WooSox honor Steinberg, Tracy, Fidrych, Zabinski in Hall of Fame class

Mark Fidrych’s name still carries the kind of pull that turns a team honor into a reminder of baseball’s local memory. The WooSox put the former major league sensation and Central Massachusetts native into their Class of 2026 on May 21, alongside founding team president Dr. Charles Steinberg, manager Chad Tracy and civic leader Gene Zabinski, a class that reaches from the roots of the franchise to the dugout the club has now become.

Fidrych and Zabinski will be inducted posthumously, and that detail gives the class its clearest shape. This is not simply a roll call of numbers and roles. It is a group built around the people who helped define Worcester baseball before and after Polar Park opened in 2021, and around the personalities who made the move from Pawtucket feel like something larger than a relocation.

Zabinski’s place in the class is tied to one of the most recognizable pieces of the franchise’s origin story. The WooSox credited him with shepherding the gathering and mailing of more than 10,000 postcards that urged the Pawtucket Red Sox to move to Worcester. The Canal District Alliance launched that postcard campaign on Dec. 19, 2015, and the effort became part of the long path that led then-owner Larry Lucchino, on Aug. 17, 2018, to commit to bringing the franchise to Worcester for more than 35 years.

Steinberg’s induction honors the leadership that helped build the modern Worcester operation from the ground up. The Hall itself was established in February 2024, during the club’s fourth season at Polar Park, to recognize former or current players, managers, coaches, broadcasters, executives and others who have been instrumental in Worcester Red Sox and Worcester baseball history. The inaugural class, inducted in September 2024, included Lucchino, former Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus Jr. and Rich Gedman. A second class followed in August 2025, and the 2026 group is the third since the Hall was created.

Tracy’s selection connects the Hall to the present tense of Triple-A baseball. The WooSox announced on Jan. 16, 2026, that he would return for his fifth season as manager, and he was named interim manager of the Boston Red Sox on April 26 after the WooSox beat Syracuse 9-2. That moment underscored why the franchise treats its Hall as more than a nostalgia project: Worcester’s identity is still being written by the same people who shape the lineup, the clubhouse and the path from Triple-A to Fenway.