Is slow pitch dying?

[greymule]

Central New Jersey used to be a hotbed of slow-pitch softball. In the 1970s, within Mercer County alone, at least five townships had leagues of from 10 to 40 teams. The larger leagues had several divisions, and many guys played in more than one league. There were well over 100 men's teams in the county leagues, too, plus plenty of women's slow pitch. On any weekend from April through September, there were tournaments galore. There were also almost 40 teams in an industrial league, which had three levels of competition. Church leagues also abounded.

Today, one township's league has folded, and the other four contain half the teams they did 25 years ago. The leagues that once had three divisions now have two; those that had two now have one. There are a few tournaments.

The population of the county has doubled, and girls' fast pitch is booming, but slow-pitch is less than half what it used to be, and it's still sinking. Is it the same around the country?



[Edited by greymule on Dec 3rd, 2002 at 10:36 PM]

[whiskers_ump]

As a rule I do not officiate in slow-pitch anymore. However,
I am always getting calls. Association keeps trying. So I
guess they are pretty busy. I know they have more slow-pitch
umpires around here [East Texas] than Fast-pitch. They do seem
to stay busy.

glen

[oppool]

Here in Plano Tx it is doing well we have about 300 teams per season with 3 seasons each year (spring, summer & fall) playing 5 nights per week usally using up all 9 fields that we have + a Sunday league. If wanted to I could probably call every night of the week. Tournaments in the area arent as plentiful as they are in FP but usally somewhere in the area of Dallas there is some type of SP tournament going on most weekends during May-Sept.

Some of what you may be seeing is it seems that sometimes when an area becomes older teams move to the newer places and facilities also sometimes when economic times get tough there is not as many sponsers out there which may limit the number of teams in certain situations

JMO

Don

[bluezebra]

Slo-pitch is alive and well in Southern California.

Bob

[greymule]

Glad to hear slow pitch is thriving elsewhere. Of course, it's not dead here—I still got in 80 games as a fill-in ump when I wasn't doing FP or Modified.

I guess part of it is demographics in this area. SP was once very popular in Princeton, but with the cheapest single-family house now costing $350,000, young blue-collar guys are not easy to find. The population is growing fast, but the professionals from the Far East don't play softball, and the Guatamalans play soccer. (Without immigrants from those places, New Jersey's population would be shrinking.) And perhaps the neighboring townships are indeed aging, with fewer young people interested in playing. Maybe with the next generation, SP will rebound.

I've also heard that the local politicians feel there are more votes in youth sports than in adult softball leagues.

[Del-Blue]

Slow pitch here in Delaware is very much on the decline. When I played 15 years ago, there were over 300 teams in this small state. The last coulple of years it has dwindled to around 100. Mike You know the numbers!!!

I think that the younger people comming into the work place are more interested in their career, than recreaction outside the job.

We used to have three industrial league teams and one womens team where I work, all made up of the people that work at my site. We also had an intramurial league which had 20 teams. Now we have one mens team, and they don't all work for the same company. The people here are getting older and the young professionals comming to work here are more interested in their career.

We used to have an association with well over 150 umpires, now I think we register about 60.

Bob

[Andy]

Men's and Women's slowpitch is huge here in Arizona. In the Phoenix area there are games just about every night year-round at most fields.

I only work FP, ASA JO FP is thriving for the girls. About 15-20 years ago there was a strong Men's state FP league. It has died. There are a few Men's FP teams around the area that try to get a 4 or 6 team league together every once in a while, but nowhere near the quality of days past. I know that the Men's baseball program here is fairly strong, too. Maybe that is what is keeping Men's FP from going strong.

[Rick Vietti]

In Northern Nevada slow pitch is still going strong. The growing segments seem to be co-ed and senior softball. Womens slowpitch softball is barely existing and the local rec depts have seen a decline in mens teams.

JO seems to be thriving for weekend tournaments.

[greymule]

At least co-ed SP is growing around here. It didn't exist 20 years ago, but most of the business leagues are co-ed today. The other growing segments are men's 40+, 50+, even 60+.

The other main difference from the past is that most men's teams no longer wear uniforms. When I played, a team's suits had to match, and having high-quality uniforms was a mark of a good, serious team. They were baseball-style, too—everyone wanted to get away from the old softball uniforms with their long straight pants and gingerbread decorations. Now they wear just about anything, MAYBE matching T-shirts for 5 or 6 of the players.

[Elaine "Lady Blue"]

Slow Pitch is still very big in Georgia. For spots in some leagues a lottery type system is used. We have more SP type ball parks (300' fences) than anything else other than little league. Luckily for FP, most of the parks have the
temporary PVC type of fences that are used. Modified has declined in Metro Atlanta where we used to have many fine teams that competed regionally and nationally. I was one of the few (3) women that called modified and we used to travel around the state calling invitational tournaments.
I quit calling SP fulltime in 1995, just calling here and there. But, interestingly, my UIC asked me to call the 12U 1997 ASA National here as they were short of umpires. I had the plate on the IF game. At that time, I had only called 2 nights of men's SP in 2 years. I guess when you've got it, you've got it!! LOL LOL