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The Games have begun!



Hello Everyone – Luther played in the Irish Dome in the twin cities on Monday and mopped on two other Minnesota Lutheran schools. Their junior pitcher Courtney Hoeg twirled a five-inning no-hitter, the first no-hitter of her career. The results and line scores are posted under the Opening Pitch section of the WSN website at www.wissports.net so check it out.



It s important to remember to e-mail in your scores, win or lose, home or visitors unless you and the other coach talk it over and agree that one of you will do it. It s really tough to keep track of teams that don t report scores and even tougher for rankers to have any idea of what is going on. We ll find you and your record one way or the other so don t try to hide – there are too many of us working to get the game more notoriety statewide. Hiding scores, stats etc. is getting tougher and tougher in this day of quick information.

We re close to getting the game summary page ready for you. It s going to be easy to use.

Since last night s bulletin I have 1) posted the Luther game score report on the site 2) added team previews of Watertown (Wisconsin Little Ten); Appleton North (Fox Valley AssociationO); SPASH (Wisconsin Valley); Verona (Badger South), Berlin (Eastern Valley); River Valley (Southwest Wisconsin) 3) added several head coach e-mail addresses to our coaches mailing list and to the regular Fastpitch Bulletin lists (Greenwood and Cochrane/Fountain City) 4) learned that Steve Krupke, head coach at Brodhead has led the Cardinals to five Rock Valley Conference titles so I added his name to the Coaches Honor Roll Page on both websites 5) discovered that Chuck Meyer of Pecatonica has won 280 games in his great career there so I added his name to the 250 win list 6) learned that Roger Schliewe of Horicon is closing in fast on the 300 win mark so I m tracking his progress this season and anxious to announce that milepost for him 7) taken the Poynette players outside for the first time – actually my assistant coach Ron took them outside and pounded flyballs to them on our outfield which was clear of snow and not full of water.

I urge you to check out all those previews that I posted and to also take a close look at the Coaches Honor Roll Pages. Those pages are The Fastpitch Chronicle  - Wisconsin High School Coaches Hall of Fame so to speak. If you know of coaches whose names are missing from the mileposts that I have there, just send me the information and I will add them on.



I had been searching and searching recently for my NCAA fastpitch softball scoring manual. I knew that it was somewhere in my highly organized office area at school but just couldn t figure out which stack of papers it was in. Today, my longtime assistant coach and head statistician and school record book keeper, Mary asked me for our record book so she could get some more copies made. I valiantly looked through a stack here and a stack there and said, "be patient, it s in here I just have to jog my memory a bit and figure out where a guy like me might have stored it."  I hunted for just a minute or so and came across the scoring manual and a couple of other items I wanted here at home so I can use information for the bulletins. Then I found the record book stuff. When I left school tonight at about 7:30 I forgot the scoring manual in my office.



Tonight s situation and ruling – With two outs and the game tied and a runner at second base, the batting team s best hitter steps up to the plate. The defensive team s coach wants to intentionally walk the good hitter to put a force at all three bricks and not have the other team s best hitter drive in the winning run. The pitcher is not very good at intentionally walking batters and fears that she might throw a wild pitch and move the runner to third and negate the force play. After thinking about things for a few seconds she steps onto the pitcher s plate, takes a signal, begins her windup and using a legal delivery, tosses the ball into the air above her head and catches the ball on the way down in order to walk the batter.



I saw something similar to that play happen in a men s fastpitch game I was playing in way back in 1978 during the ASA Class A men s state fastpitch tournament. It wasn t exactly like that but it was sort of similar. I wrote about the play I was involved in (I was on first base at the time of the historical and legendary pitch).



In tonight s play situation – The umpire should call an illegal pitch on the pitcher and award the base runner third base. It falls under Rule 3, Section 6, Article 13 which states that a player shall not engage in unsporting acts, like part c which states that behavior in any manner not in accordance with the spirit of fair play shall not be allowed. That means that there would now be a runner at third and the illegal pitch is also a ball on the batter. If the toss into the air occurred with three balls on the batter, there would now be runners on first and third with two outs. If there were less than three balls on the batter the count moves to one more ball on the batter than there were at the time of the pitch.



The legendary play I was involved in centered around the pitcher from Eastman not wanting to pitch the ball that was in play. He wanted the ball that just got fouled back, out of play. The umpire told him he had to throw the one that he had just gotten from the ump. The pitcher, then intentionally threw the next pitch over the 30 high backstop on Gelein Field in Eau Claire. There was not a person playing in that game or watching that has ever stopped laughing about that play. I wound up on second base in stitches.

 

Beth Boden, former Pacelli standout and current Tennessee Tech star has signed with the Rockford team in the Womens Pro Fastpitch League. I have posted an article from the Tennessee Tech Sports Information Department about that. The article appears in the Opening Pitch section of the WSN website.



I have received the following story from about a dozen Bulletin readers in the past couple of weeks so I decided to edit it just a bit and let all of you chuckle.

 

Two 90-year-old women, Rose and Barb, had been friends all their lives. When

it was clear that Rose was dying, Barb visited her every day.

One day Barb said, "Rose, we both loved playing women's fastpitch softball all our

lives. We played it all through high school and beyond. Please do me one favor:

when you get to Heaven, somehow you must let me know if there's women's fastpitch

softball there."

Rose looked up at Barb from her deathbed, "Barb, you've been my best friend

for many years. If it's at all possible, I'll do this favor for you."

Shortly after that, Rose passed on.

At midnight a couple of nights later, Barb was awakened from a sound sleep

by a blinding flash of white light and a voice calling out to her, "Barb,

Barb."

"Who is it?" asked Barb, sitting up suddenly. "Who is it?"

"Barb--it's me, Rose."

"You're not Rose.  Rose just died."

"I'm telling you, it's me, Rose," insisted the voice.

"Rose!  Where are you?"

"In Heaven," replied Rose. "I have some really good news and a little bad

news."

"Tell me the good news first," said Barb.

"The good news," Rose said, "is that there's fastpitch softball in Heaven. Better yet,

all of our old buddies who died before us are here, too. Better than that,

we're all young again. Better still, it's always springtime, and it never

rains or snows. And best of all, we can play softball all we want, and we

never get tired."

"That's fantastic," said Barb.  "It's beyond my wildest dreams! So...what's

the bad news?"

"You're pitching Tuesday."



Hey, it s late, batting practice at 6:45 am and I m in charge.

Have a great day!

Keep it Rising!

Bob