SoftballVol---------------

[wagee12]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoftballVol
Warner, did you ever run across a pitcher in men's fastpitch named Bill Hudson? He's my daughter's pitching instructor. She started going to him when she was still in 10U. He's probably too old for you to have run across him but it's possible.

How old is he and who did he pitch for? Did he pitch for Futo's Wreckers in Atlanta? If you see him, ask him if he remembers any of the following, Mitch Harter (pitched for Futo Wreckers in Atlanta after pitching for Shell Oilers out of Lebanon, Tenn.), Joe Lynch (pitched for Clearwater Bombers after he pitched for Tammy Wynette's team in Nashville), Jim Johnson (6-5 pitcher who threw for several teams around Birmingham), Joe Tucker (slingshot pitcher who pitched for Birmingham and Tuscaloosa teams), Any of the Ivy boys out of Chattanooga (Al, James or Wes), big Tom Schmidt (6-6 lefthander out of Memphis). The most legendary pitcher, a guy I never saw who pitched int he 50s and early 60s was Buck Miller. He threw for Buckeye Oil Mill out of Memphis and as the legend goes, his job there was to walk around the warehouse and throw rocks at pidegons up in the rafters.

[SoftballVol]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoftballVol
Warner, did you ever run across a pitcher in men's fastpitch named Bill Hudson? He's my daughter's pitching instructor. She started going to him when she was still in 10U. He's probably too old for you to have run across him but it's possible.

How old is he and who did he pitch for? Did he pitch for Futo's Wreckers in Atlanta? If you see him, ask him if he remembers any of the following, Mitch Harter (pitched for Futo Wreckers in Atlanta after pitching for Shell Oilers out of Lebanon, Tenn.), Joe Lynch (pitched for Clearwater Bombers after he pitched for Tammy Wynette's team in Nashville), Jim Johnson (6-5 pitcher who threw for several teams around Birmingham), Joe Tucker (slingshot pitcher who pitched for Birmingham and Tuscaloosa teams), Any of the Ivy boys out of Chattanooga (Al, James or Wes), big Tom Schmidt (6-6 lefthander out of Memphis). The most legendary pitcher, a guy I never saw who pitched int he 50s and early 60s was Buck Miller. He threw for Buckeye Oil Mill out of Memphis and as the legend goes, his job there was to walk around the warehouse and throw rocks at pidegons up in the rafters.
I thought I linked the article about him. I'll relink it below. Bill is 73. He charges a fraction of what other coaches charge and he has a waiting list a mile long. He could charge triple what he charges now and he'd still have a waiting list. He charges just enough to cover his expenses and clearly he teaches because he loves it. Listing him as your pitching instructor almost automatically will get interest from college coaches in the South when you send them your resume. Any smart travel ball coach in Atlanta knows that if they need a good pitcher to let Bill know that they've got an opening.

I know what you mean about the old "employee" softball teams in the 60s. My cousin Johnny Sertel was a great athlete who played some men's ball in Chattanooga and I'm pretty sure I remember him telling me about one of his jobs throwing rocks at pigeons or something to that effect. I was just a kid at the time so my memory may be faulty; he might have been talking about someone else. I do remember that men's softball was huge in Chattanooga back then.

Here's the AJC article about Bill Hudson. I should point out that Hudson is maybe 5'10" and average build. It's hard to imagine him being a pitcher back in the golden days of men's fastpitch with all those big bruisers but as he always tells his students, pure speed is overrated - movement and location are way more important.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/no-softball-bum-bill-535877.html

[SoftballVol]

BTW, did you happen to catch the D2 CWS today? That had to be one of the sloppiest games I've seen in a long time. As my own daughter said, it was like watching two B-teams go at it in a non-ASA tournament. I thought for sure that Valdosta State would win going away but they blew it. Hawaii Pacific (can you believe that teams from Hawaii made it into both the D1 and D2 CWS?) also tried to give it away but VSU didn't want it. That game was in no way indicative of the quality of D2 softball.

Speaking of Hawaii, my softball-playing daughter, while watching the replay of the If game between Hawaii and Bama jumped up and yelled, "She's out!" when the Hawaiian girl hit that walk-off HR in the bottom of the 7th inning in the Super Regional. That's because the batter took two steps down the 1B line and then returned to home plate to watch her HR sail over the fence. Question for you is whether you know if the rule that calls a batter-runner out for backing up on the first base line applies to a HR under NCAA rules. If so and had it been called then it would have changed the outcome since there were already two outs.

