These photos are mostly what dad looked like when he played softball. He usually wore a t-shirt or a Grace Lutheran Church softball team shirt. Shoes were rarely tennis shoes, like the ones in the picture. Mostly he wore his Sunday dress/church shoes to play softball in. He NEVER wore real baseball spikes. He was always our church softball team pitcher. He (and Todd) were the best I ever played with who could hit a softball to the opposite field, which was right field. The reason you tried to hit to right field was this ... the object of baseball is to score more runs that the other team...we all know that. But with a man on second base, if the batter hit the ball to right field, the man on second would always score on that hit to right field. Or .... if you had a man on first base, a hit to right field would easily send the man on first base to third base. Then a sacrifice fly pop up would usually get the guy on third base home (assuming there were less than two outs when the pop up occurred). EVERYBODY in 14 states and half of Canada knew that when Dad was up to bat, he was going to hit the ball to right field. The defensive team would put extra players on the right side of the field to stop him and Dad would STILL find a spot to hit the ball without the defensive team catching it. Many times he trotted into second base with an easy double. Sometimes, depending on the English spin on the ball, his hits would roll way off the baseline into the right field foul area and he would trot in for a triple...sometimes even a home run. Todd was really good at it too ... but Todd had great power to right center field ... so whereas Dad would try to place the ball RIGHT ON THE FIRST BASE FOUL LINE, Todd would just knock the crap out of the ball and hit it over the heads of the right center fielder or completely over the fence. Matt and I were able to hit to the opposite field too ... but my hits were mostly singles or doubles and mostly just to advance the runner to third base. Matt did it to advance the runners and get on base himself .... but Matt did not have the running speed ...
Hitting to right field was a skill that not everybody could master because it takes great patience to do it. The natural thing for a right-handed batter (which we all were) is to hit the ball to left field. That is where a right-handed hitters natural power is. To hit it to right field so specifically as Dad and Todd did, you had to stay patient in the batter's box until you got the right pitch to do it...the best pitches were the ones a little on the outside of home plate because an outside pitch is so much easier to take it to right field. So .... many times the pitcher would pitch the ball on the inside corner of the plate so the batter couldn't take it to right field. When then happened, the batter (Dad or all of us) would shift our feet in the batter's box and move our bodies toward right field to accomplish the feat. We all looked like ballet dancers doing it. Sometimes it would cause you to pop the ball up and be an easy out. That happened to me a lot but never seemed to be a problem for Dad and Todd. The other problem with shifting your feet around is that if you stepped on home plate while batting the ball, the batter was called out. You cannot touch home plate while batting the ball ... PLUS, you have to stay in the batter's box, as well....
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