Marquette baseball honoring lost fans, friends this season

This season the Marquette baseball team is honoring a pair of fans and friends have passed with their initials on the back of their ball caps.

Doyle Olson “DO” and Charlie Ellerbrock “CE” were both special people when it came to Crusaders baseball.

Olson, a 1959 Marquette graduate, was a co-captain of the football team as a senior as well as a standout left-hander pitcher for the baseball team.

“I’ve been here at Marquette for a long time, and I can count on two hands how many home games Doyle missed until he passed away last fall,” Marquette baseball coach Todd Hopkins said. “If we were playing here at Masinelli, hot or cold, rain or shine, he was here. He was big supporter of Marquette High School and our baseball program.”

Ellerbrock — an Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee in 2024 as a sportswriter — spent over five decades chronicling stories as a sportswriter during stunts with La Salle NewsTribune, the Bureau County Republican, the Ottawa Daily Times and The Times before passing away this February. At The Times for the past 20 years, Ellerbrock found himself as the beat writer for Marquette, which he loved.

“Charlie had great relationships with everyone here at Marquette,“ Hopkins said. ”He was a great reporter that always told it like it was but was also fair. As great as a writer he was, he was a greater person.”

Marquette senior Sam Mitre, part of the Crusaders Class 1A state champion team, said Ellerbrock always had a word of encouragement when covering a Marquette sporting event.

“He was always wishing me and my teammates good luck before games,“ Mitre said. ”He would ask how things were going and how everyone in our family was doing.

“There has definitely been an empty space during our baseball games this spring. I miss reading his stories after our games.”