Cedar Rapids Softball

As far back as 1929 there was enough interest within Cedar Rapids that the city created the Diamond Ball Association, a large-scale, municipally-sanctioned softball organization.  The successor to the Diamond Ball Association was the Cedar Rapids Softball Association, which contained many different leagues with different levels of competition including varsity leagues, leagues for police and firemen, industrial workers, churches and fraternal groups, among others.

Most of the large games were played at Ellis Park, where lights were built in 1939 as a response to the rise in the popularity of softball . At one point in time, Cedar Rapids had move than 130 local teams.

One of the dominant players of the early years of Cedar Rapids softball was Charlie Michalek, who began playing in 1934 for Three Minute Oats. His fastball was dominant, and "there are many accounts of his games in which he would effortlessly strike out 12 or more." Michalek played until 1954, when he retired with Fruehaf Trucking, one of the 15 or more teams for which he competed in his career.

Cedar Rapids' first state champion was Danceland in 1950. Whitey's Auto won the city's second state title in 1953.

In 1962, the once-popular Manufacturers & Jobbers (M&J) baseball league folded due to lack of commercial interest.  The baseball league had been around since 1929.  Following the disbanding of the M&J league, players such as Bob Michael, Dick English and future International Softball Congress Hall of Famer Dick Brubaker joined the Fleck's Falstaff team, which had formerly been the state champion Danceland, and later Whitey's Auto teams. At one point, the team was known as Thedes Chat and Chew.

Fleck's Falstaff was the first Cedar Rapids team to capture a regional title and compete in a national tournament in 1961. With the M&J baseball league having dissolved, many talented baseball players were moving onto the fastpitch softball circuit. Bob Michael, a former Cedar Rapids baseball player with Hall's Clothing, joined that Fleck's squad before the successful 1961 campaign. The team returned to the regional finals in 1962, losing in the championship game. Those teams were managed by Lou Dvorak, an M&J alum who spent a year with the Chicago White Sox Class D Lima Terriers in 1947.

In the late 1960s, Welty Way, a metal fabrication machinery manufacturer in Cedar Rapids began to emerge as a leader in its industry, and began spreading its brand through its connection with fastpitch softball. Cedar Rapids Welty Way was the biggest softball powerhouse the city has ever had, winning five Iowa state titles.  In 1971, Welty Way won the Amateur Softball Association National Championship,  and in 1972 represented the United States in the Softball World Championships in the Philippines.

Welty Way was managed by Jim Caviness, a Cedar Rapids softball veteran whose career began in 1956 as a member of Nordstrom Oil, which changed its sponsorship to Robinson Wholesale, then Midwest Janitor and eventually became Welty Way. Caviness recruited Bob Timmons, a second-year fastpitch player and former baseball player at the University of Northern Iowa to join the team in 1971. Timmons had been a member of Larry Lange Ford in Cedar Falls , winners of back-to-back state championships in 1967 and 1968 before Timmons had come on board.  By 1971, Caviness and Welty Way had also acquired Larry Lange manager Dick Zuccato, who had

originally recommended Timmons to Caviness. Other components of the Welty Way powerhouse were Mike Pallesen, who was "considered perhaps the finest power hitter to ever play at Ellis (Park)," dominant pitcher Jerry Ralfs, Richie Stephen, John Muench, Cliff Rice, Ed White, Ray Sturm, Jocko Hinderks, and Steve "Rookie" Andrew (who would later play on 1980 national runner-up Midwest Galleries and 1987 national champion Teleconnect).

Andrew won the Major Open batting title twice and was selected to two All-World teams. Timmons went on to coach Mount Mercy and Coe to a combined 927-366 record before retiring in 2014. Nearly every member of the 1971 and 1972 Welty Way team is a member of the Cedar Rapids Softball Hall of Fame and many are in the Iowa Hall of Fame.

*The success of the 1971 and 1972 Welty Way teams, the latter earning an invitation to Manila, Republic of the Philippines, to play for the world championship, expanded Cedar Rapids’ softball reputation even more widely. That same year, 1972, in Sioux Falls, a gifted young left-handed pitcher named Gregg Bosch paced his C&R team to a Brass Rail tournament title over Minnesota champs Whitaker Buick. In addition to playing with his local team, Bosch also played ASA during the summer of 1974 for the elite LeBlanc Barrons in California. One of the umpires at the Brass Rail, John Millis, mentioned to Caviness there was a pitcher up there who might be able to help Welty Way. Bosch was a teacher by trade, and when Caviness offered him a spot on a team in a larger town with more schools, the lefty and his family made the move east.*

*By 1975, after a couple of lean years, Caviness had rebuilt Welty Way into a team that, if possible, was even better than they’d been in 1971. The team still had Timmons, Pallesen, catchers Larry Anderson and Steve Calvert, and most of the other bats, but had added former Norway High School star Donald “Max” Elliot, who reached the Class AA Texas League with the San Diego Padres, along with Bruce Hotchkiss, who had batted .261 in “A” ball in the Phillies organization. Caviness replaced Jerry Ralfs with a formidable righty-lefty pitching tandem of Al Rausch and*

*Bosch, and added Denny Linderbaum as a backup. The Major Open loop not only fielded the Welty Way team, but also Eastside Maidrite, Collins Radio and a few others, any of which would have competed well at the national level, which made Welty’s run through the season that much more remarkable.*

*It may have been the best team in the nation, but late season injuries to Rausch and Bosch meant Linderbaum was forced to carry the entire pitching burden. In many places he would have been enough by himself, the team was that talented, but without the one-two punch of the other two pitchers, Welty was unable to recapture the national ASA crown.*

*After the next season, 1976, Welty Way relinquished sponsorship, and Jim Caviness’ own firm, Modern Piping, took over. The team continued to play to packed houses at Ellis Park and produce an elite, championship caliber of softball rarely rivaled across the country. At the same time, though, the softball landscape was again shifting, this time toward replacing fast-pitch with the even more popular, and more easily accessed, industrial slow-pitch variant.*

In the 1970s, several pitching stars from New Zealand were being brought to Cedar Rapids, mostly by Rick Davis, the lead sponsor of the 1980 Midwest Galleries team that defeated Caviness' Modern Piping team in the regional tournament. After Midwest Galleries defeated Modern Piping, Bosch, Andrew, Denver Dixon and Steve Anderson were then available to join the Midwest Galleries squad on a run toward the national championship game, a 14-inning contest that ended with a Seattle team defeating Cedar Rapids Midwest Galleries, 2-1.

In 1987, Cedar Rapids Teleconnect won the International Softball Congress World Championship in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  Members of that team included Andrew (who managed the team), Anderson, LeRoy Wegmann, Canadian Jody Hennigar, Kevin Hartwig and Michael White, a pitcher from New Zealand. In 1987, Teleconnect went

88-24, and prevailed over a field of 48 teams in that global tournament. White was named Outstanding Pitcher of the tournament, going 6-0 with an ERA of 0.31. Hartwig and Hennigar were named to the All-World second team.

The most decorated franchises in Cedar Rapids fastpitch softball history are:

Welty Way/Modern Piping/Nordstrom Oil/Robinson Wholesale/Midwest Janitor: 5 combined state titles, 1 national championship.

Fleck's Falstaff/Danceland/Whitey's Auto/Thedes Chat and Chew: 4 state titles, 2 regional tiles.

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 7, 2015
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 15, 2015
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Tom Peterson's UNI Pages on Iowa Fastpitch Softball.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 20, 2015
5. ↑ Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 7, 2015