Softball Carpetbaggers : Best Players on Slo-Pitch Circuit Live in the Fast Lane

Mike Cellura was always known as a big hitter during his football playing days at Birmingham High and Valley College.

But he never thought that it would be his ability to hit a softball that would lead to a professional career that has spanned 10 years and made Cellura, arguably, the best Slo-pitch softball player to ever come out of Southern California.

“When I was a kid all I wanted to do was become a professional athlete,” said Cellura, who plays for the Northridge-based Capitol Softball Club. “Everything I have, I owe to softball. My house, my car. I can’t complain.”

Forty million people in the United States play some level of competitive softball--700,000 in Southern California, according to Bill Plummer, director of communications for the Amateur Softball Assn.

The Oklahoma-based ASA and the United States Slo-pitch Softball Assn. are the national governing bodies for the sport. The two organizations sponsor tournaments from February through September. The season culminates with the ASA Major Slo-pitch division World Series in Maumee, Ohio during Labor Day weekend and the USSSA World Series in Greensboro, N.C., two weeks later.

The “major” or “open” divisions are where the big boys play. The players at this level generally bat .600 and have slugging percentages--total bases divided by at bats--of well over 1.000. The name of the game is power.

Capitol has been a national Slo-pitch power for 10 years. Player-manager Ron Whittleton has been with the team since its origin in 1974 and last season was voted into the USSSA Hall of Fame in Petersburg, Va.

“When we first started, most of our guys were from the Valley,” said Whittleton, whose team is playing in a national qualifying tournament this weekend in Alhambra. “But to stay competitive, you have to recruit accordingly.”

That is why Capitol, along with all of the other open-division powers, have players from all over the country fly into designated tournament sites to hit the ball over fences that are standardized at 300 feet from home plate.

“There’s a misconception on the West Coast about softball,” Cellura said. “We don’t just pick up a bat in March and start hitting home runs.”

Guys like Cellura pick up weights in order to keep their physiques and their swings in shape. It has paid off for the 33-year-old outfielder, who has been an ASA All-American four times and a member of the USSSA All-World team three times.

Cellura, at 6-2 and 220 pounds, is an average-sized Slo-pitch player. He was discovered by Capitol, where he played for two seasons, while playing in a municipal league in Balboa Park in Encino in 1976.

“We heard there was this kid hitting the ball from one end of the park to the other,” Whittleton said. “We figured he was worth a look.”

Cellura is an account executive who has packed up his bags on weekends for the past 10 years and blasted home runs in 36 states before crowds of up to 25,000.

Cellura’s career took off in 1977 after he beat 47 other power hitters in a home run hitting contest in Corpus Christi, Tex.

“All of the the big teams were there watching and scouting,” Cellura said. “I had always dreamed of playing professional sports and here was an opportunity in softball that gave me the chance to move up.”

Campbell’s Carpets of Concord, Calif., won the bidding for Cellura.

Said Whittleton: “One week before joining Campbell’s, he was driving a 1969 VW fastback. The next time I saw him he was driving a Porsche 911.”

Technically, it is illegal to pay players solely for their work on the softball field. Cellura says he got a job with a good salary, a moving bonus, health benefits and rent for signing on with Campbell’s. Cellura and the other players on his team worked 3 1/2 days a week and had 3 1/2 days off.

“We’d lived and slept softball,” said Cellura, who helped Campbell’s win three consecutive national titles from 1978-80. “I loved it.”

During his years with Campbell’s, he played on a team that scored 86 runs in a national tournament game. Cellura was 10 for 11 with 6 homers, including hitting for the Slo-pitch cycle--a solo homer, two-run homer, three-run homer and grand slam.

Cellura returned to Capitol in 1981, played for North Carolina-based Howard’s Western Steers in 1982 and Jerry’s Catering of Florida in 1983-84.

Cellura, who wears No. 2, became known as “The Deuce Coupe.”

“Some guys can hit with more power,” Plummer said. “But no one does everything--hit, hit with power, run, throw and play defense--better than Cellura.”

Cellura, however, doesn’t rank himself as one of the big names in Slo-pitch. “These guys are a different breed,” he says.

The big guys sport names like those advertised on the pro wrestling circuit. Bruce “The Hulk” Meade, “Crankin’ ” Craig Elliott and Rick “Crusher” Scherr are the stars in the Slo-pitch circuit.

Meade, who plays for the Smythe Sox out of Houston, has a contract with Worth Sporting Goods. A signature model bat, the 510, was named after a Meade home run that reportedly landed 510 feet from home plate.

Scherr, who is 6-2 and 275 pounds, set a national record last year when he pounded 451 home runs, had 919 runs batted in and batted .760 in 193 games.

There was talk around the circuit that Scherr was paid $250 for every home run, but the tales about the money paid to players proved taller than the men who earn it.

“We used to get accused of having Lear jets and Lamborghinis,” Cellura said. “Realistically though, a guy may get a bonus, salary, rent, and health benefits for $40,000 for eight months.”

The owners of Slo-pitch teams are similar to their major league baseball counterparts. They are usually frustrated jocks who expect the best value for their dollar.

“A lot of owners have come and gone,” said Capitol owner Don Webster, “There’s always one Steinbrenner or two among the owners with an ego that won’t quit.”

Ted Septien, who once owned the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Assn., was the owner of a Slo-pitch team called Nationwide Advertising Service. Septien once promoted his team by dropping softballs off the roof of a Cleveland skyscraper to an outfielder waiting below.

Some owners have reportedly spent up to $350,000 to field a team and win a national title only to have that same team dissolve because the players are offered better deals for the next season.

“Every year players move,” Whittleton said. “It can’t be because of the color of the uniforms.”

Some owners justify the expense by claiming that it helps advertise their businesses.

But as Cellura said: “Is a guy in North Carolina going to carpet his house with a company in California because a winning team’s uniforms have that company’s name on the jersey?”

For years, Capitol tried to stay out of bidding wars and consequently became a team that developed players who were eventually snatched away.

“We’re not in the ridiculous category where you pay anything to win,” Webster said. “I don’t have kind that of budget. We don’t get the 280-pound superstar that might generate a $25,000 contract.”

But, like all the top teams, Capitol does have some out-of-state players.

First baseman Rick Plante is from Seattle and shortstop Danny Basso is from Texas.

“It used to be regionalized and it was a whole lot of fun,” Whittleton said. “I think the players would like to go back to that format except for the guys who make the big bucks.”

The guys who make the big bucks are the guys who crank it out of the yard. But the unsung heroes of the sport may be the pitchers who must devise a way to somehow stop the home run barrage that can result in a team scoring 40 runs or more in a seven-inning game.

When Campbell’s Carpet’s was winning, 150-pound Buddy Slater pitched nine no-hitters one season.

Despite the avid attention to statistics, not all teams play softball so seriously. Same USSSA teams have more in common with the Harlem Globetrotters than the New York Yankees.

One pitcher in Michigan begins his windup behind second base, runs to the mound, does a somersault and delivers.

But that’s nothing compared to his batterymate who once used a glove that had been dipped in lighter fluid, lit it on fire and held it in front of a hitter, inducing him to pop up.

“We like to go back up the middle on guys like that,” Whittleton said.

Capitol will play host to a national invitational tournament Aug. 8-10 at Hjelte Park near the Balboa Sports Complex in Encino.

Webster is hoping the tournament will create new fans for the sport.

“It’s a little different game than people are used too,” Webster said. “You have to see it to believe it.”