Aaron Elton Pointer (born April 19, 1942) is an American retired

professional baseball Professional baseball is organized baseball in which players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system. It is played in leagues and associated farm teams throughout the world. Modern professional ...

player. He played in the major leagues for the Houston Colt .45s/Astros in and again in –. After his baseball career, he was a

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

official. He is also known for being the brother of the four sisters who form the Pointer Sisters singing group.

Biography

Early life

Pointer is the eldest of six children of Rev. Elton and Sarah Elizabeth Pointer, pastors at the West Oakland Church of God. He is the older brother of Fritz Pointer, a college professor and author, and older brother of

Ruth Ruth (or its variants) may refer to: Places France * Château de Ruthie, castle in the commune of Aussurucq in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France Switzerland * Ruth, a hamlet in Cologny United States * Ruth, Alabama * Ruth, Ar ...

, Anita,

Bonnie Bonnie, is a Scottish given name and is sometimes used as a descriptive reference, as in the Scottish folk song, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. It comes from the Scots language word "bonnie" (pretty, attractive), or the French bonne (good). That ...

, and

June Pointer June Antoinette Pointer (November 30, 1953 – April 11, 2006) was an American singer, best known as the youngest of the founding members of the vocal group The Pointer Sisters. Early life and career Born the youngest of six children to minister ...

the Pointer Sisters The Pointer Sisters are an American pop and R&B singing group from Oakland, California, that achieved mainstream success during the 1970s and 1980s. Their repertoire has included such diverse genres as pop, jazz, electronic music, bebop, bl ...

.Aaron Pointer Baseball Stats
Baseball Almanac. Retrieved on 2008-06-09. Aaron Pointer grew up in West Oakland, California, and attended

McClymonds High School McClymonds High School is a public high school in the West Oakland neighborhood of Oakland, California, United States. In addition to being the third oldest high school in Oakland, it is the only comprehensive high school in West Oakland, opera ...

, where he became student body president. At McCymonds, Pointer was active in sports. Along with two future NBA players,

Paul Silas Paul Theron Silas (July 12, 1943 – December 10, 2022) was an American professional basketball player and head coach in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a player, he was a two-time NBA All-Star and earned five selections to the N ...

(Pointer's cousin) and

Joe Ellis Josiah Wear Ellis (born November 16, 1957) is a former American football executive who was the president and CEO of the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL). College Ellis received his bachelor's degree from Colorado College i ...

, he played with McClymonds High's unbeaten 1959–60 team. He went to the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

on a full

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

scholarship. At USF, he met his wife, Leona.Greg Bishop.
Aaron Pointer is a man for all seasons
, ''

The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington ...

'', April 16, 2006. Retrieved on 2008-07-11.

Baseball career

In 1961, Pointer signed with Houston, a

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

expansion team set to begin major league play the following season. In his debut 1961 campaign, Pointer became the last player to bat over .400 in a full summer season of organized professional baseball in the United States and Canada (although several players have since done so in Mexico.)Jeff Faraudo.
44 YEARS LATER, .400 MARK SAFE
''

Oakland Tribune The ''Oakland Tribune'' is a weekly newspaper published in Oakland, California, by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. Founded in 1874, the ''Tribune'' rose to become an influential daily newspaper. With the declin ...

'', August 30, 2005. Retrieved on 2008-07-11. Playing in 93 games for the Class D Salisbury Braves of the

Western Carolinas League Portion of plaque displaying likeness of John Henry Moss at Municipal Stadium, Hagerstown, Maryland The Western Carolinas League was a Class D (1948–52; 1960–62) and a low Class A (1963–79) full-season league in American minor league base ...

and four games for the Triple-A

Houston Buffs Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

of the

American Association American Association may refer to: Baseball * American Association (1882–1891), a major league active from 1882 to 1891 * American Association (1902–1997), a minor league active from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997 * American Association of Profe ...

, he batted .402 with 132 total hits. He led the Western Carolinas circuit in runs and

batting average Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic. Cricket In cricket, a player's batting average is ...

, and was named Most Valuable Player and an All-Star. Pointer made his debut in the major leagues during the last week of the season, appearing in two games for the Colt .45s, then spent the entirety of the 1964 and 1965 seasons in Houston's minor league system, as well as most of the 1966 and 1967 seasons. He did play 38 games for the renamed Astros in and . Over three seasons, Pointer had a .208 batting average with two

home run In baseball, a home run (abbreviated HR) is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle the bases and reach home plate safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team. A home run i ...

s and 15

runs batted in A run batted in (RBI; plural RBIs ) is a statistic in baseball and softball that credits a batter for making a play that allows a run to be scored (except in certain situations such as when an error is made on the play). For example, if the ba ...

. He was traded to the Chicago Cubs during the 1968 season, but never made it back to the major leagues. He played for the Triple-A Tacoma Cubs in 1968 and 1969, and signed with the

Nishitetsu Lions The are a professional baseball team in Japan's Pacific League based north of Tokyo in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture. Before 1979, they were based in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture in Kyushu. The team is owned by a subsidiary of Seibu Rail ...

Fukuoka is the sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since anc ...

, Japan after the 1969 season. Pointer played three seasons in Japan from 1970 to 1972. He also played in

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

before retiring.Charles Aikens
"Aaron Pointer To Retire From Tacoma Recreation", ''Oakland Post'', November 12, 2000 (via HighBeam)
/ref>

After baseball

After retiring from baseball, Pointer settled in

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...

, in 1973 and worked for Pierce County Parks and Recreation, scheduling and supervising athletic activities. He began officiating football games at the recreational level and later at the high school and college level. From 1978 to 1987, Pointer officiated for the Pacific-10 Conference, eventually becoming a head linesman. He is also the first

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

referee in the Pac-10. In 1987, Pointer joined the

as a head linesman wearing uniform number 79. He retired from the NFL after the 2003 season, but he continues to serve as a game-day observer for the NFL. He once worked a game in Los Angeles where his sisters sang the national anthem before kickoff. Pointer retired from Pierce County Parks and Recreation in 2000 after 29 years. He currently serves as president of the Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma board of commissioners, after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2001. He also serves on the Executive Board of the Tacoma Athletic Commission."Pierce County: Metropolitan Park District board picks new commissioner", ''The News Tribune'', April 8, 2001.
Newsbank
. In June 2008, Pointer was inducted into the Tacoma Hall of Fame.John McGrath.

''The News Tribune'', June 2, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-07-11.

References

External links

Aaron Pointer
at Baseball Almanac
Aaron Pointer
at (Venezuelan Professional Baseball League)

at Pierce County Parks and Recreation {{DEFAULTSORT:Pointer, Aaron 1942 births 20th-century African-American sportspeople Living people 21st-century African-American people African-American baseball players Amarillo Sonics players American expatriate baseball players in Japan Baseball players from Arkansas Baseball players from Oakland, California Baseball players from Tacoma, Washington Durham Bulls players Estrellas Orientales (VPBL) players Houston Astros players Houston Buffs players Houston Colt .45s players Industriales de Valencia players Major League Baseball outfielders Nishitetsu Lions players Oklahoma City 89ers players Aaron Salisbury Braves players San Francisco Dons baseball players San Francisco Dons men's basketball players San Antonio Bullets players Sportspeople from Little Rock, Arkansas Tacoma Cubs players