Now it can be said, claimed, shouted, and celebrated...The Wheelersburg Little League girl's team is "The World Series Champions of Softball" in the up to 12-years of age group.
The Wheelersburg team traveled across country to Oregon, and came back to Ohio as the Only Buckeye team to ever make the claim. World Champions!
Congratulations!
The girls won the championship over a good Pennsylvania team, 3-0 last week.
I had notified my brother Sam, PHS 1950, so he and his wife, Jeanette nee Wedington, a New Boston grad, were able to watch the game on television, from their home in Westerville, Ohio. Sam is a former Goodyear Atomic Plant employee, from the fifties. He is a life-long Scioto County booster.
He reported to me that one of the 'Burg's fine pitchers, Andijo Howard, is Roger and Robin Howard's granddaughter. Sam said that he and Roger played a lot of slo-pitch softball together in Columbus.
Sam wrote me that he and Jeanette are proud of their home-county team!
I can remember well, the many days in Mound Park, watching the great fast-pitch sofeball industrial league teams competing...Teams like Ramey Feed, Adams Baking, The N & W. I spent a couple of years working the snow ball stand at The Park Shop on 17th Street. I had a practice of keeping the stand open during the evenings until one of my short-short clad girlfriends, wanted me to walk them home after they had spent the day at Dreamland (The Terrace Club swimming pool. After all somebody had to carry their bathing suit rolled into towel home for them.
Does anybody besides me remember the French-fried popcorn wagon that parked on 17th street beside the park grandstands? Um! Um! Really good stuff! Those shaved ice snowballs were pretty tasty too! We sold them for a nickel, and would add a dip of ice cream for a nickel. Clarence Evans and Walt Ressinger were the owners of the Park Shoppe in those days, and Larry Evans, Clarence and Garnet Evans' son, worked the snow ball stand too. The stand was wedged in between John Holman's bike and power mower repair shop and The Park Shoppe, but all were connected.
"Those were the days my friends...we thought they'd never end!"
AND, we hope there will be many more championships for Wheelersburg, in all sports.
"Medicine, law, business, engineering. They are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." -Tom Schulman, screewriter
