PORTSMOUTH — The Fifth Annual Gene Bennett Baseball Classic, which will be sponsored by Shawnee State University for the third year in a row, is slated to run from Thursday through Sunday.

The classic honors the man whose name is bestowed on the classic’s fingerprints and his overall contributions to the game of baseball — Gene Bennett himself.

Bennett, who is a Scioto County native, began his foray into baseball lore in 1952 when he joined the Cincinnati Reds as a member of their farm system.

In 1958, Bennett would move into a part-time scouting position for Cincinnati and continued to progress through the scouting ranks before becoming a scouting supervisor for the Reds in 1975.

While performing in this capacity for Cincinnati, he signed many notable players including Barry Larkin, a World Series champion with the Reds in 1990, the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1995, and a 2012 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, as well as Don Gullett, a local legend who starred for McKell High School in South Shore, Ky.

Gullett would later win two World Series rings with Cincinnati and two more with the New York Yankees over a span of four consecutive years from 1975 to 1978.

By the time Bennett had decided to call it a career before the 2011 season began, the Wheelersburg, Ohio native had spent 58 seasons with the Reds and had been a part of three of the organization’s five World Series titles.

These aforementioned accomplishments fueled Bennett’s induction into the Middle Atlantic Major League Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame in 1996, the Wheelersburg High School Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001, and lastly, the Legends of Scouting Award in January 2009.

In addition to honoring one of baseball’s finest scouts, the classic serves as a culmination of the most prestigious and elite amateur teams in North America while also presenting a way to elevate and inspire youth, promote community development and bring baseball back to the Tri-State area.

This is proven quite strongly in the 2014 edition of the Gene Bennett Baseball Classic as 16 teams will be split into four divisions apiece, which are named after four of the most influential baseball players toplay in the Portsmouth area —the Al Oliver Division, the Gene Tenace Division, the Don Gullett Division, and the Larry Hisle Division.

The contests encompassing the classic and its divisions will be played at seven different sites around the region, which include Branch Rickey Park, Greenup County High School, Lucasville Valley High School, Minford High School, Portsmouth High School’s Hatcher Field, Portsmouth West High School, and Wheelersburg High School.