Eastern Ontario Fastball Blog

A blog dedicated to news about the Greater Ottawa Fastball League and other happenings in the world of fastball / fastpitch softball in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, with occasional stories featuring Mrs Fitzroy Fastball, Fitzroy Fastball Junior and the Caveman. If you have info to send on, send me an email at fastball[at]fitzroyharbour.com. Follow @fitzroyfastball on Twitter.

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Friday, April 06, 2012

Fastball article from the Brockville Recorder-Times

By Ron Smith, Brockville-Recorder Times

Will area's ladies softball league fold?
By RON SMITH , SPORTS EDITOR
Posted 8 days ago
It's the final attempt at keeping the league alive.

The Leeds and Grenville Ladies Softball League will be holding a general meeting on Tuesday, April 3 at the hall in North Augusta at 7 p.m.

After only having two communities willing to field teams last year -and not operating a league in 2011 -organizers are going to try once again to keep it going.

If there are any representatives from women's fastball teams looking for somewhere to play, they are urged to attend the meeting that will determine the future of the league.

"If the interest isn't there, we will face the reality of shutting the league down," said Les McAllister, a long-time coach and organizer in this league.

North Augusta and Johnstown are willing to enter teams. Athens is a possibility again.

Organizers have been trying to contact as many possible teams as they can think of in the hopes of saving the league.

"Even if we get three teams, we'll keep it going," said McAllister.

If there are only two teams, there's not much point in having a league.

It's a far cry from what used to be a very popular and competitive league when it began in the 1960s.

It's a league that produced a Row's Corners team that won the Ontario intermediate women's championships in two straight years.


Smiths Falls won that provincial title once.

The Prescott Angels, in their first year in the Leeds and Grenville ladies league in the B division, won the Ontario midget playdowns in 1975.

It's a league that once had 15 teams, spread between A and B divisions. And, based on performance, the bottom team from the A division would be dropped into the B division with a team from there making the move to the top division.

There was plenty of interest in the women's league in the 1980s but then it began to drop off.

The number of teams has been up and down over the past number of years.

The rollercoaster ride has seen it drop to four, rise to seven, fall to three and then come up eight teams just a few summers ago.

There used to be teams in To l e d o, Maynard, Roebuck, Greenbush, Iroquois, Delta and other communities within the two counties.

There were a variety of reasons but the popularity of slopitch and work schedules cut into the number of available players.

The league tried to adapt in attempts to survive, making sure it finished the playoffs in August before younger players needed to return to university.

Players became older, and minor softball leagues, like Brockville's, disappeared in the early 2000s.

And, it's not just the women's fastball league that has declined rapidly in the past 20 years.

Fastball used to be the dominant summer sport for men and women before its major decline.

There used to be four quality men's leagues in the Brockville area that included the Dundas Fastball League, the Brockville city league, the North Leeds League and the South Leeds League.

In its heyday, the Dundas fastball league was one of the best senior men's leagues in the province.

McAllister still remembers going to a cold, fall, playoff game between the Williamsburg Pioneers and the Cardinal Pats.

Doug Casselman was throwing for Williamsburg with Ted Hoy, one of the many fastball players in the Brockville and Area Sports Hall of Fame, pitching for Cardinal.

The game ended up lasting 23 innings -with Casselman and Hoy going the distance -before the Pioneers won, recalled McAllister.

A player could be playing every night of the week in different leagues and then again on every weekend from June to September in tournaments.

There was no lack of places to play.

Then, fastball disappeared. The Dundas league folded. The South Leeds league became extinct. The Brockville city league was the next to fall.

It's been more than 20 years since there was a meaningful, adult fastball game at the cozy but quirky Kelly Park in Brockville.

The North Leeds league, operating now for more than 60 years, is the only competitive league still going -thanks to Terry McCann -and it's been flying under the radar without promoting itself.

There's an old-timers league in the North Augusta area for the relics from the days of rascally Lyle Lawrence.

There are still people trying to keep minor and junior fastball alive in the area but it's been tough.

The Leeds and Grenville women's league could be the next one to disappear forever if it doesn't run this year.

Anyone interested in putting a team into that league is urged to contact Les McAllister at 613- 925-2084 or Sherry Peters at 613- 926-2773.

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