2019 Pioneer Player: Denny Howell

Denny Howell

I was a very lucky kid! I grew up in a house across the street from Sunset Park and, weather permitting, the park would be full of kids playing whatever sport was in season or we invented our own games. When I was six years old, I found a baseball glove in our basement. It was for a right-handed player, but it was better than no glove at all. My neighbor at the time was Dick Mulcahey (who later became an Illinois State House Representative) and he convinced his sister Peggy to give me her left-handed baseball glove. I don’t want to give you the impression that our family was poor, because we weren’t. We were like everybody else in that neighborhood and buying sports paraphernalia for their children was not a priority for our parents.

I started playing slow pitch in 1970. Those days I feel were the best of times for slow pitch. The Rockford Park District alone had over a hundred participating teams in their leagues. I was fortunate enough to play on several outstanding softball teams like the Grasshoppers, RMA and Petrie Sports. Along with recreational softball, I also played industrial fast pitch and slow pitch with National Lock where we won both leagues in division A all six years. I also played centerfield several games with the Rockford Blackhawks baseball team. There were several years where I played in excess of a hundred games a year and most every weekend we would be traveling somewhere to participate in a tournament.

The USSSA was welcomed to this area as a much-needed stabilizing organization. The sport was growing so quickly that there was much confusion, but with the help of the organization and Brenda Paulson, we managed to get through the early years with a minimum of problems while enjoying a great sport.

There are dozens of people that I could thank for teaching me the game when I was a child, but when I got married in 1968 to Janice, my wonderful wife of 51 years, I quit playing all baseball and softball. I took up fishing as a hobby. After a couple of years, my wife lovingly said to me, “Your friends want you to play ball and I married a ball player. You can fish for the rest of your life.” She is the only superstar in our family and I’m sure my sons or anybody who knows Jan would agree.