Softballers

A product of the Depression, Softball has grown into a major U. S. mania. Started in the Northwest about 28 years ago (called ''indoor baseball played out-doors"), it took root only in recent years, then sprouted all over the country as a recreation for office and factory workers and a spectator sport for folks with only a dime to spend. In 1933. when the Chicago Century of Progress put on a national Softball tournament as part of its sport program, the game received its biggest boost. Today there are some 5,000,000 players (men and tomboys) and 200,000 teams (sponsored by churches, movie stars, saloons, banks) with names ranging from Slapsie Maxie's Curvacious Cuties to Bank of America Bankerettes. In Los Angeles there are 9,000 Softball clubs within a hundred miles of Wrigley Field (1,000 of them are women's teams).*

Last week 88 of the best teams in the U. S.--survivors of nationwide tournaments sponsored by the Amateur Softball Association--met in Chicago for the sixth annual national championships. After a week of eliminations, played simultaneously in five different parks, the men's championship went to the Pohlar's Cafe team of Cincinnati (owned by the proprietors of a German beer garden), whose pitcher, Clyde Kirkendall, had pitched 127 consecutive scoreless innings (a record) earlier in the season. Women's championship, won by Cleveland's Num Num Girls for the past two years, went to the J. J. Kriegs of Alameda, Calif, (owned by a little clothing merchant).

Most exciting game of the tournament was the 3-to-0 women's final, in which the Kriegs' pitcher, jolly Bessie Johnson, held the Down Drafts of Chicago hitless until two were out in the last inning, then Marge Brown of the Chicago team smacked the ball down the right field foul line for a double.

* Women's teams outdraw men's teams as box-office attractions, not only in Hollywood but all over the country. Even Manhattan's famed Madison Square Garden succumbed to women's softball this summer to swell their coffers, put on a semiweekly program of double headers featuring their own Roverettes and visiting teams.

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