Cedar Rapids was a softball mecca

Editor's note: Bill Johnson is a Cedar Rapids historian who spent 30 years working for the U.S. Navy. This is the second of a five-part series on softball in Cedar Rapids.

By Bill Johnson, community contributor

Several different issues of the Cedar Rapids Gazette in early August 1936 spent relatively large amounts of the sports section covering men's fast-pitch softball at Ellis Park.

Running the gamut of regional tournaments to the elite Major Open league and all the way down to small church leagues, softball was one of the stories that sold papers. From the game scores, captured in the same agate type that conveyed Major League Baseball results, to the various one- or two-paragraph summaries that preserved the games forever, The Gazette and other Eastern Iowa newspapers embraced softball.

The interest made sense. After all, a community's newspaper reports on the subjects that interest the readers and softball easily fit that template. Within the Cedar Rapids Softball Association (the successor to the Diamond Ball Association), even at the nadir of the Great Depression, a point at which times throughout America were at their absolute hardest, there still were seven leagues, each of which contained between six and eight teams. There was the Major Open, the varsity fast-pitch level in town, but there were others as well, like the City-County-and-Federal (CC&F) league, which hosted teams from the police and fire departments, the court house, and Office of Public Improvement. There were two Industrial leagues (simply called Industrial 'A” and 'B,” with the league title decided in a postseason playoff between the two division champs), the Church Open and the lesser Church 'B” leagues, and a Fraternal League (the Knights of Columbus, the Modern Woodmen, the Maccabees and so on).

Other organizations included the Catholic League, a County League and various youth programs. Most of the large games were played at Ellis Park, but some of the lower level contests also were held at Frolic Field, which had been built behind St Ludmila's in 1935. An exact census never existed, but it is not unreasonable to assume there were literally thousands of men, women and children playing softball at the time. Remarkably, the game only grew from there. By 1948 there were not only the Major Open and Industrial and Fraternal groups, but Commercial 'A” and 'B” leagues, a YWCA girls' group and even more smaller ones.

A SOFTBALL STAR

The career of pitching star and Cedar Rapids Softball Hall of Fame member Charlie Michalek is an example of how a single player might move around town over the course of a few years.

Michalek's first year was 1934, when he pitched for Three Minute Oats in one of the Industrial leagues. His fastball was beyond dominant (there are many accounts of his games in which he would effortlessly strike out 12 or more), a tool that earned him his choice of spots on any number of other teams playing in various tournaments throughout Iowa. By 1935, Michalek was pitching for Parkson's Blue Ribbon Beer in a Major Open league that included Wilson Packing, Beeson, Armstrong's, the Brown Derby and The Gazette. By the time he retired from the diamond, in 1954 with Fruehaf Trucking in the Industrial 'B” league, he had played for at least 15 different teams.

Within the decade after the Diamond Ball Association brought some structure to Cedar Rapids softball, the game exploded. The sheer number of games drove the city to erect lights at Ellis Park in 1939 so the schedule wasn't limited to daylight hours. The extra illumination, however, did not appreciably help local hitters. One Gazette sports writer observed in 1939 that 'This (Open) league is definitely a pitcher's league. Charlie Michalek has hurled sensational ball to land Chevrolet on top and although the Parks are in fourth place, Billy Driscoll has turned in some excellent performances.”

STATE CHAMPS

In 1950 Cedar Rapids had its first state champion when Danceland won the tournament in Boone. Whitey's Auto claimed the title in 1953 and the Major Open started to garner even more attention in The Gazette. That sort of dedicated coverage of teams and individuals, and the enthusiastic sponsorship of a huge number of local businesses, helped Cedar Rapids carve out a small niche on the national softball landscape. The leagues continued largely unchanged, albeit with some expansion, for just over the next two decades. Softball co-existed alongside the M&J baseball league, with the latter playing a more limited schedule at Daniels Park as the former spread across the city.

Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, the two sports came into direct conflict over finite sponsor dollars. The M&J folded after the 1962 season because it could not attract enough commercial interest to sustain even a four-team league. Part of the reason the money dried up was due to the changing economy of Cedar Rapids. The engines of growth from the early 20th century, including major firms like Iowa Manufacturing, were either adapting or, in some cases, dying.

The remaining sponsorship money went to the people's game. Given softball's large footprint throughout town, the decisions of whom and what to sponsor became simple. But it was not only the popularity of recreational softball that tipped the scale. One particular Major Open team, Fleck's Falstaff, emerged in 1961 and elevated Cedar Rapids from a niche, softball-crazy community to a national power.

Fleck's Falstaff ushered in a generation of Cedar Rapids softball that would see national champions, a slew of the highest level players in the world, and a legacy still celebrated today.