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(Photo: Canadian softball pitcher Mike Piechnik during his wind up in Winnipeg at the Pam Am games in 1999. John Lehmann/National Post Files)

A pair of underhand flamethrowers will make some magic for fans at this weekend’s Vancouver Challenge

Gary Kingston
Vancouver Sun

Mike Piechnik is reaching back into a memory bank that seems to spew out games as quickly and cleanly as an ATM spits out crisp 20s.

It’s 1988. U.S. fastpitch nationals. The Victoria native, hurling for The Farm out of Madison, Wisc., is in a classic bionic-arm pitching matchup with Peter Meredith, the standout from New Zealand who was throwing then for Trans-Aire of Elkhart, Ind.

Two hired-gun imports, two wizards of the windmill delivery.

“He threw every game as I did,” says Piechnik. “We met up in a game before the winner’s bracket final. Twenty innings, five hours and 50 minutes. We beat them 1-0. He struck out 26 guys. I struck out 46.”

That’s right, 46, which, ironically enough, is the current age of the still active Piechnik.

“Bottom of the 20th, I had one run and I’m thinking ‘I ain’t losing this.’ And I struck out the side.”

Piechnik, a transit driver in Victoria, is pitching this summer for American club team Portland DeMarini, which is in the six-team Vancouver Challenge tournament this weekend at South Memorial Park.

Also entered is the Horse Lake, Alta., Thunder, who have recruited another 46-year-old hurler, righthander Darren Zack of Garden River, Ont., to be their ace.

The two might be edging past their prime — though the lefty Piechnik threw a perfect game at the Vancouver Grey Sox last weekend in Portland — but for fans, it’s the first time the legendary Canadian chuckers will have played on the same field in B.C. in a decade.

Asked about other career highlights, Piechnik rattles off years and teams, scores and strikeout totals like they happened yesterday.

“What I compare that to, is it’s the same as a war veteran who goes through so many battles and then they win the war,” he says. “Like the veterans on the road through Italy [in the Second World War], you remember those hard-fought battles with close friends. The stress is huge and you band together and you win and your recall is strong because of that. You’re doing this with close, close friends, close teammates who make you better. That’s why you remember.”

Men’s elite fastpitch has always been a low-profile, niche sport in North America, its U.S. hotbeds in places like Sioux City, Iowa, and Madison, Wisc., and its Canadian status similar to senior level lacrosse. In the last couple of decades, it has even been eclipsed by the women’s game, which made it into the Olympics in 1996 and thrives in the U.S. college system.

The heyday of the men’s game was from the 1960s to early ’90s, and Piechnik and Zack were two of the best to ever take the circle, certainly the two greatest pitchers in Canadian fastpitch history. They led Canada to Pan Am Games gold medals in 1991, 1995 and 1999, and Piechnik started and Zack closed when Canada won its only International Softball Federation world title in Manila in 1992, beating New Zealand in the final of the quadrennial event.

Both also have been standouts in the annual International Softball Congress world tournament, playing for various North American club teams. In a 2003 story that compared their ISC stats, Piechnik, the career wins leader for lefthanders, was 45-16 with 770 strikeouts in 438 innings and four perfect games, though his teams never won a title; Zack was 46-14 with 797 strikeouts in the same number of innings with four ISC titles

In 1995, when his Toronto Gators won their second crown in three years, Zack was 10-0 with a 0.36 ERA and 150 strikeouts, a record for Ks that still stands.

Zack, a genial giant at 6-3 and 285 pounds, figures he’s played for “at least” 30 to 40 teams. The 6-2, 220-pound Piechnik hasn’t added his up, and simply rattles off a road map of stops: “Started with Victoria, went to Wisconsin, back to Victoria, then to Sioux City, Iowa, two teams there, then to All-Car [in Green Bay, Wisc.], then I went to New Jersey, from there to Nebraska . . .

In an officially “amateur” game where they are supposed to be reimbursed only for travel expenses and wages lost, two of the greatest have-arms-will-travel gunslingers are loathe to discuss money, just in case the taxman is reading. But it’s a fair assumption that the sponsors of the stacked teams they were recruited to play for generously looked after guys who could pitch all day while striking out 16 batters a game.

“Is that right?” said a laughing Zack.

The itinerant life of an underhand flamethrower, at least in his 20s and 30s and single, was a “rush,” says Piechnik. And there was definitely a “love of the game” feel to what he did.

“Actually, Love of the Game (starring Kevin Costner as a baseball player) is one of my favourite movies. It explains a lot of the life of a ball player. Tone it down a bit and it’s a softball player’s life. You still meet the girls, get the fans. You get to go places and do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

But at 46, with kids eight and 11, Piechnik’s days as an elite level arm for hire are just about done. He’ll pitch for Portland at next month’s ISC tournament in Kitchener, Ont., then call it quits.

“Pitching is not that demanding once you’re in shape. It’s a fun game when you can throw great, hit your spots, make the ball move. But as you get older, it’s a tougher climb each spring [to get physically ready]. And recovery is a bugger. The next morning [after pitching] it really hurts. You wake up sometimes and feel like four guys did you in.”

Zack, a member of the Garden River First Nation and a genuine hero to native youth for whom he stages pitching clinics, says he’s taking it year by year while keeping a close eye on his 17-year-old son, Darren Jr., also a pitcher.

“If I’m effective, still throwin’ it, I’ll keep playing as long as I can,” Zack said by cell phone this week while driving from Horse Lake to Vancouver. “I’d like to play with my boy.”

The Vancouver Grey Sox, the tournament hosts this weekend, plan to honour Zack and Piechnik and their careers with a small ceremony this afternoon at South Memorial Park. They have their own mutual admiration society, even if, as Zack jokes, Piechnik “throws with the wrong arm.”

“Darren is the most naturally gifted pitcher I’ve ever seen,” says Piechnik.

“And what an awesome ambassador for the game, a real gentleman of the sport. I loved playing with him, just to watch what he could do with a drop ball.

“When he was at his best, nobody had the variety of pitches he did and then he had the gas to back it up. And longevity, he could throw for frickin’ ever.”

Grey Sox co-sponsor Conrad Margolis had Zack in Vancouver from 1990-92 with the old Magicians.

“What set him apart … was he had the best set of changeups of anyone in the game. At 270 pounds, of course he could overpower batters with a riseball, but he developed a changeup riseball and a change curveball and a devastating drop change. He could keep batters off balance like nobody else.”

Both guys will get a good feel this weekend for their clubs’ chances at the ISC worlds. The No. 1 ranked Broken Bow Gremlins out of New York and No. 4 So Cal Bombers are in the Vancouver tournament.

Zack and Piechnik are likely to be the oldest pitchers in Kitchener or, as Piechnik likes to add, “the oldest effective ones.

“There’s some out there who might be older,” says Piechnik, “but they don’t have a hope in hell of beating a world-class team.”

gkingston@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
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