A Salute to Softball

"the arc of the ball ... the ping of the bat"

Slow-pitch softball, god bless it, has always been a sport of high numbers. Your average office stiff with a solid swing and a sure eye can bat .500, and the guy whose wife nags him to lose his gut can regularly use that heft to lose the ball in deepest center field.

Fast-pitch, the sport of strong-arm pitchers and frustrated batsmen, was the dominant form of the game 30 years ago; today, 90 percent of softball players prefer to take their cuts at the soft, juicy, irresistible, slow lob. With good reason: In slow-pitch, there's a play on every batter, the ball can be used to scatter picnickers and it sometimes lands in the parking lot. Softball is an ideal social game, it is accessible to players of all skill levels and it provides an alternative venue for beer consumption.

For those reasons, softball is racking up some big numbers of its own these days. With more than 40,000,000 participants (up from 25,000,000 in 1980), it stands as the nation's most popular team sport. Baseball may be the national pastime, but softball is what gets the country off its big fanny and into the field, where it belongs.

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It all started on Thanksgiving Day, 1887, in the gymnasium of the Farragut Boat Club at the edge of Lake Michigan in Chicago, where a group of 20 or so young men had gathered to hear reports on the Harvard-Yale football game. When the game ended--Yale prevailed 17 -- 8--one mischievous Eli picked up a stray boxing glove and lobbed it across the gym at a Harvard fan. The target saw the glove coming, grabbed a pole and batted it back.

Seeing this, a young reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade named George Hancock said, "I've got it. Let's play ball." Each team scored about 40 runs, and softball was on its way to greatness.

By 1900, the game had spread across the country, and during the Depression, it was determined that 11,000,000 Americans of both sexes played the game on 8696 diamondettes (as softball fields were often called). Dale Carnegie played, as did Babe Ruth, Lowell Thomas and cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who became something of a legend by pitching for five innings with a lighted cigar clenched between his teeth. It was a jolly time for the game. So jolly that attempts were made to ban beer and other alcohol from the playing field, which, in turn, gave rise to critic Alexander Woollcott's telling question "Why softball when there is highball?"

The game got a nice boost after World War Two when playgrounds and recreation departments began to wire softball diamonds for nighttime play. In the Seventies, it absolutely took off. Maybe it was all that little league the baby boomers had been forced to play when they were young. Maybe it was the yearning for sport and fitness. Or the advent of light beer. Whatever the reasons, the number of softballers doubled over the next 20 years and the equipment manufacturers found themselves with a $370,000,000 market. Five million league games will be played this year, which means that softballs will be lobbed, smashed and thrown the distance from home plate to Alpha Centauri, give or take a few light-years. You could look it up.

Faced with those kinds of numbers, the editors at Playboy figured it was time to play ball. So we've put together a lineup that includes hitting instruction, equipment, oddities, all-stars and, in this age of office and coed softball, some important tips on diamond etiquette. Think of this as your field guide to the summer game. Don't leave home plate without it.

The hard guys of Softball

Here's a bar bet for you: Which two baseball greats got their start in softball?

Time's up.

Tommy "Old Reliable" Henrich and Ernie "Let's Play Two" Banks. In fact, those two also make up the entire list of famous softballers, once you discount all the people who got famous before they stepped onto the field. That's because in softballdom, the fame goes to the teams, which, come to think of it, is a pretty democratic way of doing things.

Just about the biggest team going right now is Steele's Silver Bullets, a.k.a. The Men of Steele. They are a band of barnstorming, Ruthian monsters who go out and hit home runs high over the heads of the hapless slow-pitchers who oppose them. Mike "The Machine" Macenko is their leader, an athlete who failed to rate the cover of any national magazine even after whacking 3143 home runs over the course of the Eighties. Factor that into your Rotisserie League stats and see where it gets you.

The men are in the employ of Steele's Sports of Grafton, Ohio, with the added sponsorship of Coors Light. Steele's makes and sells bats, so these guys routinely field test them with 16 downtowners in a game. As a team, they batted .670 and stroked 3730 home runs last year. All those pyrotechnics have led to 1344 wins in the past five years. But the really scary part is that they have actually lost 100 games. Think about the guys who beat them.

Think about Superior/Apollo of Windsor Locks, Connecticut, for instance. Head to head against The Men of Steele last season, they won 11 of 15. Frank LaTeano, the team's sponsor and coach, recruits nationally, picking up players from a bunch of superteams that collapsed in the late Eighties. LaTeano admits that some of his guys are monsters, "but they are also true athletes who are multitalented and can get that third out when you need one."

Yet even they weren't named the number-one team last year. That distinction--earned through a tortuous process reminiscent of the way collegiate football champs are determined--went to Ritch's Salvage of Harrisburg, North Carolina, which only goes to show that having an unwieldy name on your uniform won't wreck your team's chance of success.

