First World Series of Pro Softball
By Molly Tyson
Pro status may have dampened the players’ enthusiasm going into the World Series, but it didn’t have a noticeable effect on either team’s style of play. The Brakettes-turned-Falcons were the same free-swingers they had always been, shooting for the center field fence. And the Laurels-turned-Sunbirds were scramblers, getting on base with bunts, pinch-hits, and prayer, just as they had always done.
The two teams had met eight times during the regular season and each had won four games. “We split with them,” Falcon Irene Shea acknowledged, “but we hit their pitchers very, very well and we knew we could do it again.”
The Sunbirds weren’t nearly as optimistic about their chances against Joan Joyce, the Falcons’ star hurler. “It’s not that she throws that much faster than other pitchers,” Sunbird Cyndi Lillock explained. “It’s the way she throws. Everybody’s scared of her.”
In the first game of the World Series, Joyce managed to intimidate every batter she faced except Dianne Kalliam, who collected the only hits for her team that game. Adding insult to injury, Joyce knocked in the first two Connecticut runs, en route to a 3-0 Falcon victory.
The hero of the second game was last year’s leading hitter in the amateur ranks, Irene Shea, who “parked one” over the right field fence for the first home run of the Series. Her teammates Snooki Mulder and Kathy Krygier also came through with timely hits to ice the second game 4-2 for the Falcons. The Sunbirds had fallen at the hands of southpaw from Illinois named Sandi Fischer.
Joyce returned to the mound for game three and was working on a no-hitter going into the sixth. The hitless streak was broken dramatically when a very unintimidated Cyndi Lillock belted the third pitch over the left field fence. It was the first earned run Joyce had surrendered all season, and the last she gave up that game. She fanned sever of the last 12 batters with vengeance, and the game ended 2-1 in favor of the Falcons.
The teams flew to California for what proved to be the final game of the Series. The hometown advantage seemed to inspire the Sunbirds and their pitcher Bonnie Johnson. But inspiration took flight in the tenth when Snooki Mulder and Kathy Krygier joining forces for back-to-back singles. Shea reached first on an error, and one out later, with bases still loaded, Willie Roze connected for a hit that scored two runs. The game ended one run later with the Falcons on top 3-0.
The offensive player of the Series was Falcon Snooki Mulder, who went seven for 15 at the plate and drove in three runs. The defensive ace was Joan Joyce, who struck out 36 batters in 18 innings-an average of two strikeouts per inning.