From the Herald & Review Sports
MARK TUPPER H&R Executive Sports Editor
FORSYTH —
I’ve known men’s fastpitch softball players who dumped their jobs, dumped their dreams and dumped their wives. But as the years move by, I’ve noticed for many, many of them it’s almost impossible to break up with softball.
I’m not sure what it is about throwing and hitting the 12-inch ball, but there must be some kind of intergalactic gravitational force that keeps pulling men age 50, 55, 60, 65 and older back to a game that they should have walked away from 20 or 30 years ago.
What else might explain the gathering of graying men who have assembled this weekend in Forsyth for the Amateur Softball Association Men’s Over 50 Fast Pitch National Tournament?
Once upon a time these were young, agile athletes transitioning from baseball to fastpitch, 20-something studs who never thought to listen for snaps, crackles and pops when they ran to first base.
They had their day in the sun, their shot at glory, but decades after most sane softball players have hung their spikes in the basement, they’re still at it.
I don’t entirely understand it, but I admire them nonetheless. A visit to Forsyth Saturday afternoon reminded me what a national tournament feels like.
For openers, it’s hot. Mid-day games are played in the beating sun and while a 27-year-old can handle that pretty easily, it’s more to ask of an infielder who is closing in on 60.
I tried to reason it out with a veteran umpire, Decatur’s Jim Pownall, who had a rough job to perform on Saturday. “Yeah, I have flip a few coins,” said Pownall, now 76.
Pownall umpired for 40 years (not counting the four games he did as a fill-in last year) and worked 10 ASA major national tournaments (men’s and women’s) and five International Softball Congress World Tournaments.
He scanned the two fields being used Saturday and said there’s one major reason veteran players can’t stop coming back for more. “It’s the love of the game,” Pownall said, and then added that the friendships made over decades are a spellbinding component that is not easily shoved aside.
“These guys love each other. You see them giving each other hugs,” Pownall said.
Indeed, long-standing friendships seem to withstand the test of time, even if those players were once bitter rivals.
Rick Minton and David Boys were occasional teammates back in their glory days with Decatur ADM and the Decatur Pride. They also were enemies chasing the same championships for competing teams.
But Saturday morning, when second baseman Minton shoveled a double-play feed to smooth moving shortstop Boys, the choreography was magic, and the knowledge that they can still pull off a play like that must be wonderful.
Same as it was for Moffett, the 66-year-old, when he delivered a big hit for the Cerro Gordo Clarkson Grain Legends.
Jeff Findley, who played for a variety of teams including the Bloomington Hearts from 1991 to 1995, is one who stays involved in softball but not on the playing field. His reasoning makes sense to me.
“I just thought that my body wouldn’t do the things that my mind thinks it should do,” he said. “I look at these guys and think if it were me, I’d blow out my Achilles or something like that. But they all still love the game.”
Another Bloomington veteran, Jeff Collins, and Andy Taylor, the son of former Decatur manager/general manager Frank “Pops” Taylor, administer a Facebook site called “Those Were the Days,” which has a large following of former softball players who trade tales and keep up with past players. Click here to continue reading at the Herald Review Sports.