PECULIAR THINGS happen if you play softball for more than 12 hours a day. I remember one marathon tournament at Raymond Bernard field when it seemed like everything but softball stopped.

Our first game began on a Saturday at 8 a.m., when the August dew was still heavy on the outfield grass, and our fourth began twelve hours later, as little brown bats began to flit out of the forest along the river.

We had done well, winning all three of our games that day, and twice defeating our opponent by ten runs or more. How we found ourselves facing another undefeated team sponsored by a big beer distributor. The winner continued on to the championship game which would culminate the tournament the next day.

I still recall the neat red, white and black uniforms our opponents wore -- not because they were any flashier than any other team with a major sponsor -- but because of one player on their team. He was hard to miss in any group, since he stood about six foot five inches tall and weighed 240 pounds.

The first thing you noticed about him was his well-muscled physique: his right arm was so substantial that it stretched the uniform fabric as taut as a sail in a good breeze. The next thing you noticed was that his left arm terminated just below the elbow, reputedly severed in a childhood water skiing accident.

Several of us studied him warming up in the outfield, where he played left. He wore a conventional fielder's glove on his right hand. When he caught the ball he quickly tucked the glove under the stub of his left arm, extracted the ball with his right hand, and made his throw. Like Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher who broke into the major leagues with the California Angels in 1989, his good arm was an exceptional specimen.

In our half of the first inning he made a running, over-theshoulder catch in left to rob one of our guys of what looked like a certain extra base hit. A lot of players would have been so thrilled to make the catch that they would have forgotten the runner on second base, but he rifled the ball back in so quickly that our runner was unable to advance. We were impressed, no doubt about it. "Yea, but how's he going to hit?" one of our guys asked another as we headed back out into the field.

We got an answer immediately, for he batted fourth -- in the cleanup spot -- and he was the first man up in their half of the second inning. A right-handed hitter, he took a stance unlike any other I ever saw. As the pitcher wound up, he stood resting the bat on the ground like a knight leaning on his sword. Then as the pitch was released, he drew the bat back, strode forward, and finally whipped the bat around one-handed, with a motion somewhat like a tennis forehand. It was all so graceful and quick that you would hardly think it was the result of an infirmity.

He hit the first pitch of the inning to deep right center on a line. Our right-center fielder couldn't get to it to cut it off, and it almost got beyond the center fielder too, who then had to reverse direction to throw the ball back into the infield. It probably could have been a triple, but the one armed man was content to take a standup double. He knew there was no point in risking getting thrown out at third with nobody out. His chances of scoring from second were good, even if the following batters couldn't do anything more than hit grounders to the right side.

They did much more than that, though. His crisp double seemed to stir the red, white and black clad crew. They posted another double, a walk and two singles to take a four to nothing lead. I thought we were lucky to get away that easily, but our team tightened up. We held the beer men scoreless for the next four innings, while scoring four runs of our own to crawl back into a tie at 4-4.

It was nearly dark by the time we started the seventh, and our world had constricted to the circle of bright grass beneath the lights. When we went out one, two, three in the top of the inning, I was pierced by the sense of doubt I felt earlier. Still, our pitcher, a swarthy backspin specialist with a deep, Tom Seaver like drop-down in his delivery, was in a groove. While the other team's hurler had seemed to get a little rockier over the course of the game, ours had gotten stronger.

We got the first out in the bottom of the seventh inning, which is the last regulation frame in slow-pitch softball, but the next hitter was the big left fielder. He had walked and lined out to the shortstop in his last two at bats. Our shortstop had turned the line out into an inning ending double play, but on the bench afterwards, he peeled off his fielder's glove and the batting glove he wore underneath to reveal sunset pink circle on his hand where the ball had caught him.

How the one armed man was up with the game on the line. The crowd of a hundred or more people were on their feet, and the beer men were baying for their Burgoyne. "Benjamin!" they cried. "Like you kin, Ben ja-min." I thought to myself, the guy's too much for simple moniker; he fills three syllables to the bursting point. From my position at second base I had good chance to study him during his unhurried approach to the plate. He wiped his black moustache on his sleeve, adjusted his hat, and then nodded to the umpire, who signaled play to begin.

