VIRGINIA ROADSTERS BEING ADOPTED BY FANS AND STAFF

By Al Mattei

Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

Down Interstate 64 from Richmond, Va., you encounter a 70-mile corridor of trees heading down towards the coast. A few miles from the coast, however, the byways in the Hampton Roads region rise to meet you.

One such road leads to a gravel parking lot in Hampton, Va., surrounding War Memorial Stadium, an iron and wood minor-league ballpark that originally hosted the Peninsula Pilots of the Single-A Carolina League.

The park is a study in contrast. The whitewashed cinder-block walls bordering War Memorial Stadium lead to round ticket booths, each with a hemispheric tin roof similar to the dome of a state capitol building. Inside the stadium, the brick wall behind the plate is padded. The public-address speakers are stereophonic and clear, and a powerful laptop computer controls the between-inning promotions.

At first glance, this sleepy minor-league ballpark may seem to be ready for a game of baseball. However, the Pilots moved out of town years ago, ceding the Hampton Roads region to the Tidewater/Norfolk Tides. Instead, War Memorial Stadium functions as the home ground for the Virginia Roadsters of the Women's Professional Softball League (WPSL).

The Roadsters have been more than a model franchise, having been able to attact its share of talent, selling broadcast rights for radio (the ESPN Radio affiliate broadcasts from a table right in amongst the fans in the general admission section), and attracting more than 2,000 fans for some games.

On this afternoon, the Roadsters are to play a doubleheader with the Carolina Diamonds. The day, however, is not just about making up a game rained out the night before. In 1999, competition in the WPSL is not only intense, it is incredibly tight. In late July, the league's six teams were seperated by a mere 5 1/2 games from first place to last. A sweep could mean the gain -- or loss -- of two or three positions in the WPSL.

"It is getting more and more competitive every year," says Virginia manager Terri Pearson. "The league, I think, is continuing to grow, and I think they're going to expand two more teams. And with the Olympics coming again (in 2000), there's going to be national excitement."

But excitement is hard to find two hours before the first pitch. Players on both teams are warming up under a hot Virginia sun in foul territory and in the baseball outfield. The sights and sounds are much like those before a minor-league baseball game: the occasional popping of a ball into a glove, the sight of a grounds crew member chalking the foul lines and dusting the bases with lime.

There are differences, however. The occasional ping of an aluminum bat hitting the ball pierces the placid late-morning air. The players are working out behind a white breakaway fence which is set to a standard 200-240-200 outfield dimension from home plate This breakaway fence can often lead to spectacular results when it comes to robbing players of home runs -- though the effort to make the catch must begin in front of the fence: outfielders cannot simply breach the fence to make the play beyond it.

And nobody is chewing tobacco.

As fans enter the ballpark, they enter the air-conditioned souvenir store to buy an assortment of Roadsters merchandise, including a trading card set, an autographed team softball (perhaps women's sports best souvenir bargain at $15), and logo caps no team member will actually wear during the game.

The reason: pro softball teams, much like the trendsetters in the powerful Pac-10 conference, wear utilitarian gear. Standard issue WPSL visors are worn instead of wool caps, shorts instead of long pants, socks with knit stripes instead of stockings over sanitaries.

WPSL softball has evolved greatly since 1996, when two traveling teams nicknamed the Blaze and the Storm barnstormed around the country, bringing an aggressive game and community involvment to towns near and far.

The concept -- originally called Women's Professional Fastpitch (WPF) -- was marketed as a kind of activity which was not only one in which women and girls could invest their athletic gifts, but one which neatly fit into a significant athletic niche.

That niche was the several abandoned minor-league ballparks which could not adapt to the new standards for professional baseball.

The Blaze and Storm invaded former minor-league parks from Akron to Albany, from Valdosta, Ga. to Texas. Members of the WPF organization would unpack breakaway fences, bases, tape measures, and a special pitching rubber and landing area which was spiked into the ground at the front of the pitching mound where the mound met the infield.

The brand of softball that the Blaze and Storm played was slightly different from what many were used to. The existing pitcher's mound was in play. Bunts died in the infield grass. The rubber was 48 feet from home plate. The ball was the "small" ASA-approved ball. Runners could take a lead off base, leading to actual base-stealing.

Once the weekend of games, community awareness events, and clinics finished in one town, the teams would pack up and move on to the next location. Plans were made for a six-team league, with teams in several parks which were abandoned by previous minor-league franchises, including Erie, Pa. and Akron, Ohio. There were even plans to showcase WPF contests in state-of-the-art minor-league ballparks; with the portable bases, pitching rubber and fencing, any ballpark was a potential WPF host.

But in the summer of 1996, the United States won the gold medal in softball at Atlanta. Softball became a marketble commodity. The league acquired sponsorship and a television contract.

Marketing people quickly helped change the shape of the original principles of the WPF. Conventional softball rules were adopted, meaning that any potential minor-league ballpark wishing to host a WPF team had to remove the existing pitcher's mound and the infield grass.

