When he died in July of 1997, the headline in the Rochester Post Bulletin sports section, proclaimed, at the top of the front page: “Rochester loses ‘heavyweight’ Sternberg.

That was the “hometown’’ viewpoint on Ben Sternberg, whose death was a loss to the entire boxing community of Minnesota. Sternberg accomplished things as a boxing promoter that no other in the same role did before him or have done since.

He was, more accurately, a Minnesota boxing promoter who happened to live in Rochester, but whose long reach, connections and know-how made him one of the best in state history.

Many of his accomplishments as a promoter occurred in Rochester, certainly, but it was on a bigger stage, Met Sports Center, where he put together ghts attractive enough to produce record-setting attendance.

His influence went far beyond the boxing ring. He was an avid baseball fan, and attended forty or more games a year after the Twins arrived in the state. He was a player himself and later a manager of the defunct Rochester Royals.

Bob Brown, sports editor of the Post-Bulletin at the time of Sternberg’s death wrote the piece memorializing him. Brown recalled that one of Sternberg’s favorite stories from his active days with the Royals involved his rejection of a 16-year-old player named Willie Mays. Brown also noted that during the last summer of Sternberg’s life, he was paid a visit in Rochester by a close friend named Joe Garagiola.

Yet, it was the boxing world that grieved most at Sternberg’s loss. A multi-talented individual who not only promoted fights and managed baseball games but wrote about them as well for the Post-Bulletin.

Everywhere he worked in the boxing world, the comments were also the same. Sternberg was a man of his word, a man of integrity and honest to a fault, all rarities within the professional boxing community, where quite the opposite of such traits were not only more common but in some cases nearly the rule.

Men who fought for him were paid without squabble. The venues in which he staged bouts were paid on time.

Brown quoted the former manager of the Mayo Civic Auditorium, Cal Smith: “Ben is the easiest guy I ever had to work with. We never had to worry about him paying us.’’ There were others, Brown noted: “He’s not only an excellent promoter, but an excellent human being,’’said Harry Davis, an amateur boxing institution in Minneapolis.

Angelo Dundee, a titan as a trainer of ghters, including two of the greatest in their weight divi- sions, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, was quoted as saying, “ Ben is one of the gems in the boxing profession. He knows the business from top to bottom. On top of that, he’s a ne man, a credit to the human race. I respect Ben Sternberg.’’

In June of 1964, Post Bulletin sta writer Ozzie St. George, later a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, covered a banquet honoring Sternberg as that year’s recipient of the George Barton Award for “long and meritorious service to boxing.’’

Barton, an inductee in the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame, was a former fighter, boxing referee and longtime sportswriter in Minneapolis. Seventy-nine at the time, he spoke at the 1964 banquet, delivering the following assessment of Sternberg, a man whom he had known for decades:

Barton, St. George pointed out, said that he had fought himself more than fty times in Minnesota before the sport was legalized in the state, and that he was a frequent referee in Rochester.

“I am honored to think that this award named for me is going to Ben Sternberg,’’Barton said.“No one more richly deserves it. I know of no promoter more conscientious in arranging boxing cards, the preliminaries as well as the main events, and none with more integrity, honesty and sincerity.’’

Ernie Fliegel of the Minneapolis 620 Club, a member of the award committee, said that “this was the first time since the award was established in 1957 that the committee agreed without argument on the actual winner.”

Sternberg’s recognition that night, St. George noted, included“congratulatory letters and telegrams from, among others, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees and Bill “Moose” Skowron of the Washington Senators.’’

Some of the biggest names in major league baseball had come to know and respect Sternberg from his playing and managing days. Skowron had played for Austin in the Southern Minny League at one time and came to know Sternberg as a fellow Minnesotan, during the summer months, at least.

Sternberg’s legacy of fair dealing was outshone, perhaps, only by the boxing cards he produced, at Mayo Civic Auditorium, and, especially, at Met Sports Stadium in Bloomington, the winter home of the Minnesota North Stars.

He promoted the fight at the Met in 1976 between Minnesota heavyweights Duane Bobick and Scott LeDoux that drew a state record 13,787 fans.

He also promoted the fight between Pat O’Connor and Duane Horsman that drew a Rochester record crowd of 4,211.

Sternberg’s legacy includes a long association with the Golden Gloves that preceded his professional years as a fight promoter. He and his brother Mike sponsored amateur boxing cards in Rochester in the 1930s, before the arrival of the Golden Gloves program in the state.

Ben carried on that tradition after losing his brother Mike in 1949 and was the Rochester promoter of the Golden Gloves until the program was taken over by the Rochester Post-Bulletin Charities

and later the Rochester Boxing Club. Sternberg continued as the sectional director of the program and then as a director with the Boxing Club.

He was president of the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves board of directors in 1958 when he was named Director of the Year.

Sternberg received additional recognition in 1976 when the Old Guards of the Ring named him the recipient of the Tommy Anderson Award, named for the former Minneapolis boxing promoter.

There was another note of confidence from a well known name in Rochester at Sternberg’s Barton Award dinner, Dr. C.W. Mayo, who had this to say: “There is nothing greater in this world that I know of than friendship and to be deserving of it, and we are here tonight, Ben, because you deserve it.’’

Those words can be used now, to introduce Ben Sternberg into the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame.