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By Lewis Dolinsky Through eight presidents, war and peace, earthquake and fire, a fast-pitch softball game that began decades ago on Berkeley’s Barrows Field endures, with an ever-evolving cast of characters and locales. I was there from the beginning and have total recall, except for names, faces, dates, and places. In 1968, graduate students Steve Kellman and Gary Robinson and itinerant street poet Bruce Hawkins (who once attended UC for a month) were on the staff of Occident, the campus literary magazine, founded in 1881 and now, alas, defunct. I was the editor and well on my way to becoming the oldest living undergraduate. None of us had played softball for years; but one June day, we took bats, balls, and gloves out to Upper Barrows Field. Maybe we were bored. Classes and protests were over for the year; the smell of tear gas had faded. Upper Barrows (North Field) was full of ruts, and right field was absurdly short, with Hearst Pool hovering above it. But the field had a backstop and potential opposition: two men and three boys, ages 11 to 14. We challenged them to a game, and they thrashed us. Undaunted, we began choosing sides every weekday afternoon, yelling at passers-by to join us. Late in the season, future psychologist Ken Pelletier declined to swing at dozens of pitches. Like cavemen re-inventing the wheel, we adopted balls and strikes. The early years were the stuff of legends: Big Al, Slugger, and Crazy Dave, the guy who refused to stop running until he was tagged out or scored. Statman kept statistics on each game until the responsibility overwhelmed him and he burned them. The first world frisbee champion, Victor Malafronte, threw discs across the outfield between pitches. Drove us nuts. Gordon the plumber brought his gun and asked to play shortstop. No one argued. Merritt Clifton left Berkeley, faked his resume, and hooked up with a minor league baseball team. When bees drove us off the field, sociology grad student and beekeeper Mark Traugott took them away. We had a porn film actor and a guy who constantly reminded everyone that he received ATD (Aid to the Totally Disabled). He threw a bat at me, yelling, “Never quick-pitch me.’’ And I never did again. But I did it to a lot of others. We were fiercely competitive. Tantrums and arguments were frequent. And we spoke in a language all our own. A Norway ball was a pitch that went over the backstop. A Big League Scout was a guy in a suit wandering by the field, or a beautiful girl. There were groupies, but also girls who played in the game, including a pretty good Communist second baseman. Choosing sides was an art, and the coin toss for first pick was crucial. But sometimes we played old against young, short against tall, even hippies against straights. Going for my 30th pitching win in 1969, I ended up on the hippie team, even though I was wearing a button-down shirt. Peter (surname long forgotten) assured me that we would win even though we were ten runs down and the infielders were stoned. He was right. The other team lost interest. Later, Peter announced that he was going to Afghanistan. That was 1969 and the king, Zahir Shah, was still in power--not that we knew. “Peter, what will you do in Afghanistan?’’ we asked. “Groove,’’ he said. You could groove perfectly well at Barrows: Lie on the grass, close your eyes, and listen to bat hit ball. Sustenance could be found nearby at Bastards and Robbers (Baskin-Robbins) on Bancroft. This was the Garden but, like Adam, we were banished. In 1974, women’s intercollegiate softball took over the field; we figured that our sins had been hitting balls onto the balcony of the women’s gym and making insensitive remarks to topless sunbathers up there. In exile, we sampled more than a dozen fields. Kleeberger was too busy and too small; Strawberry was requisitioned by the football team; Underhill was torn down because of earthquake fears; Bushrod at 59th Street in Oakland was in bad shape. There, practicing, were former minor league baseball players in their 60s and 70s, their skills diminished but passion intact. That’s how we want to be, we said. And in a way, we have become what we beheld. Long before we got old, we created the Amazing Mets, an all-star team of our choose-up game. We entered UC intramurals with moderate success, then thrived in chemistry professor Sam Markowitz’s fast-pitch summer league, winning four consecutive titles (1972–75) and defeating the UC Davis champs three times. The league required players to have a “direct connection’’ to the University (i.e. students, faculty, or staff). Our sense of community was wider. To us, you were legit if you hung out on the Berkeley campus or were friends of students or grew up in town. There were other leagues--Oakland fast-pitch, Berkeley slow-pitch--and tournaments. Players came and left, and sometimes returned. Reunions brought alumni from the East. For the 25th anniversary game at Strawberry Field in 1992, Bruce Calderwood showed up, unannounced, from the Gold Country. He hadn’t played in years, knew nothing about the reunion, just thought there might be a game. As we aged, we settled down to one game on Saturdays, April through September, although last year we went into December. Now people have jobs or children, who often play better than their fathers. In the mid-’90s, we settled at Montclair Park, where “ducks on the pond” really means ducks on the pond and the geese can be snippy. Our players are slower now, but balls and bats are livelier. How could you get anyone out when Montclair’s infield is like a rock and the outfield is wide open because fielders had to play so deep? But, eventually, younger guys ran down balls in the gaps, and new home run hitters blasted the ball so far that there was no need to chase it. Relegated to umpiring because of computer injuries, I looked for more pitchers. In 2001, I found Guatemalan brothers, ages 23 and 25, tossing underhand on a field across from North Berkeley BART. Each could throw a straight fast ball, a riser, a sinker, a curve, and a change-up. For three Saturdays, they pitched against each other at Montclair--good, tight games. When David Lee, a 69-year-old retired history teacher from the Oakland prep school Head-Royce, singled to right, I told the younger Guatemalan: “The guy who got that hit is three times as old as you.’’ David is now 71, riding a motor scooter across Europe, duplicating a trip he made in 1953. We’ve all changed over the past 36 years. Gary Robinson is now a Psychologist and hurler Andy Fisher sums up: “This game has proved the sole constant in an otherwise continually shifting landscape of locations, job venues, social relationships, outlooks, and commitments. It remains our sandbox, where we can stay in touch with our kidlike selves.’’ And Andy still wonders what happened to Peter who went to Afghanistan. Maybe he became a warlord. Lewis Dolinsky ’73 is a journalist who spent 26 years at the San Francisco Chronicle as an editor and foreign affairs columnist. |
 The author in the early '70s, when he had a fastball.
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Outwit, outlast, outplay: On a Saturday in July, players gathered during the teeam's 36th season (the author is fourth from right, top row).
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