The Saints sixteen-inch softball team first played in the Darien Park District League in the late 1970s. They were sponsored by Our Lady of Peace Church. Its pastor, Reverend Alphonse Mika, served as their first general manager. Father Al later joined forces with softball veteran Mike Paulo to take a group of neighborhood players […]
Toncie Siriscevich’s fifty-plus year softball career started on the sidewalk by Ward School when he was ten. He was too young to play at Armour Park or Harden Square, so he and his friends made bases with chalk and were coached by Frank Stubitch. Three years later, he was playing “sewer softball” (in the
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Renee Strasser started playing baseball at age nine in a boys Little League team in Alsip, Illinois. She was one of three girls allowed to play in the league. When Little League officials wouldn’t let them advance to the next level of competition, they joined Alsip Park District’s sixteen-inch softball for girls. At age eleven
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Israel Sanchez was born in Falcon Lasvias, Cuba in 1962. He came to the United States when he was six and attended Von Steuben High School. He played sixteen-inch softball for the Thrashers, Red Dog, the 45s, Windy City, and Sage at parks throughout the Chicago area. He was selected MVP at Forest Park
John Stock played softball for twenty- five years with some of the top teams of his time. He started playing neighborhood softball when he was fifteen in the schoolyard at Chopin Grammar School. He later played in the league at Smith Park. As his skills grew, better teams noticed him and he soon found
Don Savage has been a member of a sixteen-inch softball team for seventy- eight years, from 1935 to the end of the 2013 season. His teams have won more that forty championships and Don has played in or managed in approximately thirty-five senior leagues at parks throughout Chicago and the suburbs Don attended St.
The Stompers were started in 1976 when a bunch of friends from the Gailwood neighborhood got together together to play a team from another park in the area. They were successful, so one of their players entered them in the Amundsen Park League. Unfortunately they didn’t have a team name when they registered, so the
1985. After playing softball for more than twenty years for various teams in countless parks around Chicago and the suburbs, Gary S. Goldberg and Chuck Martinkus felt it was time to form their own team and bring their combined experience to a product they and everyone involved would be proud of. They acted on two
Total: 155 wins against 39 losses ASA Major National Champions in 1991 and 1997 ASA Major National Runners-up in 1990, 1994, 1995, and 1996 Forest Park Records 1992 – First Place 1994 – Second Place Sixteen members of Splinters have been inducted into the Sixteen-inch Softball Hall of Fame
Chicago’s game characteristically mirrors the city that created it – it’s brash, bold, loyal, and smart. It possesses a never say die attitude. From 1981 to 1996, no team better exemplified these traits than the Stooges, the team that in 1993 the Sun Times called “The neighborhood team that plays big-time ball.” The Stooges were
