After a record-breaking baseball career at Illinois State University and two professional seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Frank Mustari focused his talents on 16-inch softball when he joined his neighborhood friends on Custom Tape. His talents were quickly noticed and Ken Cooper added him to the Cooper’s Sporting Goods roster. With Frank at shortstop, […]
Rich Mahoney’s softball career started when he, Phil Pieczynski and some other Kennedy High School buddies formed a team named Elite. The problem was that no one on the team was more than eighteen years old, so they had to get permission from other teams to play in the men’s league at Minuteman Park. The
In 1970 Patrick Moran Sr. graduated from Roosevelt High School on the northwest side, where he had been an all-area basketball player and an all-city baseball player. He started his softball career with the Wolves, a team sponsored by a local tavern and managed by Jim Schmidt. Dwarfs Hall of Fame manager Mike McGovern quickly
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After graduating from Rolling Meadows High School in 1976, pitcher Terry Moran embarked on a softball career that was to include key roles on teams that won numerous local, state and national titles. Along the way, he was named to several All American teams, and won batting titles in several different leagues. After starting
Bob McClelland was one of the most feared leadoff hitters in 16″ softball. His fiery temperment, fierce competitiveness, and batting skills allowed him to “set the table” for some of the best hitters of his era. Many of the top teams of his time recognized and sought his skills as he played for Right-ons, J’s,
Ronnie “Mouse” Maurer started playing 16-inch softball after concluding other notable sports accomplishments. In 1961, he won All-City baseball honors while playing for Amundsen High School on Chicago’s North side. Later, as the only sophomore on the starting line-up, he captained the University of Illinois baseball team to the Big Ten championship in 1963. He
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Vito Maggerise once almost threw his arm out while trying to throw a ball onto the roof of Ryerson School on Chicago’s Westside, just a few blocks from Kells Park where he started playing softball with the Rogues when he was twenty years old. It’s fortunate that his arm recovered because Vito went on to
After a sixteen-inch softball career that spanned four decades, Jesse “Mesack” Mack retired from softball in 2001. He was one of the most respected and one of the most feared leadoff hitters and outfielders in the game. With the game on the line, he was unshakable. It would be hard to find a better player
Jim Mikuta started playing softball at 37th and Albany in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago. Like thousands of kids before him, he and his friends played “sewer to sewer” until they were too big for the street corner and moved to the schoolyards or the neighborhood parks. In Jim’s case he moved to gravel
Growing up in Canaryville, Jim McCardle started out playing softball the way generations of kids in Chicago did – on the street corner using the sewers as bases and dodging cars while chasing a fly ball. When he and his friends got too big for the street corner (and started threatening the windows of their
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