Old Empire Softball Assoc. Returns As Queens Lighted

Left to right: Gary Rizzo, Rich Ritchie, Heavy Hitters manager Irving Gonzalez and Carlo Capibianco after the 2008 QLSA championship game. Softball leagues have complicated lives, full of fits and starts and marriage and divorce, but the men and women who run them tend to keep the key points straight in their heads.

Ask Rich Ritchie about his Queens Lighted Softball Association (QLSA) and he will recount a history that charts the ebb and flow of the league's popularity in mergers and acquisitions and changes of locations.

For instance:

"For a while," Rich Ritchie said of the Empire Softball Association, which he ran for fifteen years, "we had an asphalt league that was maybe the best league in Queens. We had the premier players, and everybody knew each other. It was really very nice. Then the Parks Department let [a nearby] school put down trailers on the field (on 151st Street) and that was the end of our blacktop."

Or:

"For a while we had a team called Upback, from Astoria, that was coached by a guy named Carlo Capibianco. They were so good, they must of won five years in a row. Nobody wanted to play them anymore. Teams would say, 'Why do I want to donate to them again this year?' So we lost some teams because of that."

At the 2008 home run hitting contest: (shown left to right) Eddie Flacco, an unidentified slugger, Louis Martinez, Joe Godsen, eventual champion Joe Ferridino, Biagio Fortunado, John Galindo and Paul Schreiber. Or:

"You have some of these leagues with 60 teams—I call them the sandlot bandits—in it to make a profit. I've never been interested in that, but some teams want to be in those big leagues. I lost some teams here, some teams there, then I got sick with cancer. I tried for a while, but I couldn't keep up. Finally, we only had four teams left, so we merged them with another league, which didn't really work out.

"Health-wise, I'm doing better now. And guess what? We're back."

A born organizer Rich Ritchie got his start running sports leagues growing up in the Ravenswood Houses.

"In the summer," he said, when school was out "all us kids would go meet in what we called 'the circle,' in the middle of the project. We'd choose up teams, and we'd stick with those teams from sunup to sundown, all the way through the end of the summer.

"And what do you know? I was the one in the middle, telling everyone which side they'd play for."

Ritchie became a two-sport stal- wart, starring in ad hoc roller hockey games and organized baseball, in which sport he said he eventually earned a couple of pro tryouts. As he transitioned into his adult life, getting involved in sports leagues came naturally.

"I've always been known as an organizer," he said. "I had a friend who used to say I could get a baseball team going in the Sahara Desert."

Sure enough, Ritchie ran the Queens Roller Hockey Association for over 20 years, and Empire Softball for 15. These days, in addition to running QSLA, he's the head coach of the Long Island 495ers, a professional roller hockey team playing in the American Inline Hockey Association.

2008 highlights

Ritchie inaugurated the QLSA last year, running an eight-team league on weeknights out of Queensboro Park. The Heavy Hitters, representing College Point, won the playoffs behind the hitting and pitching of postseason MVP John Galindo.

The 2008 season also featured an all-star game, complete with home run contest, two competitions which Ritchie had never staged before.

"For the home run contest, we set up cones in the outfield to show what a homerun was, and we set them up too far. So no one hit a homerun in the first round. We moved them in after that."

The season also featured a cameo appearance from a former- Yankees great.

"I was umpiring a league game," Ritchie said, "and we're getting ready to start, and I hear someone from one of the teams—it was the Cardinals, who are all Williamsburg guys—'Hey Mick, we don't have enough. You're going to have to play.

"I didn't really think of it, but I notice a guy coaching third base in a New York Diamonds T-shirt. And the first batter says, 'You see who we got playing with us tonight?'

"And I look back down to third base, and the guy's got this distinctive walk. And I kind of squinted at him for a second, and I said, 'Wow. That's Mickey Rivers.'

"He was going to come back and be the honorary captain for the allstar game, but he was out of town, or there was a conflict with oldtimers day at Yankee Stadium, or something like that."

Looking ahead to 2009

Ritchie also tried a new payout structure last year: whereas he had previously reserved the cash pot for the playoff champions, with perhaps a smaller share going to the regular season winner, in 2008, QLSA awarded a little piece of the pot to a wild card team.

Ritchie said he thought the revised payout was a success, and that he's expanding on the idea for 2009.

"I always used to do winnertake all, and I think it caused a lot of bad blood. By dividing the money up you keep more teams happy, give more teams something to play for. If it doesn't work, we can always go back."

QLSA has expanded to 16 teams—playing in two eight-team divisions—for its 2009 season, including clubs from Ridgewood, Williamsburg, Jackson Heights, Long Island City and other parts of Queens and Brooklyn.

Ritchie said he had to fight the urge to expand further.

"Some of the teams wanted me to do Saturday/Sunday, too, and I thought about it. But one thing I've learned is that you have to grow slowly, or you run the risk of a backslide."

When asked to pick some potential favorites out of the 2009 teams, he refused.

"I would never pick a favorite," he said. "I always remember that anything can happen in this game, so in the name of impartiality, it's better not to anticipate in advance. I don't play favorites, I don't hold a grudge and I try to let teams know it's about them, not about me."

People seem to know these things about Ritchie, because after all these years, they're still signing up to play in his leagues.