Odd Ball

Codify any set of rules and people will find a way to bend, break or reinterpret them:

• Backward Ball--In 1908, the National Playground Association allowed lead-off base runners to choose the direction of infield traffic by running to first or third.

• Snowball--Priest Lake, Idaho, sponsors a winter tournament in which players use a pink ball and wear snowshoes.

• Gay Ball--Yvonne Zipter's Diamonds Are a Dyke's Best Friend bills itself as a report on "the lesbian national pastime."

• Shortfielder's Ball--The Little People of America play it at their convention.

• The Old Ball Game--There is a circuit in Florida for players 75 or older.

• City of Big Balls--Chicago's variant uses a ball that is a full 33-1/3 percent larger than the normal 12-inch ball, and nobody uses a baseball glove. Its devotees, past and present, include George Halas, "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and Mike Royko.

Ground rules of the coed game

The first thing to know about coed softball is that it isn't played on a level field. Women have all the advantages.

When you play with guys, you're all playing by the same rules, culturally and baseballistically. On the coed ball field, however, your instinct to protect and serve women gets tangled with your instinct to kill the enemy, there by rendering you goofy. And this goofiness is attained precisely in your attempts not to act like a clod in front of the women whom, taken collectively, you'd like to impress.

About these women: Some of them will have only a passing interest in impeding the flight of the ball, with either bat or glove. But a growing minority of your diamondmates will be tough, serious players who would test you even without the sympathetic handicaps your gender imposes. Add the fact that you're psychologically vulnerable, playing a game you were supposed to master in boyhood, while women have nothing to lose, as nothing is expected of them. It's a jam Whitey Herzog couldn't maneuver out of.

To help explore this difficult terrain, we consulted a man who once had the opportunity to put a glove on Barbi Benton in a celebrity softball game but instead did the gentlemanly thing and threw her out at first. Now, there's an expert. His tip on coed softball: "Never underestimate. Make sure you've seen a woman swing a few times before you bring in the outfield. The embarrassment factor in a bloop single is far less than a home run over a drawn-in outfield."

Here are a few other ground rules we should all be able to agree on:

• You are supposed to treat women with courtesy but stop short of condescension, even if they couldn't hit a dead fly with a mallet.

• If a woman can't hit or catch, don't point it out to her. She knows it. She hates it. You point it out and she'll miss the next one by an even wider margin. A humiliated woman is no fun in the bar after the game.

• Take it easy on the posturing. Treat women like the guys, but stop short of the scratching, spitting and vulgarity that have made softball such fun over the years.

• With all those babes around, you're going to be tempted to hot-dog it--swing four bats around your head, adjust that jockstrap. Don't do it. No woman worth having will buy that act.

• Handicap yourself to compensate for your superior athletic ability, but never acknowledge that you may be the least bit better than a female player. Handicaps range from modest (not playing her position for her, even if she couldn't catch a cold in a day-care center) to ridiculous (not letting men wear gloves). Once handicaps have been agreed upon, obey and ignore them.

In short, coed softball offers all the drawbacks of a woman-filled world and none of the advantages. That is, until the game's over and you're in a cool bar, glowing with vitality and fitness. Only then will you understand why you just wasted two hours with these silly, clumsy ... these lissome, dewy creatures. Only then will they be fair game. Until then, remember: It's their game.

Biz Ball

Corporate softball can be a whole new ball game. For one thing, the company flow chart is scrambled; suddenly, that pushy V.P. is benched because of his poor fielding skills, while the incredible hulk from the mail room is accepting admiring glances from the secretarial cheering section. That won't make the veep happy, which can be a work problem for the hulk, if you know what we mean.

People do take the game pretty seriously. A high school girl was quoted in The Washington Post as saying that she played "because softball is the executive sport, and if I ever work for IBM ... I'll need to know how to play." She might want to apply to the executive in Boise who had his secretary stand along the side lines holding a wad of crisp new bills; she'd ante up for every hit and tack on bonuses for extra bases. The same guy marched his charges down to a screening of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Softball, softball, über Alles.

Clearly, corporate softball guidelines are in order:

• Make sure the boss plays. He may turn your Murderer's Row into a second-degree misdemeanor, but put him on the bench and the uniform fund dries up, the year-end banquet is canceled.

• Softball skill is inversely proportionate to salary. Recruiters should always begin in the mail room and among the security forces; head for the honchos only when league registration fees are due.

• Put accountants on the mound. They are versed in deception, cool as the numbers mount up and too scrawny to fully occupy space elsewhere on the field.

• Team practices should always be on company time. Get Personnel to plead corporate morale on your behalf.

• Don't extend field relationships into the office. If a colleague makes a good point in a sales meeting, it is not acceptable to slap him (or her) on the butt.