[wagee12]

Don't know the technical rule, but no umpire in his or her right mind is going to call a kid out for taking a step or two back to admire their work on a walk-off job like that!
There is probably some NAIA teams that could play with or even beat those D2 teams you described. Union University in Jackson and Trevecca Nazerene in Nashville are both very good squads stocked with good athletes who have played on the road since they were eight or nine years old.
Ask the pitching coach if Clearwater Bombers had a team when he was pitching and did he play against them? When I played down there, they had their own field, their own bar and their own "groupies." We won one out of four in a weekend series.

[SoftballVol]

Don't know the technical rule, but no umpire in his or her right mind is going to call a kid out for taking a step or two back to admire their work on a walk-off job like that!
There is probably some NAIA teams that could play with or even beat those D2 teams you described. Union University in Jackson and Trevecca Nazerene in Nashville are both very good squads stocked with good athletes who have played on the road since they were eight or nine years old.
Ask the pitching coach if Clearwater Bombers had a team when he was pitching and did he play against them? When I played down there, they had their own field, their own bar and their own "groupies." We won one out of four in a weekend series.
I spoke to Bill Hudson today and he said that he did indeed play with or against almost all of the people you mentioned. He's sending me an email with more details which I will pass on when I get it.

I've seen Valdosta State play more than once and they looked nothing like they did in that game (which again had the championship game infuriately single-elim after being double-elim to get to the championship game). VSU is a power-hitting HR machine normally and IMO are full of players who would start at most D1 schools. But for some reason they played like crap - as did their opponent - in the winner-takes-all championship game.

D2, D3, and NAIA schools have plenty of outstanding players as the lure of D1 in women's sports isn't the same as it is with certain men's sports that have lucrative professional counterparts. By far the biggest draw of D1 over D2 and of course no-scholly D3 is the number of scholarships they can offer. But even D1 schools can only offer (IIRC) 12 full scholarships in softball while women's basketball can offer 15 full rides. As frequently noted, the NCAA employs brain-damaged ex-crossing guards who haven't the sense to get out of the rain. D2 can only offer 7.3 and as noted D3 is zero. Some NAIA schools can offer a bunch I'm told but I don't know the details. I gather that NAIA has divisions like the NCAA does. Bottom line is that a lot of good women's players, particularly in softball and probably some other sports, choose their college based on non-sports criteria such as academics or proximity to home, etc. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know since you have a scholarship athlete in college yourself.

Finally, and I'm sure you know this as well, but plenty of great players are removed from consideration by colleges thanks to the Crompton-parent-like behavior of their parents. I know of several cases where great players who were being recruited by SEC schools had their recruitment completely shut down after the college coach observed the way their parents treated their travel team coaches and their kid's teammates. In the men's money sports like football a coach will take on plenty of kids that would never in a million years be considered for most women's sports due to character issues, grades, or Little League parents. Such kids then end up at a D2 school where they may be dominant during their careers.

[wagee12]

Softball parents will produce a higher percentage of ignorant individuals simply because of two reasons. The male parent, the father, always thinks he knows more than the coach, particularly if that coach is a woman, and the female parent will get involved and interfere simply because the child is her "baby", a female child. Luckily, we only had to send two sets of parents packing in six years. It was far better to cut them out and put them on the road than to let them hang around and have things fester!
Ask the coach if he ever went head up against the King and his Court in a real fast pitch game? The old travel van that belonged to Eddie Feigner and his court sits about 30 miles from me. I have tried to suggest to a couple of guys that they should get it and sent it to the softball hall of fame, but no luck as of yet.

[SoftballVol]

Softball parents will produce a higher percentage of ignorant individuals simply because of two reasons. The male parent, the father, always thinks he knows more than the coach, particularly if that coach is a woman, and the female parent will get involved and interfere simply because the child is her "baby", a female child. Luckily, we only had to send two sets of parents packing in six years. It was far better to cut them out and put them on the road than to let them hang around and have things fester!
Ask the coach if he ever went head up against the King and his Court in a real fast pitch game? The old travel van that belonged to Eddie Feigner and his court sits about 30 miles from me. I have tried to suggest to a couple of guys that they should get it and sent it to the softball hall of fame, but no luck as of yet.
I'll ask him. I got to see the King and his Court in person once here in Woodstock. The King himself was so far gone with old age that he almost had to be carried to the field and then he sat in the dugout until the last out of the game. At that point they helped him to mound where he slow-pitched a ball to the batter who hit it to the CF fence. Then one of the other four guys in the Court casually walked over and picked it up and waited until the runner rounded 3B and headed for home. At that point he fired an underhand fastball that I swear was a pure frozen rope that crossed the plate in a perfect strike and beat the runner home by 20 feet. This was from 200 feet away. The crowd went wild of course. Later on they weren't so happy when they discovered that all the HRs the Court had hit over the course of the game had damaged several cars but the cars were parked all over the place due to the monster crowed they attracted. They were playing a men's baseball team. Except for that one at-bat no one else on the baseball team ever even put a ball into play. Although Eddie didn't pitch (except for that one pitch) his guys all could pitch and the baseball team had no clue how to hit them. It had to be seen to be believed.

