Al's Fastball is a forum for sharing news about the game of Fastball. And its O.K. to call the game Fastpitch Softball but no Slow Pitch please.
Primarily established to promote the game for the men's game, limited posts to the list regarding all levels of fastball for other levels (women, girls, boys, etc.) are encouraged. We reserve the right to limit the amount of information posted. In fact, the good news these days is that we are getting so much news that we do not forward e-mail to our subscribers. We just hope everyone is reading our news sites to see the news. Instead of using email to spread the news these days we are making extensive use of Twitter.
These guidelines are intended to make use of the list easier for you, And for me. The guidelines have been developed over time based on requests, observations, experiences of the over 2,500 subscribers to the list (The List is no longer maitained, it was deleted in September 2012). Most of us, including me, hate rules but unfortunately the limits of technology and my time call for a few rules that we hope everyone will understand.
Thank you for your continued support in making this List more Enjoyable for a large group of fastpitch softball fans.
Please send ALL news items for posting to:Â fastball(at)pmihrm.comÂ
 and please note we do not accecpt email/notes via Facebook, so please use email for all news items being sent to us.
The items in CAPS are not meant to SHOUT at you but to provide Emphasis and assistance on a few areas that have been of particular concern.
Reports with multiple columns do not come out well at all, especially on the fastpitchwest.com archive and they look terrible in an email, so please, NO COLUMNS.
More and more people are using World or Excel and even PDF to send us schedules, results, etc. and if we have time we do post them to our site. The problem with attachments is related to the space limits on our pmihrm.com host account. So what we are doing these days is asking that if you have multiple attachments that you send them to our yahoo account, its at:Â aldoran42(at)yahoo.com
but please remember to send me a heads up at our fastball(at)pmihrm.com account first so I can open up Yahoo, we do not keep it open all the time.
Sorry but we refuse a couple of Fastball-related posts each week as they do not follow a couple of basic guidelines:
a) we do not accept commercial postings however we will be adding some advertising starting in late 2013 or in 2014. This may help us offset some of our escalating web related costs; and
b) we do not accept postings that SHOUT at our subscribers. Please do not send us information all in CAPS, we will not distribute them that way and we do not have time to re type them. Sending a posting all in lower case is also a no no. We may not have time to clean out hash marks, so if your post is full of ">" signs, they will be deleted and not distributed.
c) postings should be clear and polite. We do not post personal attacks on individuals.
d) If your announcing a tournament for example, let us know if its men, women, girls, boys, where, when, etc. When is it being held, and where?
e) Use an appropriate topic name in the "Subject" heading.
f) they MUST be signed, including full name and reply email address and its a good idea to include your location (city, province/state, country); remember, this is a global list.
g) We NEVER send attachments to the list. And please remember, NO Columns, they almost never work in email. The List no longer exists, deleted in September 2012 in favour of posting to our site and to Twitter.
h) Only subscribers may post to the list and you do so by sending your post to fastball(at)pmihrm.com . This no longer applies.
i) Copying items from websites and then publishing them on this list is in breach of some companies copyright. Make sure you have permission from the publisher and site administrator before doing so.
j) Some posts sent to us are only posted out to the archives at
http://fastpitchwest.com/alsfastball - this is called NEWS-2. Please note that items posted to NEWS-2 once posted cannot be changed or deleted. Its there forever so please be careful.
NEWS-2 often is used for players looking for a team, teams looking for players, women's softball news, small items, or items sent by me from the park.
and/or to our new site at
http://www.alsfastball.com/
and not sent to the full list. This is often due to volume and/or the fact that we are on the road and may not have access to our full subscriber list. In most cases however your posts will be sent to the full list of subscribers so please prepare your messages carefully, just like you would like to receive them.
k) Please send ALL posts to fastball(at)pmihrm.com its easier for us that way,
and, please do not CC other email addresses, your posting will be processed
faster if it comes directly to fastball(at)pmihrm.com ONLY.
We reserve the right to refuse a posting if we consider it not in the best interests of the game or of our own organization to post it. We also reserve the right to limit the distribution of material.
Al's Fastball List
fastball(at)pmihrm.com Â