It was decided that all six teams in the 1997 league, the debut season for Women's Professional Fastpitch, would be in the Sunbelt region of the country. The original six teams were based in Durham, N.C., Tampa, Fla., Orlando, Fla., Hampton, Va., Columbus, Ga., and Gastonia, N.C. In 1999, the Orlando team moved to Akron's abandoned Firestone Stadium.

The season is 60 games long, split into four-game series played over 15 weeks between May and August. The teams do not have games scheduled on the first three days of the week.

"The players normally get Mondays off," said Roadsters' media relations director Kristin McCormick. "Tuesday and Wednesday, they usually practice. It's not a summer vacation for them."

And there is no winter vacation for the members of the front-office or coaching staff. In the WPSL, all of these jobs are full-time, year-round deals. For a four-month season, that means an awful lot of down time. But for Pearson, it means hard work once the WPSL season ends.

"I've already been doing some work during the season," she says. "But I'll be working on my draft list once the season ends, and trying to sign free agents, and look for more talent. I'll be doing camps and clinics, personal clinics, you name it."

The Virginia Roadsters can draw more than 2,000 for some Friday night games at old War Memorial Stadium. The team shares the facility with a baseball team from a local shipbuilding school. As there was but a couple of weeks between the seasons of the two tenants, frantic work was done to remove the mound and infield grass to create the softball sandlot, which is dragged and watered just like the infield dirt at a baseball game. There's just a lot more acreage to work with.

The crowd is mixed and enthusiastic, and always close enough to talk to the players. There are many fans in the stands wearing shirts with the words "PIT CREW" on the back. The Pit Crew is not only a fan club, it is a support system which used to exist in hamlets in which minor-league baseball were based.

"They do so much for us, it's incredible," Pearson said. "They load our bus full of food on road trips, come out and attend, and they have a relationship with the players. They help us in every way that they can. Everybody else is jealous in the league."

While even prospects in Single-A baseball are coddled and roomed in condominiums far from the community, Hampton and the Pit Crew has welcomed the Roadsters and their front office with open arms.

And the Roadsters welcome their fans with equal ardor. Even a scant 15 minutes before the pregame introductions, members of the Loudoun (Va.) Storm are absorbing a mini-clinic from one of the Virginia players.

Once the game begins, rituals unique to softball are observed: a rotation of high-fives amongst the infield after a groundout, team chants after each half-inning.

But the competition is the same, pitcher vs. hitter. Keeping the eye clear, situational hitting. Sacrifices and home runs.

Cheers on the part of Roadster fans are reserved especially for the first half of its order: leadoff hitter and former Team USA member Barbara Jordan, shortstop Sarah Fredstrom, cleanup hitter Scia (pronounced see-ya) Maumausolo, and indielder Tamara Ivie.

Maumausolo is the team's most feared hitter, as she had hit nine home runs to that point of the season. The league being as small as it is, word has gotten around about her mammoth moonshots over the plastic fencing.

Carolina is under no illusion as to how to keep Virginia off the scoreboard. The Diamonds pitching staff does not give Maumausolo anything to hit. And if anyone is on base, she is walked intentionally. Six plate appearances on this Sunday, six bases on balls.

After the game, she is asked by one of the Roadsters' beat writers whether any team ever treated her in this fashion before.

"Never," came the answer.

One of the interesting members of the Roadsters in 1999 is Tamara Ivie. It is not because of her softball talents, however.

For the five years leading up to her WPSL roster spot, she was a baseball player. She spent four years with the traveling Colorado Silver Bullets, then a year in a short-lived six-team pro baseball league before joining up with the Roadsters.

Ivie, however, was in a major slump leading into the Carolina doubleheader. Suddenly, there came a chance for her to break out of her hitting drought. It was the bottom of the sixth inning of the nightcap, and the bases were loaded.

Ivie broke through with a two-run double, which was followed with a two-run single which have the hosts a four-run lead.

But, typical of the level of competition in the WPSL in 1999, the Diamonds mounted a threat in the top of the seventh inning. Though pitcher Kaci Clark gives up a couple of runs in the late going, she is able to get the final out for a split in the doubleheader.

The team members meet in the infield and actually shake hands, unlike the half-hearted high-fives and muttered "Goodgamegoodgame" common among youth teams in the 1990s.

After meetings in the clubhouse, the day's festivities are not over. The Pit Crew heads towards a yellow and white tent near the left-field stands, hot pots and coolers in tow.

What ensued was an old-fashioned Southern-style Sunday pot-luck supper. These gatherings, to which members of both teams are invited, are starting to become a local institution.

Members of the ushering staff and ticket takers -- several of whom worked for the Peninsula Pilots of days gone by -- gather for a supper which is more than just a weekend meal. On this day, the staff saw off one of its own. It was the final day for Roadsters' stadium operations director Heather LaFleur, who had announced that she was leaving to coach high-school basketball in Connecticut.

Throughout the day, she was on the minds of the staff. The ticket-takers chipped in for a silver star-shaped plaque with her name on it. A cake was personalized for her, and a card signed by members of the Roadsters staff was presented to her.

As the mid-summer sun set through a slight haze, there were few reminders of the activities of the day, except for the cleat marks in the infield and the full trash cans under the big tent. Members of the rest of the Virginia Roadsters' family milled about and told stories well into the evening.