• If corporate honor is at stake, hire consultants (a.k.a. ringers). In Central Park, available ringers rove from field to field, offering their services.

• If you're playing against clients or colleagues, don't engage in conduct unbecoming. A New York attorney explains that her opponents are often people she works with. "The key," she says, "is balancing your professional image with your conduct on the field." Translation: Don't spike the president of the bar association.

• Bring in the national sales force during play-offs. Salesmen are famous for being ex-jocks and can often add offensive punch when you need it most.

• If you're a dork, don't play.

The Fame Game

Softball is such an accessible game that even people with no appreciable skills can play. That leaves the field wide open for celebs, politicians and TV executives.

• The Broadway Show League, now in its 36th season, fills three diamonds in Central Park on Thursday afternoons.

• The Congressional League has had as many as 250 teams--a frightening statement about bloated bureaucracy.

• In East Hampton, on Long Island, there is the annual Artists & Writers game. Recent lights of the competition have been John Irving, George Plimpton and Carl Bernstein.

• Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment and a fanatical softball player, leads a weekly charge of studio execs, writers, sycophants and toadies onto a softball field in West L.A. The goal is to share a base with a powerful executive and make pitches from close range.

Hitting the ball. Smoking it. Jacking it. Mashing a tater. The words themselves are quick violence, and why not? There's nothing nice about what the game's greatest sluggers do to poor, defenseless softballs.

"I really compressed that one," says Bruce "The Incredible Hulk" Meade of the tater he launched in a game 12 years ago in Amarillo, Texas. Quick quiz: How far did Meade's moon shot travel? Was it 250 feet, the length of an average softball tater? Or 380, the distance your basic major-league baseball--far livelier than a softball--goes when Jose Canseco compresses one? Was it 450--tape-measure distance even for baseball heroes? Try 500. Then take three more giant steps. "The wind was blowing in too," says Meade, recalling his legendary 510-foot shot, the longest home run ever hit in a softball game.

Great sluggers share one quality. Mike "The Machine" Macenko, Meade's rival in the softball pantheon, calls it selective aggression. "You can't go to the plate with a nice-guy attitude. Get up there and hit it," says Macenko. In 1987, he hit it to the tune of (this is not a typo) 844 home runs, breaking the previous record by 341. He had 1534 R.B.I.s in 350 games. His 508-foot homer, second only to Meade's blast in softball lore, sailed over a parking lot and struck a car owned by a commissioner of the Amateur Softball Association.

Softball's top aggressors gave the tape measure a rest to share their secrets with Playboy readers. There's a catch, though. If you're going to read further, go get a bat and stop thinking like a nice guy. Macenko and Meade have no patience for park-league guys who go to the plate hoping for a walk or a bloop single. Big-time softball ain't about speed or defense or looking pretty in your uniform. It's about hurting the ball.

"If you've got any frustrations in your life, take them out on that ball," says Macenko. "If there's one mistake park-league hitters make, it's that they're not aggressive enough. They take a lot of pitches, waiting for that perfect strike." His advice: "Get up there and take a good cut. Always be aggressive."

"Slow-pitch softball used to be thought of as a girls' game," says Meade. "Not anymore."

These days, the only soft thing about the game is the ball.

One other thing: Most of the game's greats sport Mighty Casey mustaches. Grow one.

And swing hard.

Howard Cosell said it: "Sports is the toy department of human life." Gentlemen, let's go shopping. Clockwise from 12: The Blue Dot Titan MSP-47 is a leather-covered 12" softball, by Worth, $5.95. The Avenger rubber-cleated leather softball shoes are from Wilson Sporting Goods, $27. U-Tote-Plush, a large-sized, padded equipment bag, holds three bats in a separate compartment, is foam-lined and comes with an optional shoulder strap, by Worth, $27.95. Palmgard padded fielder's hand-protection glove, by Markwort Sporting Goods, $17, is made to be worn inside the mitt. The Tournament Plus 12" softball that's covered with tacithane for optimum visibility is from Spalding Sports Worldwide, Chicopee, Massachusetts, $5. The Wilson Staff 8 13" softball glove is made of soft cowhide and has an angleweave closed web, from Wilson Sporting Goods, $72. High-top Power Drive Hi rubber-cleated leather softball shoes are by Mitre Sports, $60. Worth's soft-leather 12-1/2" RD2-11 fielder's glove sports an open-web construction, $129. The TPS Rich Plante model aluminum softball bat is by Louisville Slugger, $107. Easton's SX100 power generator is a perimeter-weighted aluminum-alloy softball bat with a patented weighted knob, a power-plug insert and a leather grip, $100. Worth has made the TRXS bat in lightweight 100 percent graphite, $79.95. Remember what oilman and baseball-team owner Marvin Davis once said: "As men get older, the toys get more expensive."

Game Pieces batting 1.000 with the gear that makes the game