Next Saturday, the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame will welcome seven new individual inductees along with the 1976-77 Mars girls basketball team.

Joining that team in enshrinement will be Jeff McAnallen, Terry Henry, Marlesse Schlott Hames, Jeff Dickson, Jimmy Stewart, Scott Grinder and the late Steven Napora.

Grinder is longtime president of Christian Sports International and a former professional umpire. The others won and won often in their respective sports, which include golf, basketball, softball, football and kick-boxing.

But for every Hall of Fame career that is built, there is the “other side.”

That’s the side that lost and lost often, many times in embarrassing fashion.

That would be me.

The sport doesn’t matter. Pick one. It humbled me.

Baseball? My Little League team lost games 56-0, 42-0 and 40-4. My mother was banned from attending any more games after instructing me to charge the mound after a kid hit me with a pitch three times in a game.

My Pony League teammates threatened to walk off the team if I didn’t get a hit after our coach opted to not pinch-hit for me at a critical point in a playoff game.

Feel the love.

I doubled into the left-center field gap, by the way, even though I took a header tripping over first base in my excitement.

Football? I organized a flag football team for another newspaper I worked for. We lost our league opener, 105-0. Thankfully, the officials didn’t make us play the second half.

We were immediately kicked out of the league. True story.

Golf? I can drive a ball 200 yards on a dry day, provided my ball is able to roll down the cart path.

Bowling? My approach is comprised of one giant step, followed by about 13 (or so I’m told) little ones. I’ve been called Fred Flintstone on a number of occasions.

Softball? A power hitter on the opposing team once offered me 10 bucks if I’d pitch that night. My adult recreation league team had a right fielder who couldn’t see, a second baseman who couldn’t move, a shortstop who hit the baserunner more often than the first baseman’s mitt and a first baseman who wondered why the ball was being thrown to him in the first place.

Besides that, we were pretty good. Not.

Swimming? I once anchored my relay team to a fifth-place finish in an eight-team event. My team was leading when I hit the water.

So you get the picture. We all can’t excel in sports.

I have ample respect for those who do.

The county Hall of Fame honors our own — our family members, neighbors, friends, former teammates.

Now in its 49th year and with well over 300 members, the BCSHOF is one of the most successful of its kind anywhere.

Hopefully, the Butler Days Inn banquet hall will be packed come Saturday night.

These people deserve it.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle