www.woodbatsoftball.com (Copyright 2010)
CLOSED for the Season
Contact me at john@woodbatsoftball.com
2600 Harlem Road
Cheektowaga, NY 14211
ph: 716-863-8978
john
For a great view of sports in general and especially from an EAST AURORA NY point of view please take a look at the entertaining writing of GLORY DAYS player Rick Ohler at www.rightfieldwritingworks.com
Rick coaches the Wallenwein's DUDAS !
Buffalo Magazine has a story about our League!
You can view it on-line below
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USE: jhstegner@yahoo.com
password: buffalo101
Go to pages 16-17
Glory Days Wood Bat Softball
The Boys of Summer Carry On
FOREVER YOUNG MAGAZINE
By Rick Ohler
Organization mentioned: Glory Days Softball League www.woodbatsoftball.com
It’s about six o’clock on a Thursday night, and the dusty gravel lot at the Town of Aurora’s West Falls Park is filling up with SUVs, pickups, construction vans, and all manner of cars from luxury imports to rusting minivans. One by one, men emerge from their vehicles and sit on tailgates or bumpers to trade work shoes for spikes and dress shirts for team jerseys. Some of them loosen up tight muscles as others wrap ankles in Ace bandages or struggle into knee braces. All while the unmistakable aroma of the Ben-Gay that is being slathered onto sore hamstrings, quads or shoulders fills the air, mixing with baseball chatter.
They might still think of themselves as the boys of summer, warming up their arms with some catch or swinging the wood bats, but the term boy is a bit of a stretch for this group of graying, balding and a little paunchy former warriors of the softball basepaths. In fact, the only thing boyish about them is the joyful expression on their faces that comes from knowing that, for an hour or two each week, they get to play the game they learned as kids and still love as, well, much older kids. About one hundred strong, their average age is fifty-seven and their fans are as likely to be grandchildren as spouses. They are the grand old men of the Glory Days Wood Bats Softball League, the brainchild of sixty-five-year-old John Stegner, and the first men’s fifty and over, wood bats only league in the area and still one of the very few in the country.
By 6:30 all eight Glory Days teams—the Americans, Sparks, Knights, Surfin’ Birds, Connections, Canes, Dudas and Grillers are in place at the four diamonds in the park and behind the adjacent Aurora Waldorf School, and four umpires have settled in behind four home plates. What happens over the next seven (or more) innings might surprise the skeptical. These gentlemen, some well into their sixties, may have lost a step, but they haven’t lost their competitive edge, and they deliver some pretty darn good ball. On any given night you’ll see a few double plays turned, some throws from the outfield for outs, some running catches, and plenty of tight games. Witness a recent contest that saw the Dudas best the Canes 10-9 in eleven innings where each team committed only one error. Oh sure, you’ll see some aching, aging legs struggle to get down the sixty-five-foot baseline to first base and then ask for a courtesy runner (or an oxygen mask) when they do. And you’ll have some ground balls that might have been snared routinely twenty, thirty or forty years ago, skip through the infield, but the defenses are far from sloppy.
On offense the slow pitch format means that everyone hits; strikeouts and walks are rare. The difference for these senior citizens is that the long ball is a thing of the past; most of the glory boys are now spray hitters, adherents of Hall of Famer Wee Willie Keeler’s timeless baseball maxim, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.” Oh, and the good-natured trash talking, the braggadocio, self-deprecation and raillery aimed at opponents? It’s priceless.
By 7:45 all four games are over and the players—winners and losers—adjourn to the parking lot for that most sacred of male rituals: post-sporting event beer drinking. Each team will have assigned one member beer duty—making the last out of the previous game or striking out are usual sins that carry beer penalties. At first the boys cluster around coolers by team—the huddle of rainbow tie-dye shirts marking the Dudas, the brilliant Hawaiian print shirts marking the Surfin’ Birds, the Sparks with their traditional yellow Sparkle Cleaner jerseys. Then, the teams begin to mingle, laughing easily with each other, recounting this game and others from decades ago, asking about family, sharing photos of grandkids, lighting charcoal grills for sausages and hot dogs.
There is much that makes this league special, if not unique: the wood bats and the low compression, low impact balls that limit the speed and distance of hits, thereby reducing the threat of injury to players with ever lengthening reaction times; the liberal substitutions that allow courtesy runners for gimpy hitters; the rule that makes any ball through the infield an automatic single, eliminating the very embarrassing prospect of being thrown a out at first from the outfield; the no collision policy on the basepaths. But it is the camaraderie that really cements this league. When league commissioner John Stegner, a lifelong ballplayer, founded Glory Days, he was adamant that all teams play at the same time in the same location, so that the fellowship after the games would flow naturally.
The Glory Days Softball League is in its third year and Stegner is proud that this labor of love—he’s an unpaid volunteer—has eight teams, up from five in 2010 and seven last year. Even with fifteen players on a team, Stegner says that he turned away lots of would-be softballers and could have fielded another team or maybe two if there were enough diamonds. They come to Glory Days from all over Western New York and from all walks of life—there are CEOs, several attorneys, a renowned surgeon, Moog and Fisher-Price workers, law enforcement officers, blue collar guys, entrepreneurs and even a writer for a local magazine. They come because John Stegner had an idea back in 2009.
“In 2009, after our summer softball season in the young men’s league, it became clear that so many guys were dropping out, older guys that could still play and still wanted to play. But with the metal bats and the illegal bats and the younger players it wasn’t fun anymore. So in the fall of 2009, I bought two wood bats and twenty of us over fifty-year-olds played a practice game to see how it would go. Everybody loved it. Over the winter I put out the word and by spring we had five teams. And it’s been growing ever since. My goal is simple: to provide a safe and competitive team sport for senior men in a game that resembles the baseball of our youth within a slow pitch softball format.”
By 8:30 or quarter to nine, the parking lot is empty except for Stegner, who finishes his notes on the night’s results so he can file a newspaper story and piles the league equipment into his van. To sum up he says, “Let me give you the league motto,
“Bring us those with sore arms and aching shoulders.
Bring us those with injured knees and throbbing hips.
Bring us those who were and now are not.
Bring us those that never were but still strive to be.
Together we’ll enjoy the spirit of competition and friendship
inspired by wood bat softball.”
Rick Ohler manages the Dudas of the Glory Days Wood Bats Softball League. His first book, Have You Lived Here All Your Life? “Not Yet.” is available at www.rickohler.com
RICK OHLER’S DEBUT COLLECTION OF STORIES ARRIVES IN EAST AURORA AND ON THE WEB
Lifelong East Auroran, softball manager, writer and award-winning East Aurora Advertiser columnist Rick Ohler’s first book, Have You Lived Here All Your Life? . . . “Not Yet” debuted July 26, 2012. The book is a collection of fifty-eight of Ohler’s funny but poignant stories about growing up on Oakwood Avenue in East Aurora, coming home after college, sticking around and raising a family, reaching the ripe old age of sixty and getting on with life in small town America.
Ohler has been teaching creative writing for almost thirty years. His classes include a popular Writing Your Memoirs and Family Histories class, creative writing workshops and grammar seminars. Ohler’s Travel Writing and Photography Bus Trips to Wyoming County and day-long writing retreats offer aspiring writers an opportunity to learn the craft. In addition, he writes for Buffalo Spree, the Western New York Land Conservancy and for the Gow School alumni magazine.
The book is available through Ohler’s website, www.rickohler.com, and at these fine establishments throughout East Aurora: The Bookworm, Larwood’s, Vidler’s, Wallenwein’s, The Roycroft Inn, Roycroft Antiques, Aurora Brew Works, the Advertiser, Aurora Paint Pot.
Copyright 2010 wood bat softball. All rights reserved.
2600 Harlem Road
Cheektowaga, NY 14211
ph: 716-863-8978
john