Our pitcher threw a strike and a ball before delivering a pitch to Benjamin's liking. I broke an instant before the ball was hit because I could see it was a pitch that could be pulled, but I needn't have bothered. Benjamin hit the ball beyond the reckoning of mere infielders. This time he launched the ball on a long and high arc into the outer reaches beyond the light towers. It landed in the long grass beyond the mowed margin of the field, took a high bounce over a stream, and disappeared into a thicket.

I thought about big Benjamin a lot after that, not just because of the way he had beaten us in the bottom of the last inning, but because of the swing he had done it with. When you looked at his right arm it was obvious he was tremendously strong, but when he swung the bat the predominant impression he conveyed was one of ease and grace. He was not trying to kill the ball at all; he was just trying to serve it. And yet I had just watched him hit a ball farther than I had ever seen on that field -- with one hand. How could this be?

My hunch is that because he lost the use of his left arm, Benjamin was forced to simplify the mechanics of his stroke. Watching him at the plate was like watching a slow-pitch version of the Visible Man models which display the vital organs inside under a clear plastic skin.

Although the surface might seem strange, what was revealed beneath was fundamental. When one got past the novelty, what you saw was a naked display of good hitting, and the fact that you really don't need two arms to hit with power.

Contrary to what you might think watching the play in a lot of recreational leagues, hard hitting in slow-pitch softball does not require swinging with every ounce of your strength. What is crucial is hitting the ball well: timing the ball and serving it with a smooth, efficient motion. Styles can vary, but successful slow-pitch hitters all share the ability to consistently hit the ball squarely. The ball leaps off their bats, making it a quick and often difficult chance even if a fielder is able to get to it.

Lack of brawn is not what prevents most competent players from becoming a the kind of hitter who brings the outfielders up on their toes. The problem is usually that the batter doesn't make solid contact enough to be a statistical threat. The reasons for this are well known to doctors of hitting everywhere. They include both mental errors (like poor selection of pitches to hit) and mechanical problems (like dropping the hands, pulling off the pitch, etc.). Hone is unique to slow-pitch, but certain ones play a more prominent role.

One that is particularly prevalent is overswinging. Because the batter knows he's got to provide all the energy to drive to drive the soft pitch -- and because there is time to really crank up -- a lot of people take button-busting swings. I have seen hitters in co-ed leagues draw their bats back so far they look like corkscrews in a misguided effort to get more sock into their swing. Ironically, they would hit the ball further and more frequently if they just didn't swing so hard.

This is not to say that the secret of slow-pitch softball is a weak swing, though. It's like hammering nails (another one-handed activity). You could probably drive a nail 8-penny nail with one stroke if you swung with all your might. The problem is that beyond a certain point, the harder you swing the more difficult it becomes to accurately direct your blow. Most of the nails you hit will actually be bent over, rather than driven cleanly home. The idea is to find the strength swing that balances the need to drive the nail (or ball) with the need to hit it accurately.

To try to locate this point, I practiced swinging slower and slower until I got to where I could almost always hit the ball squarely. As the ball left the pitcher's hand, I focused my attention down to a tiny spot at the center of the spinning orb. Then as it fell, I thought to myself, "wait, wait, WAIT." Finally, as it fell to just a little above belt height, I tried to serve it smoothly. In time, I was able to swing harder with accuracy, driving certain pitches cleanly over the outfielder heads.

I remember a media league all star game I played in that was the opener for a game between the class A affiliates of the Seattle Mariners and the San Diego Padres. You know you're down there a ways in baseball when the class A professional facilities look slick, but we all enjoyed it. The drinking fountain in the dugout was a particularly big sensation.

By the third inning when I came to the plate, the sun was slanting behind the center field fence and the professional players were warming up along the foul lines. I could see that both the third baseman and left fielder were playing me off the line, so I decided to look for a pitch to pull.

I was just hoping to get the ball past the third baseman, but I drove it on one hop off the left field wall at the 326 foot marker. It turned out to be an inside the park home run, and gave our team the winning run.

Afterwards, one of the media types on the bench asked me in mock interview style where I got my smooth home run swing.

I told him I learned it from a one armed man.

"Dr. Whacko's Guide to Slow-Pitch Softball" © Copyright 1991 Bruce Brown
Original jacket cover illustration by Tim Curry.

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