[Tnphil]

Eddie lived for several years about 12 miles from here in Trenton, Tn. I watched them play several times and it never got old...Eddie died in Feb. 2007...

I watched them one time in Paducah Ky. They were playing at Brooks stadium where I grew up playing American Legion ball...anyhoo, Eddie pitched from 2nd base one inning and struck out all three batters, none of the 3 even touched the ball....he was unreal..

ONE of Eddies claim to fame was he struck out: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente in succession...

[Tnphil]

Do any of you remember NAS Memphis hosted at least twice, the Military Nationals in softball?...I went twice in the 60's and you talk about some softball playing dudes.... Military teams came from all over the world to play in that tourny and it lasted pretty much a week..

[SoftballVol]

ONE of Eddies claim to fame was he struck out: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente in succession...
That's not as impressive as it sounds. The truth is that baseball players - even pros - can't hit a decent fastpitch pitcher to save their lives. Jenny Finch has struck out plenty of pro sluggers. Not that they're incapable; they just haven't been trained to do it and it's not the same as hitting a baseball. My daughter's assistant coach in high school was also the head baseball coach. He overheard some of his baseball players bragging about how they'd destroy any of the softball pitchers so he invited them to come to the next softball practice and have at it. If they struck out they had to run laps. He had every pitcher on the staff pitch to those boys and every dang one of them struck out every baseball player. It was too funny. Those boys probably never did finish running all their laps because they kept going back for more punishment and kept striking out. I've tried it myself when I used to coach and they beat me every time as well. Softballs move like crazy and a 60mph pitch from 40 feet is like a baseball thrown in the 90s from 60 feet. You have very little time to try to figure out where the ball is going and the only thing you know for sure is that it won't go where it initially appears to be going. Unless they throw you a fastball and nobody throws fastballs despite the uninformed announcers on TV who talk about pitchers throwing fastballs.

[wagee12]

Fernandez, perhaps the greatest softball pitcher ever, faced major league all-star David Justice after the 1996 Olympics and struck him out on three pitches. Since Jennie Finch took over as a co-host of This Week in Baseball, she has consistently struck out current major leaguers who've dared to take the "Jennie Challenge." Eddie Feigner—the star of the famous barnstorming team The King and His Court—was supposedly once clocked at 104 mph, and in a two-inning exhibition in 1967, he struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, and Roberto Clemente. As Feigner recently observed, "In fast-pitch softball, you have to swing four or five inches above the ball or four or five inches below the ball. If you swing at the ball, you'll strike out every time."

The great Eddie Feigner actually lived in Trenton, Tn., for a few years before he passed away, I think while he was in Atlanta. That is where his old Dodge Touring Van sits right now.

[SoftballVol]

Fernandez, perhaps the greatest softball pitcher ever, faced major league all-star David Justice after the 1996 Olympics and struck him out on three pitches. Since Jennie Finch took over as a co-host of This Week in Baseball, she has consistently struck out current major leaguers who've dared to take the "Jennie Challenge." Eddie Feigner—the star of the famous barnstorming team The King and His Court—was supposedly once clocked at 104 mph, and in a two-inning exhibition in 1967, he struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Willie Mays, Harmon Killebrew, and Roberto Clemente. As Feigner recently observed, "In fast-pitch softball, you have to swing four or five inches above the ball or four or five inches below the ball. If you swing at the ball, you'll strike out every time."

The great Eddie Feigner actually lived in Trenton, Tn., for a few years before he passed away, I think while he was in Atlanta. That is where his old Dodge Touring Van sits right now.
When Eddie and his Court came to Woodstock his starting pitcher and catcher started to warm up by pitching to each other. They started at maybe 50 feet apart while standing on the left field line equidistant from the foul pole and the backstop. With each pitch they'd each take a step back until each man was as far back as he could get because of the fence or the backstop. Each man would fire a perfect, horizontal strike to the other from well over 200 feet away. This went on for several minutes while the crowd was just stunned at the exhibition. There's no telling how fast those pitches had to be moving to seemingly run flat for over 200 feet. They were every bit as good at what they did as the Harlem Globetrotters were at basketball.

[wagee12]

At one time, his son was handling the majority of the pitching chores. Also, one of his catchers was former Houston Colt 45s John Bateman. Now, when we played him in the mid 1970s he was still very good. He would throw between his legs, behind his back and blind folded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWkUk4mYN9w