Sport: Soft Series

Elsewhere the world of sport was worried by such momentous questions as “How can an ordinary citizen corner a couple of tickets to the World Series?” and “When are the Brooklyn Dodgers going to move?” But in Clearwater, Fla. (pop. 25,500) last week, 25,000 fans had something much more immediate on their minds: they had 22 teams (and as many as 13 games a day) to watch in the softball championship of the world.

The swivel-necked softball fans saw a faster, flashier brand of ball than many a big-league booster has seen all season. The slow, playground pastime of Depression days has speeded into an organized sport of fierce and popular competition. There is nothing soft about it; even the big, hand-filling softball itself is hard as a regulation baseball.

Time was when men brought up on ordinary, old-fashioned baseball sneered at the upstart as a sissy sport. No more. Everybody plays softball.* Churches, civic groups, industrial organizations and all the armed services sponsor teams that compete in hotly contested leagues. Softball has been taken up by neighborhood taverns, the choruses of Broadway shows, the Ku Klux Klan, the atomic scientists of Los Alamos. Some 25,000 teams work hard all summer for a shot at the end-of-the season series.

Rise & Break. Ball clubs came to Clearwater last week from as far off as California and Canada, but the favorites in the tournament were the Aurora, Ill. Sealmasters (ball bearings), the Raybestos (brake lining) Cardinals of Stratford, Conn., and the town-sponsored Clearwater Bombers, the defending champions. The reason for the choice was simple enough: each of the teams had a crack pitcher. Softball is a sport in which any manager in his right mind would trade four heavy-hitting sluggers for one big-time pitcher.

Working from a mound that is only 46 ft. from the plate, softball pitchers boast much the same repertory as their big-league counterparts. Even though they are limited to an underhand delivery, their curves and fastballs blaze in so fast that the best batters have no time to swing from their heels. And there is always the change-up to help give the pitcher the upper hand. Most important of all, the underhanded softball delivery permits a wicked pitch that no hardball batter ever has to face: the rise ball. Sailing up from a few inches off the dirt, the rise ball can be made to break either way across the strike zone. The best batters are prone to pop it up for an easy putout. Good softball pitchers have been known to barnstorm the country and win most of their games with only a catcher and two fielders to fill out their teams.

Bunt & Brag. Held down by such deadly pitching, softball games (except when some industrial giant takes on a church-league team) are low-scoring affairs. The bunt is a favorite offensive weapon. Fast-handed fielders are always ready to charge the plate; the first and third basemen often find themselves playing just a few yards from the batter. Then the second baseman covers first, the shortstop covers third and the centerfielder takes over at second. The hit-and-run is rare, since base runners are permitted no lead.

Pitchers, who in the early days had been allowed to sling the ball out of a windmilling windup, were eventually held down to a single rotation of the arm. As the ball was hardened to speed up the game, gloves appeared, and softball finally settled down as a small-scale, frenetic version of America’s national game.

In Clearwater last week, softball put on its small-scale version of the World Series and crammed in a full measure of fine baseball. The final game, as usual, belonged to the pitchers. In an 18-inning final between the Sealmasters and the Bombers, Clearwater Schoolteacher Herb Dudley, 37, hung on to win, 1-0, and the Bombers hung on to their championship.

* Many a braggart state has filed paternity claims for softball, but the most popular story blames a Minneapolis fireman named Louis Rober, who organized the game back in the 1890s to keep other firemen out of trouble.