Dedication to baseball success leads Joe Shere to the Janesville Sports Hall of Fame

Sep. 17—JANESVILLE — Joe Shere and his brothers had their own field of dreams before Kevin Costner even learned how to throw a curveball.

Growing up just southeast of Janesville, Joe and his brothers, Jeff and Josh, loved playing all sports—but baseball was their favorite.

So their father, Larry, who had an acre of land behind the house to work with, built a baseball field for the kids.

"He threw up a backstop, measured out the bases and built a pitcher's mound," said Joe's brother, Josh Shere.

Is this heaven? No, it's Janesville.

"Dad would go out there and pitch and I would hit, and my brothers all played," Joe Shere said. "We were all very involved with baseball."

Forged at a young age, Shere's love of baseball lives on today. His non-stop excellence as a third baseman and pitcher—from Janesville Boys Baseball to traveling AAU ball to Janesville Craig High School to UW-Whitewater and beyond—is the reason Shere will be inducted next month into the Janesville Sports Hall of Fame.

Shere, now 41, will be one of five members of the Class of 2020 to be inducted during a ceremony set for Oct. 7 at the Janesville Country Club. It's the Class of 2020 because last year's ceremony was delayed due to COVID-19.

"He's only 41 and this will be the third Hall of Fame he's been inducted into," said Doug Welch, Shere's friend and manager with the Milton Raptors of the Rock River League. "That tells you what you need to know about Joe Shere."

Success has been as constant a companion in Shere's baseball career as his glove, spikes and cap—teaching lessons that Shere has applied in all areas of his life.

"Playing sports has helped me be successful in my business career and also with my family," Shere said. "I've always worked hard, whether it was in the weight room or at practice, because I wanted to put myself in the best position to succeed."

As a youngster, Shere made an Amateur Athletic Union tournament team that traveled all over the Midwest—with his mother, Deb, usually behind the wheel—and starred on a team that took third in a national tournament and played against a California team that featured future 17-year major leaguers Jimmy Rollins and Eric Chavez.

Next came Shere's time at Janesville Craig, where he played football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball all spring (and summer). He earned three varsity letters in baseball, two in football and one in basketball. As a running back for the Cougars, he earned most valuable player and Big Eight offensive player of the year honors as a senior.

Shere earned all-Big Eight Conference honorable mention as a third baseman in 1996 and 1997, hitting .298 both years. Shere was named the Cougars' most valuable player and captain as a senior; as a junior, he put together a 7-1 pitching record with a 1.84 earned-run average.

"We certainly had some success" at Craig, Shere recalled. "We had some really talented players, especially in my class in 1997. I'm sure we would have liked to have done a little bit better (as a team). But we were certainly one of the top teams in the state."

When asked to recall some of his most memorable moments at Craig, Shere flipped the script.

"You're supposed to look back at all these great moments, I know," Shere said. "I had a lot of great moments at Craig and at Whitewater, but what stands out to me are a lot of the moments that maybe didn't come out in my favor."

An example: In a rivalry game against Janesville Parker, Shere was called upon to pitch and faced a Vikings lineup that included his friend Ben Stanley, Parker's catcher.

"We wound up winning, but Ben hit three home runs off me in that game," Shere recalled with a laugh. "He went on to UW-Oshkosh and was successful there. He certainly had my number that day at Riverside (Park)."

Shere also played summer American Legion ball in Janesville, earning awards for his play.

Shere really came into his own, though, when he arrived at Whitewater as a business management and finance major and joined the baseball team coached by the late, legendary Jim Miller.

The Warhawks won back-to-back Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference titles in 2000 and 2001, with Shere playing third base and pitching, and twice advanced both years to NCAA Division III regionals.

He earned all-conference and Division III all-region honors three times, was named the Warhawks' most valuable player in 2000, earned two WIAC player of the week awards and was named to the WIAC Scholastic Honor Roll all four years. He remains among the top 10 players in program history in career doubles (40), stolen bases (51) and hits (187).

Shere was inducted into the UW-Whitewater Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018.

Back then, UW-Oshkosh was the gold-standard program in the WIAC, winning or sharing the league title 20 times between 1979 and 1999. But Shere was part of a group that shifted that paradigm, as Whitewater has won or shared the WIAC title 16 times since 2000.

"We were there for the beginning of the success that they still have now," Shere said.

Shere recalled that during his sophomore year, the Warhawks swept all four regular-season games against Oshkosh. "Oshkosh had never been swept in four games under Tom Lechnir," Shere said.

Joe's younger brother, Josh, wound up going to Oshkosh and enjoying a successful career—and Joe said that Lechnir told him he wished Josh would have been the second Shere to play for the Titans.

"My senior year, after we played Oshkosh, I talked with Coach Lechnir. He told me he came and watched an (American) Legion baseball game where we played Baraboo, and he was looking at a player from Baraboo," Shere said.

"He apologized for not recruiting me—which made sense, because my batting average against Oshkosh turned out to be something like .430."

Despite all his success, Shere was not able to make a connection with a major-league franchise.

"My junior year I was eligible for the draft," Shere said. "There were some teams that were interested, but for whatever reason it didn't work out. My senior year, I didn't have as good a year as I could have. I put the work in, but it didn't work out."

Shere graduated from Whitewater with a finance degree, but his baseball playing days were far from finished. He wound up playing "12 or 13 years" with the Janesville Aces of the Wisconsin State League, taking on teams from all around Wisconsin and the Chicago suburbs.

Shere excelled with the Aces, earning induction into the Wisconsin State League Hall of Fame in 2014.

Eventually, though, life and its responsibilities got in the way of devoting every weekend to baseball.

"You're playing games every Saturday and Sunday. It got to be so much that I had to find an alternative," Shere said.

That's when Shere accepted an invitation from Milton's Doug Welch to join his team in a 35-and-older league in Madison. It's safe to say that league wasn't as challenging as the Wisconsin State League.

"Talk about overmatched," Welch said. "We got out of that league because we won our last 44 games over 2 1/2 seasons."

Welch helped to form the Milton Junction Pub Raptors, which became part of the Rock River League. That league didn't have any age restrictions, so Shere found himself taking on players in their late teens or 20s. That didn't matter.

"Probably his first three or four years, he was the best pitcher in the league, hands down," Welch said. "Probably the best hitter in the league, too, outside of his brother Josh."

Welch said that even in his 30s, Shere was able to reach 80-plus mph with his fastball and hard slider: "He struck out a lot of guys because he threw a lot harder than people saw in that league at that time."

Shere won the Rock River League's most valuable player honor in 2013, and Welch said no one deserved it more.

"He is somebody who always played the game right and demanded that everyone around him did the same," Welch said. "He always brought our younger guys to a much higher level. People didn't want to let him down because they'd see him busting his butt out there to stretch a single into a double, and they wanted to emulate him and play at his level."

It took a doctor's order and a growing family—Shere and his wife, Carrie (Davis), now have 7-year-old twins (son Easton and daughter Averie), a 5-year-old son (Brodie) and a 1-year-old son (Gracyn)—to get Shere to finally hang up his spikes five years ago.

"What put my baseball career to a halt was when I had elbow surgery and the surgeon said I couldn't play competitive baseball anymore," Shere said. "It was an easy decision because at that point playing baseball with my kids was more important."

Instead, he spends his day as a commercial lender at the community-minded Blackhawk Bank in Janesville, where he is vice president of business banking, and coaches his children in baseball and softball at least four evenings a week.

"I still love the sport, I love the game. If I could still play, I probably would," Shere said. "But what I've got now is so much more important than playing."