West Bend, Wi – The West Bend Baseball Association will hold its 2026 WBBA Hall of Fame Induction on November 14 2026. The evening celebrates the people who make baseball work in this community: the players, coaches, volunteers, umpires, and supporters who show up year after year.
“We’re bringing back our traditional event after seven long years of fundraising and rebuilding Carl M. Kuss Memorial Field,” said WBBA President Willie Mueller. “We’re excited to sit down and celebrate all the people who help make this game great here in West Bend and across Southeast Wisconsin.”
More than a dozen awards will be presented and for the next week we will highlight some of the recipients.
Erik Kraemer is a West Bend native whose love for baseball was forged on the Little League diamonds of his hometown at a Carl M. Kuss Memorial Field where he played for West Bend East High School Class of 1999.
That passion carried him through a four-year collegiate career and into 15 years of competitive play in the story Land O’Lakes Baseball League. As an outfielder at West Bend East, Kraemer was a four-time Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association All-Star Selection and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel All-Area Selection, a distinction that placed him among the finest high school players in the state throughout the 1990s. He was part of the greatest high school team in Wisconsin history.
The 1999 West Bend East State won a state championship and finished ranked in the USA Today Top 20. After graduation, Kraemer continued his career at Trayton College in Illinois before transferring into the University of Wisconsin Parkside where he remains among the program’s all-time leaders in nearly every offensive category.
Following his collegiate career, Kraemer brought his talents to the amateur game, played for the Kewaskum A’s of the Rock River Baseball League and the West Bend Company and later West Bend 7-Up in the Land O’Lakes Baseball League.
In 2009, he became a player manager and led the team to a league championship in 2010. He retired as a player in 2012. In four seasons with the Kewaskum A’s and 11 seasons with the West Bend Company 7-Up, Kraemer had 712 career hits.
Kraemer has remained deeply connected to the game as a coach. Alongside future Hall of Fame member Curt Schroeder and WBBA Secretary Craig Larsen, he served as an assistant coach at West Bend East for four seasons under the legendary head coach Doug Gonring where West Bend East won a state championship and went to another. Today, Kraemer coaches his son’s West Bend Thunder Club U-12 baseball team, a role he has held for four seasons alongside future Hall of Fame member Ryan Rohlinger.
