From Toledo
Blade
Richard "Rip" Riley
Sports
writer Jim Taylor
some
years ago (1979)
Richard "Rip" Riley 1956
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The lighting
is murky, and shadows play faintly across the dirt patch infield.
The pitch hisses like a freshly lighted fuse darting hummingbird-style,
up down, away
It's a blur
Here it is ->>>>.O ->>>>>>>>.their
it goes.
The batter swings.
The ball already is in the catcher's glove.
That's
Fast pitch softball.
It was played that way in the small towns of my youth, and it's
the way an overpowering underhand stylist, Richard "Rip" Riley,
remembered it.
A 6-5, 205-pounder in the days when he seemed to fall all over a
batter from the mound, Riley is older now and works for
the Faultless Rubber Co. In Ashland Ohio. The man they called "The
Ripper" hasn't pitched in many years, but maybe that's because
there isn't anybody to pitch to.
While not extinct, fast pitch softball like the buffalo, is , or
was dying out.
Maybe they should play it in a preserve somewhere, because it deserves
to be saved.
A game that moved like summer lighting, fast pitch fell victim to
the high, lob mortar shots of slow pitch, something any Suma Wrestler
with the omph to grunt twice coould bloop the ball out of the
park of play. It was a arc of triumph
Fast
pitch, a game of strikeouts and bunts, was on the wane.
"Rip" Riley remembers real softball. and what a misnomer.(unsuitable name) The "softball" was as hard as a
baseball and flew in all directions depending on the manipulator
on the mound.
"Ripper" recalls being clocked one time in Colorado at 104 miles
per hour. The ball would break anyway you wanted it, in, out,
up, down.
The "Ripper": was now ordinary pitcher. In 1950, he was ranked
No. 4 in the world at a time when softballers were rated.
According to a banker in Toledo Bob Sockrider. "Sockie" was saying
the "Ripper" was the finest softball pitcher of all time. With Eddie
Feigner, the King and his Court coming to town I wondered about
"Rip" Riley.
A windmiller--the arm twirling like a windmill on delivery, Riley
said pitchers didn't get all their force from releasing the ball
directly underhand. You were supposed to keep it six inches from
your hip, but some guys got a foot, foot-and-a-half away.
Some used the windmill windup, but others used what they called
the slingshot, where the pitcher curled the arm behind his head
and let it go. "Then there was the Figure Eight Spinballer"
who spun the ball all the way. The windmill pitchers lasted
longest -- the used their arm and body all together.
It's a vanishing art.
Because fast pitch has been in decline, you don't see many accomplished
young hurlers these days.
They are some
who can still hum it. A man Ty Stofflet, whizzed the big,
fat ball past a few Dodgers recently, and they didn't touch him.
but then the Dodgers haven't been hitting much of anybody.
Our games were fast -- they moved
right along."Riley said. "We'd play them in 50 minutes to
an hour. If you walked one man it was something in those days"
Rip remembers Toledo as a kind
of softball Mecca in the late 40's and 50's. He played here
often.
"we had some super clubs in Toledo,:
he said . "I played with Schmidt Beer, and Ansberg-West Mortuary.
I know in the late 1930's you had a world champion there, Crimson
Coach."
He had not trouble remembering
the great pitchers of the time. Tommy Nichols, Ray Amborski, Bonnie
Jones out of Detroit, Ken Ramsdell, Wigg Keeler, and Fritz Sosko,
who pitched for the VFW, a team Riley called "one of the best in
the country."
The great hurlers would strike
out 16 to 17 batters a game, the third and first basemen would play
so close they could shake hands with the batter, and the scores
were almost always 1-0, 2-0, 2-1." in the strength-vs.-strength
matchups.
It was one bomber against another
and a break often would determine the pitcher's fate. (win or lose)
For Rip Riley and others, It wasn't unusual to pitch
five and six nights a week.
"I've never had arm trouble. I
always took care of my arm. I got it rubbeddown before and
after a game.
You know what they say "It was the legs that went
bad. they wee the first to go. I can still throw, though
I'm not nearly as fast as I used to be." Riley said.
A friend of The Blade's Dave Hackenberg,
Riley has never been tapped for the American Softball Association's
Hall of Fame.
"Hack wrote a nice letter t the
ASA for me, going to bat for me t get me into the Hall of Fame,
but they said you had to have proof.
'But I had a divorce, and my ex-wife
burned up three scrapbooks I had kept, and now I don't have anything
to show for my career. They want proof." Rip said..
Riley pitched in Six All-World
tournaments, and hurled for the VFW team here in the VFW tournament's
and his team won three straight during those years.
At one time when he was 18, rip
was pitching for six different teams. Pitchers were precious
"They got you a job, and you got a little under the table.
Softball pitcher's got the cabbage," Riley recalled.
He grew up in Wayne, Ohio, near
Bowling Green, and developed in softball because the high school
wasn't big enough to field a baseball team.
He spent a lot of time on the play-grounds,
and often came home with his pants ripped. "That's where I
got the name" he said "My Mom called me that, then my grandfather,
my sister, and pretty soon all the kids."
From pitching his right arm is
an inch and three-quarters larger in circumference them his left.
And no wonder---he used to warm up from second base.
So what happened to fast pitch
softball, the game of the late 40's and 50's and now merely a memory.
"Slow pitch came in and it was a game
made for old men." Rip replied "When you got too old for fast pitch
you played the other. In the beginning I think you could only
have two players under 30 on a slow pitch team.
"Anyway, it cost less to play ---
less equipment, and less travel. (more teams) kids did not want
to accept the challenge of going to bat against a fast pitcher."
Richard "Rip" Riley Born;
1924--Died Feb. 18, 2002
Information courtesy
Bill Cline from T/B Jim Taylor article 1979