Softball for EVERYONE!

Bob Sampson
Decatur Herald Review

Where would you find people willing to stand in line 24 hours to gain a spot in a league with no trophies and no rules that is short on competition but long on recreation?

Batter up!

In Decatur, where men, women and their children line up on cold April mornings outside the Decatur Park District recreation department offices to gain one of the 232 spots in the summer slow-pitch softball leagues.

Any given summer night will find some 4,500 men and women participating in the softball program in the district's parks.

Vacations are planned around a team's schedule. Meals are delayed or accelerated. Children get a summer's tour of the city's playgrounds following their parents' athletic exploits. And recreation department officials worry about how to accommodate more.

Yet 17 years ago, most people close to softball laughed when Jerry Menz, recreation department director, brought the game to Decatur. Fast-pitch then ruled the parks and pitchers, of course, ruled fast-pitch.

Hearing about a new game then popular in St. Louis that kept the 12-inch softball but required slow-pitching, Menz was intrigued. Somehow, he begged and cajoled four teams into forming the first year's league.

"It grew very slowly," remembers Menz. "We had four teams, then six or seven and then it started taking over." Fast-pitch was chased from the parks by men and women hungering for the chance to compete in a game where anyone could have fun. "We want every group that thinks, 'Oh, I can't play,' to play," explains Menz.

There have been problems aside from the phenomenal growth that has taxed the capacity of the parks. Overzealous competition has often been the prime culprit.

Years ago, trophies were abolished. Currently protests are not allowed, standings are not recorded, and there are no playoffs. If an umpire ejects a player it is an automatic year off. One season before the changes, Menz remembers having six players in hospital emergency rooms in a single evening.

Rule changes were instituted that practically eliminated unnecessary physical contact. A force rule took care of the potentially dangerous homeplate collisions, frustrating some sandlot Pete Roses but avoiding crippling injuries.

Sure, there was griping. Over the years some teams went off and formed their own private leagues. But the program kept growing. Most recently it has skyrocketed in the women's leagues.

"This game spreads not through anything we're doing to promote it but between people who play it or know people who play it," says Menz. "I never had any idea it would get this big. "It never occurred to me that we'd be getting younger players as well as the older."

Somehow, the game of slow-pitch has touched the athletic fantasies of Decatur's residents. It provides both an outlet for all those pent-up dreams of glory and for the simple desire to have fun.

Hurrying on Home!

Illinois Parks and Recreation 16 July/August 1981