Eye Openers: Birdsley was among leading proponents of slow-pitch game
The name probably didn’t mean much to most people when it showed up in the obituaries last week, but the local recreational scene wouldn’t be the same without Don Birdsley.
Birdsley, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 73, apparently had an awful lot to do with the growth and development of slow-pitch softball in the Quad-Cities.
Until the mid-1960s, fast-pitch softball was the game of choice here. There were dozens of leagues. Rock Island was the home of the ISC World tournament. Hardly anyone played slow-pitch.
Denny Wiese, a longtime local softball maven, said when he was in the service in the mid-1960s, there were perhaps only 25 slow-pitch softball teams in the Quad-Cities.
“Four years later, there was about 400,’’ Wiese said. “He (Birdsley) is the one that started slow-pitch here. He had more to do with it than anyone.’’
Birdsley, who was a switchman for the Rock Island Railroad and later worked as a guard at East Moline Correctional Center, recognized the fact that slow-pitch could be played by people with a broad range of skill levels. He helped found several local teams and leagues and was instrumental in bringing the first Illinois slow-pitch state tournament to the area in 1974.
For his efforts, he was inducted into the Illinois Amateur Softball Association Hall of Fame in 1990.
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It’s really too bad the Quad-Cities River Bandits couldn’t have made more use of that pretty little bridge the city built to get to flood-mired Modern Woodmen Park.
The Bandits, who played three games at other stadiums last week, wanted to play a home game in the stadium, having the fans trudge across the bridge. The idea was nixed by Midwest League officials, who apparently never bothered to see how safe and secure the bridge was.
It could have made incredible aerial footage: A stadium full of fans watching a ballgame in a stadium surrounded by water. It probably would have gotten the Quad-Cities some exposure on CNN and ESPN.
Hopefully they’ll save the pieces of the bridge when they take it down. They might need it again one of these years.
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When Davenport native Bill Fennelly was inducted into the Quad-City Sports Hall of Fame on Wednesday, it was mentioned that he was the winningest basketball coach — for either men or women — in Iowa State University history.
It got us wondering if he might have won more often than any Cyclones coach in any sport. He hasn’t. But if he hangs around for eight or nine more years, which is very plausible, he should be able to make that claim.
Harold Nichols, who coached wrestling at ISU for 32 years, is the top all-time winner. He compiled a record of 456-75-11 in dual meets.
Also ahead of Fennelly are two men who coached the Cyclones’ baseball program, which no longer even exists. Cap Timm was 342-374-5 in two stints as at ISU (1937-42, 1946-74), and Bobby Randall went 309-311-1 from 1984 to 1995.
Fennelly, 280-132, should only need about three years to pass those two guys.
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This tells you how much our annual Salute to Sports means to local high school athletes: Two of the finalists for the female athlete of the year award — Sherrard’s Megan Warner and Rockridge’s Liz Watkins — went head-to-head in an Olympic Conference softball game Wednesday night but still managed to change clothes and race to Davenport for the 7:30 p.m. event.
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This was just a matter of time: Former Davenport Central athlete Austin Howard is an offensive tackle now.
Howard, who played tight end in high school and was the starting tight end for Northern Iowa’s
No. 1-ranked football team last fall, made the move during spring practice.
At 6-foot-7, 279 pounds, Howard has looked more like an interior lineman anyway and with starting left tackle Chad Rinehart going to the Washington Redskins as a third-round pick, the Panthers needed a replacement.
“We all knew it was coming,” Howard told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “I came in here as a freshman at about 280 pounds. Tight ends don’t get that big usually. It was always expected. I just didn’t know exactly when.”
With Howard’s combination of size and athleticism, we’ll probably see him going fairly high in the 2010 NFL Draft. He might be an even better prospect than his older brother, Marques, who was an All-Big 12 tackle at Iowa State a few years ago.
Don Doxsie can be contacted at (563) 383-2280 or ddoxsie@qctimes.com.