Slo-pitch — or, originally, slow-pitch — softball can be traced back to Chicago in 1887 as a recreational break during Thanksgiving. Baseball had been around for decades. George Hancock came up with the idea of tying a boxing glove into a ball and using a stick as a bat. That first game was played indoors at the Farragut Boat Club as attendees went through the custom of waiting for telegraph updates from football’s Harvard-Yale game.
Softball rapidly caught on, using a variety of makeshift orbs, and was known by many names — Indoor Baseball, Diamond Ball and, my personal favorite: Kitten Ball. The YMCA coined the handle, “Softball” in a 1926 national meeting. And so it’s been ever since.
Here in the Santa Clarita Valley, men and women, boys and girls, pick your pronouns, have been playing baseball since the 19th century. Games would be started at the loosely organized Fourth of July celebrations or schoolyards, dating back to the late 19th century and, by the 1920s, we had two semi-pro baseball teams, one for Saugus, one for Newhall. We battled squads from neighboring Fillmore, Santa Paula and the San Fernando Valley, including The Apemen, owned by the legendary “Tarzan” author, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Many visiting squads were organized culturally, religiously or racially, with all-Jewish, Hispanic, Black, Catholic and even — perish the thought — the Irish. Our own film superstar, Harry Carey, employed an entire village of transplanted Arizona Native Americans who worked his San Francisquito spread. Fittingly, Carey’s baseball squad wore, “Navajos,” on their jerseys. I’d kill to have one.
A gift from the Newhall family, Newhall Park was created in 1949, its ground and swimming pool officially dedicated a year later, along with a baseball field that immediately started hosting softball games. New parks popped up, with softball diamonds, of course. We became a city in 1987 and today? Slo-pitch wars wage almost every day of the year.
Chris Padula over at the city’s Adult Sports was most helpful in supplying gee-whiz info on today’s gargantuan and thriving softball empire. In fact, Chris was SO helpful, as Mr. Santa Clarita Valley, I sternly suggest to you suits at City Hall that you’re not paying Chris nearly enough, so, please, quadruple Chris’ salary. We’ll be following up. Anywho. Mr. Padula shared that the valley’s slo-pitch mania peaked from 2008 to 2014, when city parks hosted 220-235 teams, day and night. Now? There’s about 140-160 teams. In case you have a streak of litigiousness running through your veins, walk with the aid of a seeing eye dog, have the judgement of Angel Hernandez, the leadership skills of Kamala Harris and would like to earn spare change beyond a burger-flipping wage, softball umpiring pays $40 a game. You oversee 715 games weekly, that’s $28,600 a week, $123,923.80 a month or $1,486,085.60 a year.
Or, Chris’ new proposed salary …
I mentioned in last week’s Part I column that former Hart High and Angel MLB star, Greg Garrett, had the ability to launch a softball to Tierra del Fuego on one bounce. Arguably, the SCV’s most famous player is former Oakland A’s slugger, Jose Canseco. His equal? For my money, it’s Todd Zeile, the Hart phenom who played for 11 MLB teams in 16 seasons. Todd holds the Bigs’ record as the only player to hit home runs for 11 different teams. Todd’s mom, Sammee Zeile, used to be publisher of this very newspaper.
Like baseball, softball is a game of statistics. But, a big piece of America’s puzzle are the stories that don’t make the line scores.
I used to umpire softball. Calling balls and strikes can be dangerous. I called this one player out in a close play at second. Enraged, he charged me but was quickly pulled back by teammates. I gave him a warning. Two innings later, I’m sweeping off home plate and the ball comes whizzing by my ear at I’d like to say hypersonic speed but who’re we kidding, it’s softball. Still. It would’ve knocked the two remaining IQ points I had rattling around had it hit me. I tossed the guy. He ran into the dugout, came out with an aluminum Easton, sprinted at me all hydrophobic a la George Brett and threatened, “I really want to bash your (expletives deleted) brains out with this bat!!!”
I’ve read mountains of books, from self-help and spirituality and how life works to the Bible. That moment, I heard, clear as a bell, a wisdom the mythicist Joseph Campbell once shared as the single crowning lesson of his life, that — “…we get into trouble the instant we fail to see ‘The Thou’ in our brother’s eye.”
In that split second, I wondered. Did this nonsense actually work? As he raised his bat, I looked into my brother’s eye, smiled, and calmly said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
He didn’t swing. I explained I had to toss him. Still fuming, perched in the bleachers, he kept swearing at me and I informed his captain they’d forfeit if he didn’t vamoose Old Orchard Park. Cursing, he left. It was the afternoon’s last game. I was alone, catching my breath, when he returned, climbed out of his car and made a beeline toward me.
I was slouched in the dugout. Sheepishly, he asked if he could join me. It was Sunday, when good people are supposed to be in church. Instead of a pew, we shared a bench. The batsman confessed. He was at the end of the worst week of his life — lost his job, his wife, his home. Couldn’t find his self-esteem or reason for living. We chatted for an hour. He thanked me for listening, for not reacting. Neither one of us ended up dead or in the hospital.
I so hope he found himself.
Sports — softball — are so much more than stats.
Pick up “Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” at JohnBoston-Books.com. Also available is his two-part “SCV Monsters” series. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
