (Michigan) from 1971 to 1976. In 1976, he became athletic director at Evart High School in Evart, Mich., where he also scouted Michigan baseball prospects for the Cincinnati Reds.
In 1976, he went to work full-time for the Toronto Blue Jays as an advance scout, and in 1977, Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick named Welke the team's Midwest Scouting Director. Welke held that position until 1993 when he accompanied Gillick to Baltimore after the Orioles named Gillick their general manager. Welke's immediate supervisor with Orioles, scouting director Gary Nickels, also had a CCIW background. Nickels played for Illinois Wesleyan in the late 1960s.
In 2005, Welke worked as a cross-checker for the Texas Rangers. He reunited with Pat Gillick in 2006 as a special assistant to the Philadelphia Phillies general manager. From 2007 to 2014, Welke was a senior special assistant to Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels before being named the San Diego Padres’ vice president of scouting operations in August 2014.
Welke was featured in a July 13, 1996, New York Times article entitled, “Proving Himself Again,” a piece primarily about former Blue Jays first baseman John Olerud. Welke was the scout who recommended that Gillick draft and sign John Olerud out of Washington State University in 1989. Olerud played for the Blue Jays from 1989 to 1996 before being traded to the New York Mets in December 1996. Welke was also responsible for the Blue Jays selecting Augie Schmidt IV in the 1983 draft, 1996 Cy Young Award winner Pat Hentgen in the 1986 draft, and he recommended that Gillick draft Jim Abbott out of high school in Flint, Mich., in 1985.
