From 
via 
BeaconNewsOnline.com Member of the Sun-Times News Group
International transfusionIts popularity waning in recent decades, fastpitch softball teams like Dolan and Murphy use recruitment of international players to keep the sport alive in United States
September 23, 2007
BY JOHN SAHLY Staff WriterJonas Mach, a 23-year-old softball player who throws a fastball hitters have less than four-tenths of a second to react to, lives in a pink room.
Not just pink; suffocating pink. Pink tulips in untouched parts of nature aren’t this pink.
To top it off, the light-switch cover includes a pastel-colored bunny painted on it, matching the banner that crawls across the room.
For the Czech Republic-native Mach, this pink room is not home. Neither is the more spacious but just as messy room where his Argentinean teammate Juan Potolicchio spends his time.
Both young men are international fastpitch softball pitchers who play for Aurora’s Dolan and Murphy team. They are part of a large contingent of foreign players who, for various reasons, come to the United States and Canada to play softball in the summer.
Mach’s room — cluttered with clothes, softball equipment and a single mattress — can’t fit more than a handful of people comfortably. The bedroom once belonged to a young girl. For Mach, it’s a place to sleep and a place to hang out with Potolicchio and teammate Jason Iuli — who all live together in the Aurora house during their summers in the U.S.
“At first, when I walked in and I saw the pink walls I thought it was a joke,” Mach said.
But the fastpitch community knows Mach’s fastball and Potolicchio’s riser are no laughing matter.
The two are a major part of the sport’s biggest trend. Two pitchers in a pitchers’ game; two international players in an increasingly-international game; two young competitors in a game desperate to get younger.
Two players who represent how fast-pitch softball — a sport few in the public know about and even fewer pay attention to — not only survives, but thrives in its own small way.