August2015

Fastpitch great honed his craft on local diamonds

August 4, 2015

Erie, PA

 

Fastpitch great honed his craft on local diamonds
August 3, 2015


By GIBSNYDER III - OBSERVER  Sports Reporter , Observer Today
  
ERIE, Pa. - Two weeks ago, during the 40th annual First Ward Falcon Club Fastpitch Tournament, Erie Budweiser pitcher Bill Hillhouse, a mainstay over the last 25 years in the local tournament, informed me of an eight-team tournament he was organizing for this past weekend in his hometown of Erie, Pa.

The eight teams were all listed among the top teams in the International Softball Congress' rankings, including the top five teams, which consists of the top-ranked Hill United Chiefs, the No. 2 Kitchener Hallman Twins, No. 3 New York Gremlins, No. 4 Scarborough Force and No. 5 Toronto Gators. Ninth-ranked Denmark Circle Tap, No. 10 Peligro Gremlins and No. 16 Bloomington Stix rounded out the eight-team field.

If all of this makes little to no sense to you, do not worry, you are not alone. Unless you pay attention to men's fastpitch, the names of the teams, heck, even the name Bill Hillhouse, will mean very little, or nothing, to you.

 


Erie native Bill Hillhouse pitches for Erie Budweiser at Promenschenkel Stadium, during the 39th annual First Ward Falcon Club Fastpitch Tournament, on Friday, July 18, 2014.

For years now, or since at the very least Hillhouse's estimate of the end of World War II, men's fastpitch, especially in the United States, has been dying off. Which, if you love and follow the game, is a rather sad thing to think about. It is a fascinating game that relies on pitching, defense and timely hitting moreso than baseball does.

Hillhouse, however, is one person you do not need to tell that too. The Erie native has been pitching in men's leagues since he was 11 or 12 years old. He pitched a year in a church league, before jumping to the city's B League. His father, Hugh, had to sign waivers that allowed his young son to play with men. And back then, softball was still a popular recreational sport. There were, according to Hillhouse, morning leagues for the men who worked second and third shift.

"My dad played," Hillhouse recalled. ". He played in the morning leagues and my brother and I were the bat boys and we just never stopped (being involved in softball."

Hillhouse's talents have allowed him to pitch all over the world, but aside from pitching in the Falcon Club tourney, he also played in the Dunkirk Men's League when he was still a high school-aged player.

"I was 16 or 17, it would have been 1989 I want to say," Hillhouse said. "I'm not exactly sure how I (began playing in the Dunkirk League). I know the Westfield Legion team called me and I played for the Westfield team. We played Mondays in Westfield and Wednesdays in Dunkirk and we ended up winning the championship. They had it on the radio and everything, so yeah, that was pretty cool.

"It was a competitive league," Hillhouse added of what he thought of the local league during his time playing in it. "There were a lot of older, more experienced players. Of course I was 16 I think, because I was driving, so obviously everybody was more experienced than me. But playing in it was a good experience, because it was the first time I played outside of Erie."

It would not be his last time pitching outside his hometown. When he was just 21, Hillhouse became the youngest player at the time to be named to the United States National Team, as well as the youngest to compete at an international event.

"It was overwhelming in a lot of ways," Hillhouse said. "Everyone always says to have that, 'USA', on your chest gives you that feeling of pride, and it does, but it was overwhelming because my career had such an up-shoot to it so quickly. It was so fast that I didn't really have time to soak it all in. It was an incredible, incredible experience."

One of those incredible experiences included being named the MVPitcher of the a Pan-Am games qualifier in Monterrey, Mexico.

"That was another highlight of the career there," Hillhouse said. "But getting to say that I've got to meet a lot of people and been to a lot of places that I wouldn't have met otherwise. Softball-wise, it's really hard to narrow down and say what the best thing is, or what my best accomplishment was personally or team-wise. But it was a fun time while it lasted and I just never saw an end to it until the last couple years when I couldn't do what I wanted to do. To be able to step aside from that is really hard."

Aside from the MVPitcher Award he won in Monterrey in 1993, some other highlights in Hillhouse's illustrious career include throwing a perfect game for Team USA in the World Championships in East London, South Africa, winning the ISC Under-23 North American Championship and finishing second at the 1995 ISC World Tournament in 1995 in Sioux City, Iowa.

But there was one memory that seemed to maybe stick out just a bit more than some of the other great memories Hillhouse has collected over the years while playing the game he has loved since he was just a young boy.

"It would have been 2009 and I wanted to be on the next US National Team that was going to play in the Pan-American Games and I wanted to be on that team," Hillhouse said while acknowledging he was left off the roster. "And as luck would have it, on their warm-up tour, they came to a tournament where I was pitching with my club team from Salt Lake City and I pitched against them and I shut them out. So that was kind of cool and something I'll never forget."

As for the state of the game at the present time, Hillhouse is hopeful, yet realistic as to where the game is headed.

"I think the quality of the pitching ... it's hard to say, because I think there have been equalizers" Hillhouse said. "The bats and the balls have really equalized it. We're playing on bigger fields now that have equalized it. And I'd say the hitting has caught up to the pitching.

"The teams now aren't like what they used to be," Hillhouse continued. "The teams used to be local teams that would go and play in tournaments and now they're superstar teams. (The Ed McCormick Tournament), these are eight of the top teams in the world and they're made up of players from all over the world. They're the best of the best. Twenty years ago, it wasn't that way. They didn't have the all-star teams of international players."

Noting that the game no longer has a small community-type feel to it, Hillhouse was not, however, saying that the way the game is played now is worse than it was a quarter century ago.

"It's rearranged itself to where it can kind of sustain itself," he said. "It's not growing in the local communities anywhere in North America. It's growing in Europe, but the talent level there is low, but they're just learning. That said, I would have to say that it's hard to compare generations."

And Hillhouse is right, it is hard to compare one generation of ball players with another. But if you asked him to pick out two players - one from his generation and one from the current generation - he would have little trouble telling you who he thought the best pitchers were.

Michael White, a righty from New Zealand, and Adam Folkard, an Aussie who threw this past weekend in Erie, were the two pitchers noted were head and shoulders above anyone else.

"He's now the head coach at the University of Oregon," Hillhouse said of White. "And he was my pitching hero. Most people grew up idolizing Mickey Mantle. I grew up idolizing Michael White. He was a pitching god to me. He was phenomenal, he was everything. And in the 1996 World Championships, where all the countries played each other, he threw a perfect game in the final and beat Canada, 4-0. That's just a pitching performance ... It's hard to beat perfection, but that was masterful."

White, who Hillhouse was able to play with and pick his brain, dominated the game during his time while Folkard is currently doing everything that White did in his prime.

"He's a man among boys," Hillhouse said of the 28-year-old righty. "He's a one-of-a-kind pitcher right now. He's winning everything that there is to win and he's playing for the best team on the planet, so he's got a lot of things going for him. He's got a bright future, a great team, a fantastic sponsor and it's hard to see anyone dethroning them in the near future."

Whether or not men's fastpitch has a future is something that all of us who love the game will have to take a wait-and-see approach to. But so long as there are people out there like Hillhouse teaching not only the love of the game, but the right way to play it, there is still hope that the game will be able to survive.

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