The Chicago Park District’s new Grant Park Framework Plan is raising eyebrows among the city’s 16-inch softball players because it leaves out the dozen historic diamonds in the section of the park known as Hutchinson Field.
16-inch softball has been played in Grant Park for nearly 100 years.
Never with gloves. It’s in the DNA of the city. Especially the working class.
The game was invented in Chicago.
There’s a 16-inch Softball Hall of Fame.
Softball enthusiast George Bliss says the decision is “among the worst ideas ever.”
He was among the founders of the hall of fame and an inductee.
“If they take away softball from Chicago it will be very disappointing,” he said. “16-inch softball - way before Michael, way before Oprah, way before Walter Payton - it’s been around for about 130 years, it’s a disaster, it’s a travesty.”
Another hall of famer, Don DeBat, notes in an article in Loop North News, if Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Mike Royko were alive today “he would be like General George S. Patton fighting the ‘Battle for Grant Park’ on behalf of the Windy City’s 100,000 softball players”.
He noted that Royko, also a hall of fame inductee, once successfully sued the park district to prevent the use of gloves, which was considered “blasphemy.”
There was testimony from a colorful politician who told the judge,
“Gloves? The only time anybody on our team ever wore any kind of gloves was when they didn’t want to leave fingerprints.”
Bliss said over time, the game has been pushed out of places like Grant Park, by events like Lollapalooza and NASCAR.
He hopes this is not the end of 16-inch in Grant Park.