Cheyenne Post Six baseball honors six newest Hall of Famers

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (Wyoming News Now) - On Friday night, the Cheyenne Post Six legion baseball team had a chance to honor some notable figures from their past. The team inducted six former sixers into their hall of fame.

“It’s pretty surreal, I mean it’s quite a humbling honor. I mean, there’s just been so many that have come through the years, and just being part of this class. I played baseball with all of them except for one, and just great people, great teammates, great players, and just an incredible experience,” said Steve Soltesz, one of the newest Hall of Famers.

The inductees list, (made up of Lamont Oliver, Danny Orr, Steve Soltesz, Shane Taylor, John Wimmer, and Mike Zegunis) starred for the sixers throughout the 80′s and 90′s. It was called a bit of a forgotten era by those who helped pick the hall of fame class for 2022, which made selecting players from that time frame such a large focus this year.

“It was just kinda like a start of what the program is now. It was one of the first year’s that Tagg Lain was even a coach at Post 6, so we were kind of one of the building blocks of the start of the program and getting it rolling,” HOFer Shane Taylor mentioned of his time.

About the Hall of Famers

Lamont Oliver was a dominant two-sport athlete in Cheyenne in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1991, he had a remarkable 16 hits (16 for 31) and took home MVP honors as Post 6 won its first Wyoming State Legion Baseball Tournament since the 1970s. Oliver’s performance included seven base hits (1 HR, 1 triple, and 5 singles) in a 13-inning elimination game against No. 1 seed Casper. For his career, Oliver hit more than twenty homeruns. Oliver, who was also an All-State linebacker and running back for the Cheyenne Central Indians state championship team in 1989, played college baseball and football at Midland Lutheran College in Nebraska.

An imposing right-handed flamethrower, Danny Orr is the first Cheyenne native to have been selected in the Major League Draft. Orr pitched for Post 6 for three consecutive seasons in the mid-1980s. With a fastball that consistently registered speeds in the mid-90s, Orr played college baseball at Glendale Community College in Glendale, Arizona, before being drafted in the 1989 Major League Baseball Draft by the Oakland Athletics. Following his playing career in the A’s organization, Danny trained and evaluated pitchers for three MLB teams. He then went on to patent and release a neural training method that helps athletes all over the world optimize their performance.

Affectionately known as “Slappy,” Steve Soltesz could slap base hits wherever he wanted in the outfield when he played for Post 6 in the late 1980s. In 1988, he batted .364, good for the fourth highest on the team, and was second on the team in doubles and slugging percentage. In 1989, he finished the regular season with a .417 batting average, more than .050 better than the next best hitter on the team. He was also a team leader in RBIs that season and picked up a dozen hits at the Wyoming State Legion Tournament, pushing his final season average over .430.

In a time when it was rare to play three seasons of varsity legion baseball in Cheyenne, Shane Taylor did just that in 1989, 1990, and 1991. In 1989, as 16-year-old, Taylor hit .351. Taylor’s most impressive season came in 1991, when he led Post 6′s State Championship team with a.364 batting average and six homeruns. Taylor went on to play college baseball at Regis University in Denver, Colorado.

John Wimmer is generally regarded as one of the best defensive shortstops to play baseball in Cheyenne, but it was his bat and speed that most impressed the selection committee. In 1987, Wimmer hit .341, and in 1988 he led Post 6 in average (.402), doubles (19), triples (6), homeruns (5), and RBIs (41). Wimmer also played college baseball.

Mike Zegunis was a hitting machine for Post 6 in the late 1980s. In 1987, he hit .403 in the regular season – .043 higher than the next best hitter. He also hit three homeruns during the Wyoming State Legion Tournament. In 1988, he hit .398, and had 14 doubles and 39 RBIs (all second to fellow-inductee Wimmer). Zegunis was part of a junior college national championship football team at Glendale Community College before becoming a starter at Fort Hays State University, where he later coached. Zegunis has coached football and baseball in the Kansas City Metro area for the past 30 years.

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