Brazney Keeps Pitching Her Game to IOC

Suzy Brazney would like America to know that women’s fast-pitch softball deserves a place in the Olympic Games. Now if she just could figure out a way to say it.

At the moment, her voice is as faint and hoarse as a bad telephone connection. Whispers make more noise than Brazney, whose incessant infield chatter has worn down her vocal cords like whetstone.

Brazney can’t help herself. Fast-pitch softball is her passion, her best friend of sorts. The game has captivated her, and Brazney, 27, doesn’t mind a bit. Given the choice between a raw throat or a teaching session back at Golden West College, Brazney always will opt for the lozenges.

This is Brazney’s fifth U.S. Olympic Festival, her third as a member of the Orange County Majestics, which, for Festival tournament purposes, have become the South team. Brazney, a third baseman/catcher, could care less about affiliations, though. All she requires is a glove, bat, uniform and soapbox.

Brazney, you see, has a little speech she’d like to recite to the International Olympic Committee, keepers of the Games’ future:

Include fast-pitch softball. Now.

“We’re still pushing to get it as a demonstration sport in Barcelona (for the 1992 Summer Games),” she said. “Annoying? Definitely. There are so many people who play the sport, but yet, something like windboarding . . . gets in the Olympics, but we can’t. They keep saying, ‘Next Olympics, next Olympics,’ but that’s tough to take, especially when the next Olympics might be too long away.”

Brazney is fighting the calendar as well as the IOC. She wants desperately to see the sport earn medal status. Even more, she wants to be there when it happens. It is an exhausting battle, given that the Olympic bureaucracy behaves much like a knuckleball: slowly and perplexingly.

All in all, Brazney’s request seems reasonable, if not logical. According to figures supplied by the National Softball Hall of Fame, whose headquarters are in Oklahoma City, the game is played in 70 countries and by 41 million people. Not everyone plays fast pitch, of course, but that isn’t the point. The point is, what deserves Olympic consideration, windsurfers bobbing on a lake or fast-pitch softball?

As for myself, take me out to the ballpark.

This is the game where the pitcher’s mound is a mere 40 feet away from the plate, which makes for some interesting confrontations.

Back in 1981, the legendary Reggie Jackson, still in his prime, mind you, agreed to face women’s fast-pitch star Kathy Arendsen in a brief segment for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. All Jackson had done the previous season was hit 41 home runs and collect 111 runs batted in. Then again, all Arendsen did in 1981 was strike out an astounding 600 batters.

Jackson took his place in the box, cocked his bat and then struck out three consecutive times. As best as anyone can recall, Jackson didn’t manage to hit a ball in fair territory.

“Here’s this real imposing figure, the Yankees’ Mr. October in the prime of his career,” said Arendsen, whose East team (alias, the Hi-Ho Brakettes) defeated Brazney’s Majestics, 1-0, Friday evening for the gold medal. “I’m a little nervous because I’m only 40 feet away, and I figure that if he hits one back at me, I could be dead. So I just tried to mix the pitches and keep him off stride. I don’t think he’d ever seen a rise ball before, so I tried a rise ball under his chin and then I just tried to keep the ball away from him.”

You’ve got to respect a game where Jackson can whiff three times to an off-season UPS driver, which is what Arendsen does to make a living. And you have to applaud the efforts of someone such as Brazney, who spends her days happily spreading the news of such events.

This year alone, Brazney and the rest of the Majestics have piled into cars and made tournament trips to Las Vegas, Bakersfield, Redding and Pennsylvania. They have no team sponsor (the coaches pick up some of the expenses) and meal allowances are a paltry $5-$10 a day.

Here at the Festival, the U.S. Olympic Committee is footing the bill, as if it mattered. Brazney would have hitchhiked to Oklahoma City if she had to, such is her fondness for this tournament.

In 1983, she earned a gold medal at a Festival. In 1987, she was plunked on the left forearm with a pitch during the first inning of the bronze-medal game. Team trainers thought a bone had been fractured (it wasn’t, tests showed later). Brazney completed the game, which is a constant source of pride for her.

But time inches forward for Brazney, who perhaps wishes she were 10 years younger or the IOC were 10 times smarter, at least smart enough to recognize a medal sport when it sees one.

In the meantime, Brazney waits and wishes for a speedy decision by the assorted Olympicrats. If all else fails, there is always retirement and slow-pitch softball, a game Brazney surely could dominate.

“Ugh,” she said of the possibility. “The thought of playing recreational slow pitch with some housewives isn’t my idea of fun. Anyway, I might not get a hoarse voice if I play that.”