Most Saturdays in the spring and fall semesters can find a diverse group of professors, staff, students, alumni and family members swinging bats and rounding the bases at Tempe Papago Park.
These individuals make up the ASU Intra-University Softball League, which has operated since 1987. That was when Dennis Howe, a now-retired facilities manager at ASU, reserved a room in the Memorial Union for an informational meeting about a slow-pitch softball league.
“I thought, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of ASU people who would probably like to play this game,’” Howe said.
The league has grown exponentially from the 35 people who showed up at that first meeting, and its officiators estimate that more than 400 ASU alumni played as students.
While the players do keep score and the end of each season sees the winning team’s name inscribed on a trophy, the game is more about fun than competition, Howe said.
“We play to have fun, we play with good sportsmanship, but we also want to win,” he said. “It’s something regular people play, because they want to have fun.”
While some league members had played softball before, many were new to it when they started.
“There’s people that think ‘I’m not very athletic’ or ‘I won’t be good at this,’ but they all come out and have a good time anyway,” Howe said.
Over the years, the league’s even had several international students from countries where softball isn’t played who knew nothing about the game, but got right into it, he said.
Many of the teams, like the geography department’s Continental Drifters or the registrar’s office Drop/Adds come from academic or administrative departments on campus.
The league builds connections between people who might otherwise never have crossed paths, Howe said.
“ASU is a very big place, so to say that it does something for ASU is a big stretch,” he said. “But it is a way for a lot of ASU-related people to meet each other in a way that they wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
The friendships keep Ray Murdock, an academic financial specialist at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, coming back.
Murdock attended that first meeting in the MU 25 years ago and has been helping schedule games, as well as playing, ever since.
“There’s friendships that we develop here,” Murdock said. “I’ve met and become friends with people from all over ASU that I would never have met.”
The league keeps costs low — about $4 to $5 a person — by having other members umpire games. It’s open to anyone 18 or older who wants to play ball and have fun, Murdock said.
“We try to keep it attractive so people can come out,” he said. “Anyone that wants to play competitively can play somewhere else.”
Sticking with the spirit of fun, the league’s most coveted recognition is the Kelly Bender Sportsmanship Award, named for its first recipient and given annually to the player who displays the best sportsmanship.
Library operations supervisor Henry Stevens, who’s played for the last 24 years, received the award in 2004.
Stevens, 66, had to sit out last spring’s season because of knee issues, but he’s looking forward to coming back in the fall after a knee replacement surgery. He’s ridden his bike to every game since he started playing, and he said he enjoys being able to stay active and healthy with people he likes.
“Win or lose, we want to have fun,” Stevens said. “I stress winning, but we want to have fun.”
The league is looking for new players and teams for the fall, and those interested are urged to contact Murdock or Howe.
Reach the managing editor at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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