june2009

OTTO - Connecting the dots with fastpitch softball

June 9, 2009

Yucaipa, CA

Connecting the dots with fastpitch softball
 
By Bob Otto / Freelance Writer
 
YUCAIPA – While out covering ball games I sometimes run into former insurance clients who ask, “How did you ever get into this?”
 
The better question would be, “how did someone like you ever get into the insurance business?”
 
It all started when I walked into the field house at Minnesota State University (then Mankato State) in 1973. In the far corner I spotted a left-hander windmilling a softball.
 
In the dead of winter – December – with the season five months away.
 
So I stopped to watch. I could tell he was pretty good. “Whap! Whap! the ball exploded into the glove of his catcher, pitch after pitch.
 
“Who do you pitch for?” I asked.
 
“The St. James VFW,” he answered while catching a throw back.
 
“Work out every day?”
 
“Yah, pretty much except for the weekends,” he said.
 
I introduced myself and said I would like to find a team to pitch for come Spring.
 
He stuck his hand out. “I’m Craig Brown,” he said.
 
He also said that there were lots of teams in the area that play in the Mankato City League, New Ulm League, or the Southern Star League.
 
“The Southern Star is the best league with quite a few good teams,” Craig said.
 
Craig and I went on to become good friends over the years often times pitching against each other, or occasionally on the same team.
 
Now fast forward to 1979. I needed a job. “Get into insurance,” urged Craig. “It’s a good business with a good income.”
 
I had my doubts that someone like me who lacks an outgoing personality could succeed in insurance. But hey, I was unemployed and without a job, so what did I have to lose, I figured.
 
By that happenstance meeting and getting to know Craig, I went on to a pretty successful 23-year insurance career.
 
 “So what’s the big deal?” some of you are asking.
 
Of late I’ve been doing some connecting the dots with my life. Sort of a “what if” this or that scenario had or had not happened evaluation.
 
I’ve been lucky enough to have had three careers: Insurance agent / owner, writer, photographer. And I owe all three to people I have met through fastpitch softball.
 
Now on to Jim “Tater” Crates.
 
My photography and writing career got its launch when I met Tater at the Beaumont Coyotes men’s fastpitch tournament in 1985. Tater was the sports editor for the Yucaipa News Mirror.
 
I told him that I had bought this fancy new camera (Nikon N60) with a pretty snazzy lens. But I didn’t know one end from the other and needed some practice.
 
“How about shooting some sports for me?” Tater asked. The first assignments didn’t go so well.
 
“A lot of blurry pictures,” he said gruffly. “Can’t use many of ‘em. Can’t you hold that camera steady?”
 
“I’ll get better,” I said. And over the years I believe I have. From photography, Tater started giving me a writing assignment here or there. And as they say, the rest is history.
 
Had I not met Tater at a fastpitch tournament, and had he not befriended a green, untested, aspiring shutterbug, would I have gone on to become a scribe and photographer? Maybe, maybe not.
 
But as with Craig, the connection with Tater is tied to fastpitch softball.
 
So I thank you Craig. I thank you Tater. And most of all, I thank you fastpitch softball for connecting the dots to a pretty good life.
 
To read more of my writing, visit www.ottoinfocus.com.  
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