But despite his slight stature, Benedetto (Benny) Tomaso, a .400-hitting shortstop on coach Hop Riopel’s Midland League championship team who is now four months shy of his 100th birthday, will stand tall during his induction next month into the Milford High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

“Those memories never leave you. When I received the letter about the hall of fame, it made me feel so proud and very much surprised - and I still love baseball,’’ said Tomaso, who wore a Red Sox cap and a smile while recalling an era that the hall of fame committee’s chairman, Nick Zacchilli, called “the beginning of the tradition of Milford High baseball.’’

At 5-foot-3 and 120 pounds, Tomaso was also a varsity football player his senior year, when he scored a touchdown against Clinton and played fearlessly on defense against a powerful Framingham team.

Born Jan. 7, 1910, he remembers games played at the old Milford Town Park as vividly as the 1918 flu epidemic that took the lives of his two uncles in what was then a small community of 7,000. He recalls, too, the 1938 hurricane that paralyzed the town and blocked the railroad tracks where he once drove spikes during his summer vacation from high school.

“My father, Calogero, came here from Italy and was a foreman on the Milford-Uxbridge Railway,’’ recalled Tomaso, one of 10 children. A younger sister, Josie, still lives in one of the two houses that Benedetto, his brothers and father built for the family on Hayward Street. He said working on the railroad and making cement blocks for the houses put him in top shape to play sports.

“Our family is very excited for Dad because he’s excited and knows that he’s been remembered,’’ said Tomaso’s son Bernard, who also resides in Milford. “He has a great story to tell, and since the announcement it seems like everybody in town knows him.

“I have three sons, two of whom live in North Carolina and Alaska, and we’re hoping that both of them will be at the ceremonies along with my late brother Richard’s family,’’ Bernard said.

Tomaso’s grandson Alan, a Bellingham resident, added that “hopefully, I have my grandfather’s genes. For him to be around this long and to be honored is a tribute to him.’’

Benny Tomaso, who played three years of varsity baseball (1926-28) and just the one year of football, vividly remembers the Scarlet Hawks ending Hudson’s reign as Midland champion in 1928.

“Hudson was league champion two years in a row, but my senior year, Coach Riopel, who came here from Holy Cross College, made us into as a good a team as there was in the state. We played practically errorless ball, used the hit-and-run, we did everything,’’ said Tomaso.

His coach, Albert Riopel, is a past inductee to the school’s hall of fame, as are two of Tomaso’s cousins, Charles Brucato and Samuel Tomaso.

Known as “Mr. Holy Cross,’’ Riopel was offered a baseball tryout with the New York Giants after college graduation in 1924, but the Worcester native chose to coach basketball and baseball at Milford High for nine seasons. He then returned to his collegiate alma mater as a three-sport varsity coach and coordinator of athletics. The Holy Cross baseball team’s MVP award is named in his memory.

“He was an exceptional coach,’’ said Tomaso, who had two hits in the season-ending victory over Hudson that gave Milford a share of the 1928 league title before 1,000 fans.

“And we did it without having some of the best players in town on our team because there were two high schools in Milford then, Milford High and St. Mary’s.’’

Tomaso, who didn’t know he had batted .400 until after the season, is also proud of the football team, which played bigger schools like Natick and Framingham (he called them “monster’’ teams), but always gave them a good battle.

“My last game was against Framingham, and they kept running plays to my side because of my size,’’ he said with a proud twinkle in his eye.

“Well, it was 0-0 at the half and they stopped running at me. But we lost, 12-0. The following Monday our school principal shook my hand and said I had played a fine football game.’’

The Great Depression made jobs hard to find after his graduation from Boston’s Wentworth Institute, where he also played varsity baseball.

Tomaso toiled on the looms at Draper Corp. in Hopedale, sold life insurance for John Hancock door to door, and worked at Bay State Abrasives in Westborough before contracting tuberculosis that hospitalized him and cost him the use of a lung in the mid-1940s.

But he recovered, owned three race horses, one of which won a feature at Suffolk Downs in East Boston. He later worked in the printing department at the Dennison Manufacturing Co. in Framingham for 12 years until retiring in 1975.

He loved taking Bernard and Richard to Fenway Park, where he’d tip the ushers to give the father and sons better seats in the grandstand.

But Tomaso, who has eight grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren, didn’t stay retired for long.

He worked out of Laborers International Union Local 609 in Framingham, even surviving a knock on the noggin from a 2x4 being carried by a co-worker as they stood on a plank. He retired for the final time at age 85.

“It was outside work and I loved it,’’ said Tomaso, who lives independently in an apartment, enjoys going out to buy the daily newspaper, playing cards at the Milford Senior Center, and watching the races at Plainridge Racecourse in Plainville.

“It’s amazing to be able to recognize a person like Benny,’’ said Zacchilli, a former athlete, coach, and athletic director at Milford High who will also be enshrined next month.

“He’s a wonderful link to Milford’s athletic past, and he’s very proud that he is.’’

Joe DiAntonio (class of 1945), who is chairman of the hall’s Old Timers Committee, said once Tomaso’s accomplishments were brought to the group’s attention, his induction was a formality.

“He was a star athlete at Milford High, and there is no one still alive from his teams except for Benny,’’ said DiAntonio.

“Having him with us for the hall of fame ceremonies is going to make it one hell of a night.’’

Marvin Pave can be reached at marvin.pave@rcn.com.