Fast Pitch

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Nic Stone comes a challenging and heartwarming coming-of-age story about a softball player looking to prove herself on and off the field. Shenice Lockwood, captain of the Fulton Firebirds, is hyper-focused when she steps up to the plate. Nothing can stop her from leading her team to the U12 fast-pitch softball regional championship. But life has thrown some curveballs her way. Strike one: As the sole team of all-brown faces, Shenice and the Firebirds have to work twice as hard to prove that Black girls belong at bat. Strike two: Shenice’s focus gets shaken when her great-uncle Jack reveals that a career-ending—and family-name-ruining—crime may have been a setup. Strike three: Broken focus means mistakes on the field. And Shenice’s teammates are beginning to wonder if she’s captain-qualified. It's up to Shenice to discover the truth about her family’s past—and fast—before secrets take the Firebirds out of the game forever.

Now that twelve-year-old Anya is old enough to join her fourteen-year-old sister Marina on the fast-pitch softball team things are becoming tense between them: Anya has trouble catching her sister's pitches and resents Marina's criticism and being moved to the outfield, Marina is increasingly obsessed with her role as captain, and angry because Anya does not seem to take the game as seriously as she does--and with an important game coming up the sisters are going to have to work out their differences if their team is going to win.

Fast-Pitch A lost chapter in the history of America's favorite pastime is finally recovered and retold in brilliant and play-by-play detail in Pete Gallo's book, "Fast-Pitch Fifties." Readers are warmly invited to revisit New Rochelle during the 1950s and discover the Twilight League and windmill baseball at its height as some 20 teams battled for championship titles and local bragging rights. Fast-Pitch recalls a period when local sports was king and a championship series in towns like New Rochelle would draw crowds that were measured in the tens of thousands. Based on interviews and historical accounts, the author brings to life local legends of windmill at its height, such as pitcher Rush Riley who threw a softball at major league speeds and was known for his Olympian endurance, playing up to ten games per week. While many of the names are less familiar, windmill stars who managed national acclaim are also recalled such as Hicksville, Long Island native Roy Stevenson, an early pioneer of windmill pitch who helped inspire a generation of players in the New York metropolitan area. Aimed at sports fans, the book is also the story of an era - one full of memorable characters like 'Popeye' Claps an affable stationery store owner and baseball coach who managed to get Roy Rogers and his troupe to visit New Rochelle for an ad hoc block party for local kids. Then there was Bruce Flowers a professional boxer who helped lead New Rochelle's most-winning windmill team for the decade, the New Rochelle Royals. You will read about Bill Marino, a veteran who lost his arm in World War II, but remarkably managed to recapture personal glory by becoming one of the league's most feared pitchers. The author also finds that windmill's most prominent feature lead to its decline in community sports. It was a game where sheer pitching strength ruled the day, making balancing league play difficult, which helped give rise to its successor, modern "slow-pitch" softball. Though, fast-pitch persists in popularity, particularly among women's college leagues, Gallo brings us back to an era when communities across America were first discovering the game. The book recalls how the social fabric of the 1950s, with its unbridled post-war optimism and corresponding economic boom, provided for a golden era in community sports - from stickball play to fast-pitch. Gallo reminds us of how this amateur recreational league evolved to resemble a full-fledged minor B-ball league, housed in a single city - the Queen City of the Sound.

The first softball game was played in 1887, and while it didn’t even include a ball, this sport has been gaining in popularity ever since. This instructive book teaches readers the basics of the fast-pitch game, including the differences between it and slow-pitch ball. Readers will learn all about rules, equipment, field positions, and more. Handy tips will help players play their best game. Featured players in fast-pitch offer insights for anyone, whether they just want to read about the game or are eager to get out on the field and into the game.

From its humble beginnings in 1887, when it was invented in a Chicago boat club and played with a broomstick, to the rise in the 1940s and 1950s of professional-caliber company-sponsored teams that toured the country in style, softball's history is as diverse as it is fascinating. Though it's thought of today as a woman's sport, fastpitch softball's early years featured several male stars, such as the vaudeville-esque Eddie Feigner, whose signature move was striking out batters while blindfolded. But because softball was one of the only team sports that women were allowed to play competitively, it took on added importance for female athletes. This book chronicles its history.

In Mexican American communities in the central United States, the modern tradition of playing fastpitch softball has been passed from generation to generation. This ethnic sporting practice is kept alive through annual tournaments, the longest-running of which were founded in the 1940s, when softball was a ubiquitous form of recreation, and the so-called "Mexican American generation" born to immigrant parents was coming of age. Carrying on with fastpitch into the second or third generation of players even as wider interest in the sport has waned, these historically Mexican American tournaments now function as reunions that allow people to maintain ties to a shared past, and to remember the decades of segregation when Mexican Americans' citizenship was unfairly questioned. In this multi-sited ethnography, Ben Chappell conveys the importance of fastpitch in the ordinary yearly life of Mexican American communities from Kansas City to Houston. Traveling to tournaments, he interviews players and fans, strikes up conversations in the bleachers, takes in the atmosphere in the heat of competition, and combs through local and personal archives. Recognizing fastpitch as a practice of cultural citizenship, Chappell situates the sport within a history marked by migration, marginalization, solidarity, and struggle, through which Mexican Americans have navigated complex negotiations of cultural, national, and local identities.

Field a winning fastpitch softball team year after year with the knowledge and insights of a coaching legend! Coaching Fastpitch Softball Successfully provides the guidance and technical expertise you need in order to build and maintain a competitive team, covering every facet of leading a squad on the field and developing a program off of it. Hall of Fame coach Kathy Veroni, who has won more than 1,250 fastpitch games in her career, and pitching expert Roanna Brazier share their insights and experiences in this authoritative, comprehensive guide to coaching fastpitch softball. From developing a coaching philosophy and planning for the season to teaching the skills and tactics of the game, you will find proven formulas for success within these pages. With practice and conditioning plans, administrative forms, sample scouting charts, tactics for dozens of game situations, and more than 130 drills, Coaching Fastpitch Softball Successfully is the most complete resource available for aspiring and experienced coaches alike. Take advantage of the authors' expertise to gain a winning edge over your competition.

Details the differences from men's softball and offers effective strategies.