“When the ten dollar bet on the game was your last ten dollars, that’s pressure.” So begins Les Messinger’s commentary on softball in the 60s and 70s, an era that many softball historians consider the highest quality and most competitive softball era in Chicago history. Competing against such softball icons as the Bobcats, Sobies, Rogues, Butch Mc Guires, Dwarfs, and Lyons 45s, Messinger pitched and served as captain of the powerful Moore Business Forms and Loafers softball teams for fifteen years. Competing at Kelly and Clarendon Parks, the Loafers won eleven league or playoff titles. Many consider the Loafers to be the best defensive team in 16-inch history. Besides playing and managing, Messinger is also credited with being a major organizer of the major softball league at Kelly Park, where he served as league president for the first eleven years. Although the “big leagues” have passed him by, Les can still be found pitching two or three days a week in high caliber local leagues. For the past thirty years Messinger had been a commodity broker / cattle trader whose newsletter has been called the best advisory letter to the cattle industry in the United States.
