Historical April 1988 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The game of slow pitch softball has been played by a group of neighborhood men who are thirtysomething in one of those “over thirty” leagues for so many years that a number of them are now fortysomething.
We are talking about the group that forms the St. Roch’s entry in a ten-team league which plays every Friday night from the first Friday in May until the last Friday in August.
The games are played at 6:30 PM in parks all over south St. Louis.
This St. Roch’s team is the remnant of a team formed fifteen years ago to play slow pitch softball in the Class A Open division of the Muny League. That team went through two consecutive seasons without winning a single game.
When word reached the neighborhood of a new over-thirty league being formed of teams from various parishes, we made the switch.
The St. Roch’s team, from the beginning, had players who were parishioners and players who were not—and some who didn’t even live in Skinker-DeBaliviere.
The 1988 team will be the same.
This new league suited us better because we were competing on our level and we began to win some games.
There were no practices, no umpires (each team at bat umps during that half inning), and no trophies.
There were just guys who like to play ball and drink beer and not necessarily in that order. Through the seasons we have added new players as others have dropped out, and we’re looking to add more now.
This is a league where you can be as competitive as you want to be—or as laid back.
This is a league of guys who think that softball on a Friday night is a perfect tonic after a week of crabby customers or impossible deadlines or ridiculous clients or Nameless Dread.
On this team, when the manager flashes the “take” sign to his batter, it means “take an extra beer to the field next inning, the heart of their order is coming up.” How good do you have to be?
If you think that seven innings of slow pitch is a fitting way to spend a couple of hours on Friday evenings, you’re in.
If you think that ball is better played on honest crabgrass than polyester fiber, you’re invited.
If you think a game is better illuminated by the sun than the ersatz light of an ear-splitting, rag-draped dome, welcome aboard.
But if, perchance, you could stand on the pitcher’s mound and deliver, 20 or 30 times an inning, a ball with a little spin which rises in an elegant arc to a height that is just short of illegal and drops, unerringly, completing a perfect parabola, just nicking the back outside corner of the strike zone, leaving the batter flailing helplessly skyward, like Moe Howard trying to chop his way out of a packing crate, you are not only in, not only invited, not only welcome, but there will be a silver gray stretch limousine in front of your house at 6:00 PM each Friday night to take you to the game. Call Brad Weir, 863-7558.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, April 1988.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1988_04.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
