2004 Lifetime Achievement: Laurie "Smitty" Smith
/Laurie “Smitty” Smith
A self-described “fair player with a decent bat,” Laurie “Smitty” Smith played third base and catcher through a career that included roster spots on such Rockford Park District teams as First National Bank, Ace of Diamonds, Bolender Jewelers, Diamond Bar and Valley Furnace Flames.
When her playing career ended in 1982, her body left softball behind but her hard couldn’t. Like so many others, the love of the great sport led her to seek out other ways to stay involved with the game. That has led to serve the game of softball in every way from scorekeeping to announcing to singing the National Anthem.
“I wanted to stay involved with the game and be around my friends,” Smith said.
Happily, by 1982, her former coach, Brenda Paulson, was the Illinois USSSA State Director and running numerous tournaments in Rockford. Smith began keeping score, running the scoreboard and announcing the games.
“I was being called the ‘Harriet Carey of Forest Hills,’” Smith said.
As time went by, Paulson entrusted Smith with more responsibilities. She became Diamond Director for State and Qualifying Tournaments, as well as handled the checking in of teams and players and collecting the ever-elusive team rosters.
“As strenuous and exhausting as it was, I enjoyed almost every moment,” Smith said. “When the day was over, as players and umpires were leaving the park and going to the nearest bars for cocktails, I was faxing in the day’s scores to the newspaper, cleaning up the score booth and locking up.”
Smith remembered an embarrassing moment from a day she was calling a Men’s tournament at Forest Hills. With the stands filled with fans, Smith was at the microphone when a batter stroked a single down the first baseline. “It’s a base shit!” Smith blurted out. Blushing beet red and sliding away from the front of the booth, she hid in the recesses, then gathered the courage to peek out over the window ledge at the crowd where no one was laughing at her gaffe. “Thank the Lord!” she breathed and went on with her announcing duties with greater care to enunciate her words.
“My years in softball have been the best years of my life. This is where I met my best and dearest friend, Brenda Paulson, along with my many other cherished friends. I want to say, ‘Thank you, I love you and God bless.’”
Smith knew she was being fully accepted around the ball park when she found herself with male players regularly in her face and “yelling at me as though I were Brenda.”
“Of course, their problems were self-induced most of the time, but I tried to keep my cool as best I could,” Smith recalled.
She has, she said, enjoyed it all.
“My years in softball have been the best years of my life,” Smith said. “This is where I met my best and dearest friend, Brenda Paulson, along with my many other cherished friends. I want to say, ‘Thank you, I love you and God bless.’”
Laurie Smith is welcomed into the Illinois USSSA Hall of Fame with the Lifetime Achievement Award and we say thank you in return for her proven love and devotion to the USSSA and the sport of softball.