One night Mark, Scott, Wally and Hose were on a tour and ended-up at Wally’s farm. The beer had taken its toll and the conversation turned into booze-talk. Wally thought we should start our own rock band; Hose said his piss was glowing in the dark, Scotty was singing Freebird and Mark mentioned that we should start a slo-pitch team and join the local Chepstow league. As soon as he mentioned it the car became eerily quiet. Hose's pee stopped glowing, Scotty stopped singing and Wally still thought we should start a rock band.
I don’t know if that’s where it really started but that’s how I remember it. A few phone calls later and the Amish were born. We added a few more founding members; Brad Lacey, Bryan Muegge, Jim Weiler, Gordy Schmidt, Joe Lang, Shawn Mirander, Grant Lacey and Kevin Schmidt and by God we had a team.
That might be a bad heading, we never really had any lean years. The Amish were known for two things, their ability to drink any other team under the table and their badly out-of-shape players.
The year was 1999. The Amish had lost some key players but added a speedy centrefielder with a cannon for an arm and an out-of-shape second basemen who could hit like the wind. That year, the Amish sailed to their first ever winning season. Along the way they played some of the all-time greatest Amish games and had some of the best Amish beerfunds.
One of those games was in the year-end tournament. After winning their first game, the Amish found themselves on the A-side, unfamiliar territory. They had to play the dreaded Dunkeld OTs. That game, some say, changed the way the Amish were looked at in the league. The beer gardens emptied as word spread. “The Amish are leading the OTs 5-4 in the seventh!” “That can’t be” they said. But when the dust settled, it be’d. The Amish had pulled off the greatest upset in slo-pitch history. We then lost the next two straight and were done for the season. But what a season.