Put keys on home plate and turn out the lights

from the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, hat tip to Fastpitch West

Put keys on home plate and turn out the lights
By Claude McIntosh

The final program was sold. The uniforms were packed away for the final time. And the keys to the van were placed on home plate before the stadium lights were turned off.

The King and His Court, the world's greatest barnstorming softball team, played its final game Saturday night where it all started 65 years ago . . . in Walla Walla, Washington.

The architect of the four-man team was Eddie Feigner and legend has it that he started it on a bet in a bar in Pendleton, California.

The show outlived the man.

Feigner died in 2007 but his widow and veteran Rich Hoppe kept the show on the road . . . until Saturday night.

Mike Meilicke, the only surviving member of the original team, was on hand to throw out the first pitch.

As Hoppe told a television interviewer prior to the finale, "The time had come."

"It's the last piece of Americana, the landscape has changed," said Hoppe.

There is too much competition for the entertainment dollar. And the cost of travelling thousands of miles each year has become prohibitive.

Invited back for the final game was Mike Branchaud, who honed his softball skills on Cornwall diamonds and was taught by his dad, Ron, one of the best of his era.

Mike Branchaud barnstormed with Feigner and Co. in the 1990s.


It was, he recalled, the experience of a lifetime.

Branchaud got his shot at playing for Feigner in 1993 when Hoppe, the back-up pitcher, hurt his arm while the King and His Court were in the area.

Branchaud threw two games and Feigner, not easily impressed, liked what he saw.

"For his age, Mike's the fastest pitcher I have seen in many years," Feigner told a reporter.

It took a flight from Ottawa to Vancouver and a seven-hour drive to the stadium, but Branchaud, back in his Softball Canada office Monday, said he wouldn't have missed the final act for the world.

When the game ended, the keys to the team van were placed on home plate as a tribute to Feigner.

Said Hoppe: "I just wanted to return the van keys to Walla Walla where it all come out of."

Branchaud calls it a privilege to have been picked by the greatest softball pitcher of all time to play on the greatest softball team on the planet.

Barnstorming with the King and His Court wasn't every softball player's cup of tea, regardless of ability.

The gypsy lifestyle and wear and tear weren't easy.

It required a team member to be physically and mentally tough.

"It wasn't easy . . . on the road all the time, sleeping in different hotels every night and eating in restaurants," said Branchaud.

As Hoppe noted: "If you did one tour with the Court, you've been tested. To do more than one tour, you're certifiable. It was like being on the Rolling Stones, only with a softball."

Feigner had two rules when driving across North America from ball park to ball park: no radio and no cruise control.

And then there was having to live and work with a demanding perfectionist like Eddie Feigner.

Each of the other three team members had a cross to bear . . . and his name was Eddie.

"It was his team and his show," said Branchaud.

But as tough and gruff as Feigner was on the outside, like any good marine drill sergeant, he had the welfare of his men at heart.

Mike Branchaud believes he is better for having known The Man.