A tale by Barry Hastings
As I’ve said a time or two, I was extremely lucky with the first three fast-pitch softball teams I coached on the “small” diamond.
The first consisted of terrific athletes, even better human beings. I think of them pretty near every day. They got me started in a game very much a part of American culture at the time (mid-1970s), and a very big part of my culture for the next 36 years I served as coach, manager, pseudo psychologist for nine ball teams, on two peninsulas, and an island. “Oh! God!” (to quote a Jonathan Winters skit), “It was wonderful! WONDERFUL!”
All my best memories revolve around softball diamonds and complexes, and particularly around the pretty little two-diamond complex in Freeport, on Coldwater Creek.
When I left my first ball team in the U.P., it was not from wanting to do so, but from dissolution of a long-time relationship with a beautiful “Up North” girl I adored, but could not keep (a fairly common experience for me with my football playin’, softball coachin’, politickin’, other-side-of-the-hill, order of priorities).
At my first job in Hastings on coming back down here, I met a young fella named Dave Nichols. We engaged in some coffee-room sports talk, and I learned he was pitcher for a local team, he learned I’d been coaching in the U.P. He told me of the league in Freeport, and invited me up to watch them play. I began driving to Freeport often — they played twice a week there, at the time.
The Freeport league was a strong one of up to 10 teams. There were no easy pickins’ in the league. Toward the end of August, Dave asked me to attend a team meeting at the home of three teammates. He said he wanted me to manage the ball-team, but wanted to run the question past the players. Of course, walking into a situation like that, cold, is nerve-wracking. I decided to play it just the way I’d been seeing it. They had a terrific bunch of players, skills as good, or better than the Chassell team, but no design other than hittin’ the ball hard, which didn’t work as often as it did.
One of the guys made it easy for me just after our conversation began. “Well, what do you think of our team?” he asked.
“You’ve got a really fine group of skilled athletes,” I answered, “but. . . you’ve got 13 chiefs, and no Indians.” No one challenged my political incorrectness. I remarked on their excellent defensive qualities, and decried their failure to utilize the bunt, in its several manifestations, noting that I liked to show bunt, often, for the unsettling effect on opponents; and I liked to bunt often, base-hit bunts, squeeze bunts, drag bunts, slap bunts.
I guess they liked my directness, ’cause they hired me for the next game, part of a pre-district playoff to determine the league’s second entry in the district tournament at Webberville. We won it all, and began planning our trip east. To make a longish story short, we swept the district tourney in four games, twice beating our home league-rivals, Hastings Manufacturing (a team unaccustomed to losing).
The regional tourney was scheduled for the following weekend in Muskegon. The team had never progressed so far. We started out with wins — bang, bang, bang, and were playing in the final. An umpire behind the plate, had been failing to give David the corners of the plate on pitches the whole game, and he’d been grumbling the whole game. Finally, his self-control broke and he yelled some crudity at the umpire.
I called time, ran onto the field, got him straightened out, and we got out of the inning, one run down.
In the next (last inning) he reached second base, where he was positioned to tie the game. I believe it was his brother, Terry, who delivered a solid outfield hit. The ball bounced well for the outfielder, who fielded it, then threw it toward the plate Dave was quickly approaching. He stepped on the plate half-a-step before arrival of the ball, the umpire raised his arm, crying, “Yyrrrr outta dere!”
It was robbery, I knew it, we knew it, the other team knew it. And the umpire knew it. He quickly turned, and was out of there before anyone recovered from the shock. It was a hard, but necessary lesson, to back up my claim to be the only guy on the team with the right to be ejected due to a big mouth.
The next year, 1980, we spent January, February, March and early April in a round robin racquetball tournament among teammates, plying two hours a night, two nights a week on courts in Lake Odessa.
When we opened the softball season, we came out pounding the ball, running-up big scores on nearly every team we met. We just about waltzed our way into the Class D state finals. They were scheduled that year in Cadillac, on a ball field to which my mother had carried me as a one- and two-year-old, so I could see my dad (a short-fielder, fourth outfielder, later done-away with) play ball.
The fields there were 225 ft to the fences, which were 20 ft high. Despite the amazing batting power we’d demonstrated all summer long, not one of our hitters reached the outfield fence with a struck ball, all weekend long. We won one, lost two, went home.
Of course it was a huge let-down, but we knew there was “always next year,” and this team was destined for far better times in years to come; Dave Nichols would grow into the dominant pitcher in our area, become known throughout the state. And our ball team would play in tournaments around the state, and in national title play.
Dave Nichols is the last of the old bunch playing — still pitching after all these years. He just finished a season during which he turned 62, and played in another state final tournament. He’s planning on another next year.
“You’ve gotta love this game!”
