It was there where I watched Bobby Thornton and Frank Smith pitch, Gary Scharf catch, Larry Moffett gobble up grounders and the legendary Doug Smith bash the ball far into the night sky.

It wasn’t until 1979 and 1980 when the action shifted to the beautiful new ballpark being built by Rt. 51 south of Decatur, a place called Borg-Warner Field.

Fastpitch’s roots in Central Illinois run deep and places like Teutopolis, Taylorville, Atwood-Hammond and Cerro Gordo. They’ve always managed to rally their young men to make the transition from baseball to fastpitch. While the great Aurora Sealmasters team set the standard here in the Midwest, Decatur sniffed around with some very good teams but was not able to unseat Aurora as one of the premier teams in the country.

Until, that is, the day the Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., decided to go into the men’s fastpitch softball sponsorship business.

I’m sure this was not a universally celebrated decision within the corporate halls of the great agribusiness giant. But when corporate big-wigs like Jim Randall got involved, all bets were off.

ADM made it clear from the start: The goal was not to be competitive. The goal was to be the best in the world.

Enter an approach to softball team-building unseen in these parts. That included a vastly stepped up budget, an international search for talent, a team charter bus for transportation, state of the art uniforms and amenities, a clubhouse at the ball field and grabbing the right to host the Amateur Softball Association Men’s Major National Fastpitch tournament in 1980.

It rained so hard on the morning of the opening night of that 1980 tournament that Borg-Warner Field quickly turned into a swamp. How games were played that night is a long and complicated story, but this much will suffice: National Guard helicopters swooped in that afternoon and blew the water off the main diamond. In the process, mud and debris were splattered all over the bleachers, creating another problem.

Finally, towels were brought in to wipe the bleachers clean, mulch was put down and painted green and somehow the show went on.

Decatur did not win the national championship that year. But one year later, in 1981 in St. Joseph, Mo., pitcher David Scott and the ADM team brought Decatur the first of several national and world titles.

Ah, those were the days. When I bump into softball folks now, they vividly remember the 1980s and 1990s as Decatur’s glory days in the world of fastpitch.

They remember Pops Taylor, the colorful, original ADM manager. They remember the all-star roster that included future national Hall of Famers like David Scott, Brian Rothrock, Denny Place, Ted Hicks, Rick Minton and Darryl Day.

They remember the New Zealand pitchers like Brent Stevenson, Chubb Tangaroa, Marty Grant and Michael White. They remember the big Canadian, Darren Zack.

They remember the all-star cast of characters like catcher Mark “Boogieman” Crawford, Steve Kerian, Steve Kaiser, Avon Meacham, Danny Binkley, David Boys, Terry Wiebe, Shawn Rychick and manager Denny Bruckert.

And that was just the guys from the Decatur team. It said nothing of the visiting players who became household names around here, players like Tom Zappone, Scott Plangger, Paul Algar, Brian Martie, Ty Stofflet, Jeff Seip, Mike Piechnik and Phil Honeycutt.

If you hung out at the ballpark back in those days, you got to know many of the regular helpers, people like Jim Nicol, Jim Cairns, Ron James, Mel Lingafelter, Larry Royer, Larry Pickett, Ron and Sonie Pflum, Herbie Gibson, Harry and Tim Cook, Al Pote, Buck Brown and the legendary grounds crew bunch called “Duncanville,” named after Don Duncan and run for years by Charlie and Patty Ohlemeyer.

I was happy to have helped create an annual tournament called the “Herald & Review Shootout,” which was the country’s best mid-season test leading toward the national and world championships.

The women got involved, too. Kudos to people like Mike Hayes who kept the Central Illinois Girls Softball group going for many years and for helping to generate interest when the United States Olympic team made a stop in Decatur for an exhibition game. More than 7,000 fans turned out at Borg-Warner Field. Think about that: Where would we ever put 7,000 fans at a local sporting event nowadays?

With media travel budgets shrinking everywhere, it seems hard to believe that back in the day the Herald & Review sent me to cover the 10-day International Softball Congress World Tournament in Victoria, British Columbia, along with a week-long tour of California and Arizona, the softball team’s participation in the United States Olympic Festival in Houston as well as world tournaments in Canada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

How big of a deal was fastpitch back in the early 1980s? WSOY sent a radio play-by-play man to broadcast those games from California.

I was there when Decatur won the world title in Allentown, Pa., in 1984, but the single most thrilling moment came at the ISC World Tournament a year later in Kimberly, Wis.

The occasion was an afternoon winners’ bracket showdown between Decatur, the defending champs, and Madison (Wis.) The Farm, which had a strong home-state following.

The tense game came down to a single decision.

Madison pitcher Peter Meredith, one of the best to ever play, had to decide whether to face Decatur’s first baseman, Denny Place, or center fielder, Brian Rothrock.