History

Here is a brief history of how Strokes Softball came to be and how we got here.

The Story

 Humble Beginnings

The Strokes Softball Club started out in 1988 as a work team for a copier company I worked for called SCMI. When I went to register this new team at the league office they asked me what the name of the team was. At that time I did not know if SCMI was going to sponsor us so I had to come up with a name. I was a goofy 21 year old kid who earlier in the week had been making fun of that really bad 70's sitcom, Different Strokes. Here is where the name was born. Being the fast thinker that I am, I told the lady at the league office that the name was Different Strokes. Needless to say the name has not been the most popular part of playing on the team over the years. Many people have made jokes about the name and in hindsight it probably wasn't the best decision. If you do a search on the Internet you will mainly get returns for Different Strokes Gay and Lesbian Swim Team. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a gay or lesbian( not that there is anything wrong with that) to put on a Strokes uniform, although I think Steve Kimos is a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

As with most work teams there is not much talent to draw from and most people were very unreliable to say the least. In the fall of 1988 I decided to scrap the work team thing and try to actually make a team that was a little more dedicated to winning. I recruited the best players that my friendship could buy and set out to build a state champion. All the pieces were there and the first official version of Different Strokes was born. We won the first game of the double header that fall and things were really looking up. Visions of a state or even a national championships started dancing in my head. We lost the second game of that double header and the next 13 games before winning the last game of the fall league to The Little Sisters of the Poor to compile a very unimpressive 2 and 14 record. It was time to rethink the team for 1989.

Getting The Ball Rolling

The next year we actually added a few good players and as the next few years started to roll by, the team actually started to win more and more games. The emphasis started to be on the greater good of the team and as a result the team started to win more and more games. We were still a long way from being even remotely good but league championships started to happen and bad attitudes were slowly being replaced with guys with better attitudes. A basic team philosophy was being adopted where bad players were never kicked off of the team but if a guy left the team for whatever reason, we tried to replace him with a better player. Sometimes you ended up with a real jerk and sometimes you ended up with a guy who really fit into the team mold. As the years went on we ended up with with more and more guys who became life members of the team who truly put the team first before themselves. Frank Cullen is a great example of this. He was our first member of the team to be put into the Strokes Hall of Fame.

Now that the team was winning games someone suggested we get into a tournament to realize our dream of becoming state champions. We were league champions, we surely were good enough to win it all, right?


Tournament Time

Our first tournament is a blur to me but I think we were at Denny's eating breakfast before 9:30. We were 2 and out faster than you can say " whatch you talkin' about Willis? " . We had no idea how much better teams that play in tournaments are than the average league teams. The 2 and out scenario was commonplace  except when we played in guaranteed 4 game tournaments and then you know what happened then. Slowly we started to improve and 2 and 2 tournaments started to happen as the team started to add a key player here and there. Finally somewhere around 92 or 93 we won our first tournament and have had varying degrees of success ever since. Probably our biggest highlight came in 96 when we came one game from actually being state champions losing in the championship game in field of 80 teams in Hagerstown Maryland.


Changing The Name

I never wanted to change the name of the team because I like the fact that people always knew who we were no matter who was sponsoring us that year. Many teams if they stay a team for as long as we have are always changing the name to whatever their sponsor is. I liked the recognition we got and as we started becoming one of the better teams in the state I like it even more. In 96 someone suggested( I think it was Ed ) that we just call the team Strokes. Everyone like the idea and now we are just called Strokes.

Putting It All In Perspective

Being a player and the coach of the team over the years has really made me a better person. When I first started coaching I never enjoyed it because coaching is a big hassle or at least it used to. I was always stressed because this guy couldn't make or this guy was late. But over the years the team has evolved into so much more than a bunch of guys playing softball 120 games a year. We are a TEAM. In every sense of the word we are a TEAM. Everyone respects the demands and how hard it is to coach a team. Everyone plays as a team and are truly friends outside of playing softball. We have 14 guys that I know aren't looking to play somewhere else and treat the team as their team and not just a team they play for. Many guys on the team get offers to play for other teams that sometimes have much more to offer financially or even have more overall talent. That doesn't matter, Strokes in it's current configuration will be together for years to come. Winning is great, but Strokes has proved that if you are a TEAM, winning will eventually come. What I finally came to realize is that when it's all said and done, the main thing my team will remember when we are too old to play anymore is the friendships we had on the team. That is what's really important.

Dave Woods