Drinking and Softball

                If you have not noticed this far into my blog I am a huge softball fan. Some people call me a softball slut because I will play on any team that asks no matter how good or bad they are. With all of the softball I play I get a lot of criticism because of the bad stigmas surrounding softball and drinking. People feel that softball is just a bunch of men going out getting drunk and throwing a ball around. This is not always the case. Yes drinking beer and softball go hand and hand there is another side of the game that most people do not realize.

                For many people softball acts as an activity to replace bad habits they may have had in the past and help keep them on the right path. I have many friends that I play with to this day that used to be in and out of rehab and continuously having a problem staying clean. So some of the rehab clinics in the area got together and decided that it would be a good idea to put a softball team together to give them something else to do and still have the support of other people going through the same problems. These teams have become huge in the city of Concord and the success rate has been tremendous. The softball clean and sober program is just one of the many advantages of the game.

                Me personally I do better in school and stay out of trouble more when I have a sporting activity to look forward to play. I have always gotten better grades when I was playing a sport. Before playing softball I had been arrested a couple of times for DUI and DIP (driving under the influence and drunk in public) but when I started playing softball all of my trouble stopped and my grades went through the roof.

                Yea we may throw back a couple of beers after a game but it is not the same game our dads played when we were kids. A lot of us take it too seriously and have too much on the line to get drunk and go play. So next time you think of softball as just another beer league think again. Who knows you may even find yourself on the field one day in the future.

Baseball's Team of The 70's

                While everyone knows about the New York Yankees dominance over World Series in major league baseball very few people now about the team voted the best team of the century by Sports Illustrated in 2000. The Oakland A’s have been deemed baseball’s team of the 70’s and maybe even the team of the decade. Winning three consecutive world serious titles and going to the playoffs five years in a row it’s hard to argue that this is not correct.  

                With one of the best pitching staffs to every play the game and multiple hall of famers in the field the 70’s Oakland Athletics were a team that can never be matched. If it wasn’t for their idiot owner Charlie Finley who sold the players off for money the A’s may have continued to keep wining World Series into the 80’s.Players from the trade like Reggie Jackson went on to continue at their hall of fame pace after the trade never slowing down. Most of them are still so hurt by the past owner breaking up the brother hood these young players once had that most didn’t even go into the hall of fame as Athletics. The Oakland Athletics may not be the Yankees but they will forever live in my hearth as the best team to ever play the game. You can argue this point but just look at the number from 1970 to 1976 and tell me I’m wrong.

Negro Leagues

With all that is known about the MLB in the United States it is important to remember all of the history that has made it the game it is today. Until 1947 Major League Baseball’s owners had a “gentlemen’s agreement” that stated no African American will be allowed to play on any Major League team. There are many great players and coaches from this time that should be in the MLB Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but because of past racisms these men are hardly known today. To counter the racist Major League Baseball’s “gentlemen’s agreement” a man by the name of Andrew “Rube” Foster created the first successful Negro baseball league (NNL or the National Negro League). The first club was created on February 13, 1920, at YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri in which Foster served as the leagues first president as well as founder. Foster’s role in the creation of the African American baseball has forever given him the name of “The Father of Black Baseball”.

Three years after the creation of the NNL a man by the name of Edward H. Bolden decided to create The Eastern Colored League (ECL) on December 16, 1923. Where the NNL only had teams from the South and the Midwest, the ECL had more teams from the east coast area. The leagues came together in 1924 to create the first Negro World Series.  In 1929 the ECL and the NNL both went under there affect on the African American society had already been affected. Many other African Americans tried to start there own professional leagues but many of them did not last more than one season. With the presence of the Great Depression made it that much more difficult for the leagues to succeed. It was not until 1933 that the NNL reopened for the second time with the American Negro League and lasted as the last Negro league until 1960.

Living Out Childhood Dreams

As much as baseball has been a huge part of my childhood, as an adult a new form of baseball has taken over in my life. Slow pitch softball has been on a huge rise as of lately. Slow pitch softball in which men and women can live out there childhood dreams without having to be in top athletic shape. It is a sport in which drinking is encourage but definitely is accepted. For someone like me that used to play a lot of baseball growing up but no longer am in the best of shape can still go out and play a similar sport and stay competitive in a team environment. In order for someone like me to still play baseball I would have to practice daily to stay in the right baseball shape to stay competitive, but in softball you can go out with friends after a night of drinking and just have fun on any given day. The rules are changed so someone as out of shape as me can still be competitive. The biggest rule differences between baseball and softball are that the bases are 60 feet instead of the 90 foot bases in baseball, the pitches are thrown under hand and lobbed to you instead of being thrown over hand and the balls are 3 times the size of a baseball.

While this seams to be a fat mans game it still gets very competitive. In my league I play with ex semi pro and college baseball players that are had made it as far as they could playing baseball but were not done playing the game. There are even famous ex professional baseball players that once played in the Bay Area that now play on the same fields I play on every weekend. It is not uncommon for me to see players like Jose Canseco and Eric Byrnes playing the game before me on a field that looks just like the Oakland A’s field they play on today.  

While most little boys growing up playing baseball I dream of one day playing for my favorite Major League Baseball team (The Oakland Athletics) and playing in the World Series. Obviously these never happened for me, but while playing softball I can still live out these dreams ever weekend. There are tournaments all over northern California every weekend and many different leagues going on all over the Bay Area every night. It has become such a major part of the community I live in that last season Concord’s Summer League had 250 teams filled with ten to fifteen players per team like myself trying to live out there childhood dreams. There have even been ball parks created all over the country called the Big League Field of Dream. All of the fields at the Big League Field of Dreams have been created to look like exact replicas of ball professional ball parks all over the world. This way a fat out of shape man can truly live out his childhood dreams of one day living playing on there favorite professional stadium. There was even a Softball World Series held once a year in Las Vegas in which the best teams in the country go to compete to be the best in the world.   

America's Greatest Past Time

To many people in the world including myself consider baseball to be the greatest sport ever created in the United States, if not the world. The first trace of baseball in the United States dates back to 1791 where the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts where baseball was regularly played on Saturdays.  The baseball played at this time was much more unorganized and did not still have a lot of set rules. The first team to play by modern rules was the New York Knickerbockers, in 1845. The biggest change in the rules was in the passed baseball was played more like kickball than modern day baseball. You were allowed to force the runner out by tagging or throwing the ball at the base runner. These new set of rules were known as the Knickerbocker rules.  It wasn’t until the civil war when baseball really took root around the United States. With the war going on and soldiers from all over the United States fighting baseball became the thing to do while soldiers had free time from fighting. After the war and with amateur baseball teams on the rise owners decided it was time to take baseball to the next step and start paying players and make the sport truly a professional sport. The first major leagues baseball league was NABBP (National Association of Professional Base Ball Players) established in 1871 and only lasted four years. After the failure of the NAPBBP William Hubert Formed the National League which we know baseball as today. In the National League there was an unwritten Gentle man’s agreement which excluded non white players from playing the sport. The common misconception is that Jackie Robinson was the first African American to break the color barrier, but in reality during the 1880’s two African American brothers were kicked out of the league for being African American. As with the two brothers many African Americans played in the National League pretending to be of other races (Indians, South or Central Americans). With many other leagues trying to contend with the National Leagues dominance it was until 1901 that the American League was formed. The American League’s success causes an up rise in the National League and the result was the first World Series 1903. The very first World Series was won by the American Leagues’ Red Sox in 1903. As the United States struggled to find its own identity so was Major League Base Ball. It is truly these struggles and accomplishments that has made base ball America’s greatest past time it is today.