Gil Muratori arrived in Chicago from Italy in October of 1938 when he was just a few months old. But in 1948, when he was ten years old, he adopted Chicago’s great game and started a twenty-eight year softball career that would change the way teams used a catcher. He started playing in the streets …
Robert McCormack started his softball career in 1950 with the Braves and before he was finished he would play at some of the top parks and with some of the best teams of his era. After the Braves, he was recruited to play with the Yanks before heading over to play with Eddie Barretts for …
Little did Ed Miller know when he started playing softball that he would be one of the players responsible for organizing one of 16″ softball’s greatest teams – the Bobcats. He played second base for the Rush Liquor in the Windy City League, with Weinberg Studebakers in the Northtown League and with the Jimmy Rose …
Members of the Kool Vent Awning team would have been very surprised to find out the age of the kid they often called on to fill in for missing players. Dennis Migala was only 15 when he played for one of the top teams in 16″ softball history. He started playing sandlot baseball at age …
Wally Mader is considered to be one the top pitchers in the game during the 1950s and early 60s. To bolster this claim, Mader’s statistics show that he had more wins at Clarendon Park than any other pitcher during the 60s and early 70s. In 1956 he played with the championship Alderman Laskoski’s 36th ward …
At 5’10” and 210 muscular pounds, Ed Mulligan was one of the most feared hitters in softball during the 1960s. Teamed with Kenneth Allen in the 1960s, he hit many legendary home runs – one measured more than 300 feet. A ball player of unequaled strength and power, he also played into the 1970s with …
Gene Mozdzierz grew up in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago around Bloomingdale and Hermitage. He started his sixty-two year plus softball career when Father Jim Grzybowski from St. Mary’s of the Angels, who also played in the Windy City league, started teams for students in the seventh and eight grades. When is was time to …
Charles Miceli was known to his teammates and opponents as Mississippi, but that was too long for a nickname, so it was shortened to Missy. Over his five-decade softball career as a shortstop and pitcher, he was truly one of the great players of the Pioneer era. In the early 1940s, the Boston Red Sox …
Wally Meyers began his softball career in 1937 as manager and first baseman with Becker Coals at Hamlin Park in the Lincoln – Belmont Softball League. His superb fielding at first base and ability to get on base earned him All Star honors that year along with Hall of Famers Dick Triptow and Bud Gierke. …
In over 40 years in 16″ softball, Leonard “Sarge” McKinnon forged a legendary reputation as a player, manager, umpire and administrator. The Wendell Phillips High School graduate started playing softball in 1942 at the Wabash YMCA at 37th and Wabash when he founded the Nighthawks. He played first base and was their top hitter. The …
