By JEFF MAGUIRE (reprinted with permission)Appeared in The Stittsville/Richmond EMC
They are getting down to the crunch in the Greater Ottawa Fastball League (GOFL) with the second round of the playoffs underway this week.
Two teams from our coverage area, Stittsville 56ers and Carp 14C Victory, have advanced and are hoping for a shot at knocking perennial champion Ottawa Team Easton off their high horse. It won’t be easy!
Obviously I am pleased to see the 56ers, from my hometown of Stittsville, performing so well again this season. They finished a strong second in the nine-team league during the regular campaign, just five points behind powerhouse Team Easton. In their opening playoff round Stittsville easily disposed of Greely, winning the best-of-three two straight and by one-sided scores of 8-1 and 7-0 respectively.
Carp too has played well in 2008. They were a strong fifth during the season, finishing a single point behind Fitzroy Harbour West Carleton Electric. The same two clubs met in the first round of the post season. It was Carp who triumphed, sweeping Fitzroy/WC by scores of 4-2 and 4-1 to move into the semi finals, which are best-of-five affairs.
Unfortunately the Carp “victory” was at the expense of my colleague and friend Brad Porter who, besides being an outstanding graphic designer for the EMC, is also a first-rate fastball pitcher for Fitzroy/WC (I’ll pick up the envelope next time I’m in Bradley).
Just before the GOFL playoffs began one of the best players in Stittsville softball history passed away. Clifton Craig ‘Cliff’ Neill was 82.
Cliff starred during three decades and was a local sports legend when I was growing up. In 1956 he led Stittsville to the Ontario championship. So, no mystery about where the current team nickname – 56ers – comes from!
During that long ago season Stittsville’s ace pitcher threw several no hitters, including a pair of rare perfect games (no hits, no walks, no runs). Hurling a perfect game is a dream for most pitchers. Cliff Neill, using his signature rise ball, did it twice in one championship campaign. He also earned two pitching victories in Stittsville’s memorable series win over Windsor and, for his efforts, was named to the all-Ontario senior men’s softball team. Much later he was the first softball player named to the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame and is also included on the Goulbourn Sports Wall of Fame.
Further testament to his athletic excellence!
Before I go any farther let me explain quickly the difference between fastball and softball. The modern fastball is simply a slightly stream-lined version of the old softball that was used at the time Mr. Neill ruled the mound. There is little difference, only a minor size reduction that occurred over the years. Today the sport continues to be called fastball, softball or perhaps fast-pitch softball, depending on who you talk to.
A softball (or fastball) isn’t soft either. Especially if you happen to be hit by a pitch thrown underhand, from 46 feet (14 metres) by a ball traveling at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour! Trying to hit one of those pitches is akin to making contact with greased lightning.
I played and coached the game (although never in Stittsville) so I have some “painful” personal experience to draw on.
Softball excellence
The Ottawa Citizen wrote a very nice obituary about Cliff Neill. Accompanying the story was a photograph of him in his softball uniform. The first thing I noticed was that he wasn’t wearing a glove.
My father Howard is a huge baseball (and softball/fastball) fan. He also coached and managed Little League baseball, including a Stittsville team from yesteryear (the 1960s) that fell just short of a berth in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
When I was a kid growing up in Stittsville I watched a lot of men’s softball at Alexander Grove which remains one of the top venues for the sport in the province. The community was very small then – a few hundreds residents – and ‘The Grove’ was the best possible place to be on a warm summer evening in the 1950s and `60s.
As a Little League player myself I was used to using a glove. I remember asking my Dad why some pitchers – Cliff Neill among them – didn’t wear gloves when they played?
“It’s because they hardly ever have to field the ball,” my father answered.
How true! When you could pitch like Cliff Neill, not many people managed a hit off you.
He was one of a string of outstanding softball players who were part of past glory in Stittsville. Among them are Mr. Neill’s surviving teammates Ed Garland, who played third base and Pat Bullard. “Mr. Garland” as I knew him was, in his day job, a teacher at South Carleton High School in Richmond which I attended and, I’m pleased to say, graduated from!
Some of the other outstanding players from that era were Roy Bush and Eldon McEvoy. But the players I remember well are some of the men I knew the best. Friends of our family including the late Weldon ‘Weldy’ Parks and the late Garnet ‘Red’ Bradley.
Weldy was an outfielder and, in daring fashion, he too played without a glove which is a real departure for a fielder. I told you the Stittsville pitchers were good!
Men like Weldy and Red were as tough as nails actually. Just ask anyone who “ran into” Red on a hockey rink!
Red was an all-round athlete who could play any sport, any position and play well. So it was hockey in the winter and softball in the summer. It was as natural as breathing!
As I recall guys like that had hands on them like Sunday hams. They could grab a hit or thrown ball faster than most people could swat a mosquito.
Speaking of mosquitoes Alexander Grove, heavily shaded by pine trees and damp with humidity, was a magnet for the tiny, irritating insects. The township fathers in the bygone era I’m writing about this week had a solution though. They hired Don Parisien!
Don, who happens to be the father of my brother-in-law Allan, was a deadly man with a mosquito fogger let me tell you!
As we sat in the bleachers watching a ball game we would suddenly hear a steady mechanical hum that got louder and louder. It was Don at work with the chemical fogger, ridding the Grove of the blood sucking little vampires which bothered us no end – until Don had done his thing that is.
We would suddenly find ourselves enveloped in a blinding, choking fog, probably DDT. Just as suddenly, no more mosquitoes!
I’m not sure what was worse actually? But so far no one I know has grown a second head so perhaps DDT isn’t as bad for you as the fear mongers suggested? Regardless, ball fans at the Grove got a life-time dose in one evening.
Important place
As for Alexander Grove, it was unequivocally THE major gathering place in Stittsville in its hey day. It was the centre of everything as I recall, including the village’s Centennial celebrations on July 1, 1967. I particularly remember the beard growing contest and my Dad’s neatly trimmed goatee, contrasted against my Uncle Lloyd’s bushy, reddish beard.
Alexander Grove was one of the first lighted ball diamonds in the district, including Ottawa proper. In fact my father thinks it was either the Grove or a ball field on Booth Street in Ottawa that led the way with floodlights to allow night-time play.
I can recall spending many wonderful days and nights at Alexander Grove and it remains a constant in a community (try a city) which now stands in stark contrast to the tiny village I grew up in.
In closing this week I want to express sincere sympathy to Mr. Neill’s family, his four children (two daughters and two sons) his grandchildren and his surviving sister Eyleen.
Be assured that he is fondly remembered by so many of us from those wonderful years when softball was king in a small community, during a much gentler era. He and several of the others I have named were among the early heroes of many young boys.
Perhaps his story will help inspire the current 56ers, named after the championship team Cliff Neill starred for, to future fastball success in Stittsville? If his exploits don’t, nothing can!
