President and Leadership Team

The Hall of Fame recently announced its next major project, an exhibit to open in July 2025 titled “Yakyu | Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game” focused on the relationship forged by the national pastime of Japan and the United States.

The Hall of Fame welcomes 250,000 visitors annually and the Museum’s collections contain more than 40,000 three-dimensional artifacts and three million documents in addition to 200,000 baseball cards, 250,000 historic images and 14,000 hours of original audio and video recordings.

Rawitch came to Cooperstown following 10 seasons at the Arizona Diamondbacks and 15 seasons at the Los Angeles Dodgers. With the D-backs, Rawitch served as the Senior Vice President of Content and Communications, overseeing numerous departments within the club’s Business Operations.

Fluent in both Spanish and English, he has overseen media relations during trips to Mexico City (2003), China (2008), Taiwan (2010), Sydney, Australia (2014), and Hermosillo, Mexico (2015), in addition to goodwill tours of Japan, New Zealand and the Dominican Republic. In 2009, ‘13 and ‘17, he served as venue press chief for the World Baseball Classic.

He joined the Dodgers in 1995 and spent parts of five seasons in Marketing before moving to Public Relations. He left the organization for two seasons and became one of MLB Advanced Media’s earliest employees, serving as a beat reporter covering the Dodgers (2001) and Giants (2002).

The Los Angeles native attended Indiana University, where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Marketing and Management with a minor in Business. He has taught Strategic Sports Communications at both Arizona State University and the University of Southern California.

Rawitch was honored with the 2018 Robert O. Fishel Award which goes to the “active, non-uniformed representative of MLB whose ethics, character, dedication, service, professionalism and humanitarianism best represent the standards” of the longtime baseball PR executive for which it is named.

He has previously served as a trustee for the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame and on the board of directors for the Greater Phoenix Chamber, Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, ASU’s Sports Business Advisory Board and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He has helped organize MLB’s Winter Meetings annual auction, which has raised more than $2 million for various charities.

He and his wife, Erin, have 2 children, Emily and Braden, and reside in Cooperstown.