DaytonDailyNews.com

Jim Harrison was stricken while doing what he loved — tutoring young baseball players.

The longtime area coach and teacher was working with the Sinclair Community College team Friday, Oct. 31, when he stopped breathing. He was revived and taken to Miami Valley Hospital, where he died early Saturday morning due to heart complications from cancer, his family said. He was 76.

Mr. Harrison had been at Sinclair for 20 years, the first 14 as head baseball coach, the last six as an assistant.

"Coach was like a grandfather to me," said current Sinclair head coach Steve Dintaman. "He really loved baseball. He had to be around it."

Mr. Harrison, a Troy resident, taught at Wayne High School from 1963 to 1988, coaching baseball and football. The school's baseball field, dedicated in 1990, is named for him.

Wayne won five Western Ohio League baseball championships and three district championships while making one regional finals appearance, in 1977, under Mr. Harrison's guidance.

"We're getting bombarded by calls from all over the country," son Tim Harrison said. "It's amazing how many lives he touched and what he's done."

After retiring from Wayne, Mr. Harrison wanted to continue coaching baseball "but not have any pressures," Tim Harrison said. Sinclair became the perfect fit.

"It's always an adventure," Mr. Harrison told the Dayton Daily News in 2005 in discussing the challenges the downtown Dayton school presented.

A one-time Cincinnati Reds farmhand as a catcher/third baseman, Mr. Harrison is in the Dayton Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame, the Miami Valley Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Wayne High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

He is survived by wife Janice, sons Tim and Jim, four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Services are being handled by Terebinski-Jennings Funeral Home in Tipp City, but were pending as of Saturday night.