It all started...well, actually, it all started in 1996 before I came along. I joined the Unusual Suspects in spring 1997 when a friend of a friend told me that a local team needed someone to play softball. I'd never played a real softball game with umpires before, and it sounded like fun, so I joined, played, improved, and began keeping stats and a web page. We were playing 20-game doubleheader seasons at the Softball Country Club in Decatur, GA and it was good. This complex had nine fields, several concession stands, beer, and TVs. If you wanted to play softball in Atlanta, this was where you went. Unfortunately, most of our players were there more for the beer and socializing than the actual game, and our overall record that year was 16-32.

It was always hard to find consistent players who would come back every season, and for 1998, we only had eight who returned. To help fill in the gaps, I brought some people I knew into the team, and we played hard that spring and summer, with a combined record of 13-22 for those two seasons. During the summer, a number of us chose to split off and form our own team, and the Outcasts were born that fall. We had a good core group from the Suspects as well as some new players. We played with a lot of heart, but we were a team in its infancy and it showed, as we posted a 2-8 record.

Things were looking up for 1999, but then we (and every other team in the area) ran into a major obstacle: the Softball Country Club went bankrupt and closed down. After a mad scramble and a spring season where some of us played on someone else's team, we ended up joining the Atlanta Club Sports league that summer as the Outcasts were reborn. We were still learning to work together, though, and the teams there were really good; we went 0-7 that season and decided to take the fall off.

For 2000, we found a new home: Dekalb County's leagues at Blackburn Park. By now, we were coming together as a team, and in three seasons that year we went 7-16 including a 5-5 fall season in which two of our losses were 1-run games. We tended to score a lot of runs, only getting beaten by teams who scored even more. This was a far cry from the days of being shut out by a 20-run margin. Things were looking up.

With a name change to Designated Hitters in 2001, plus a few new players, it all finally came together. We went 6-4 with several close losses in the spring - our first winning season, and it showed us that we had a legitimate shot at future winning seasons. Many of our players could play multiple positions, and the hitting chemistry had finally emerged, as we often scored more than ten runs a game. We fielded two teams that summer and two that fall, and only one poor fall season in a tough league put our record for the year at 22-23.

2002 saw two losing seasons (3-7 in the spring and 2-8 in the fall) but also two winning ones (3-2 and 9-1, both in the summer.) The 9-1 team lost its first game and then bounced back to crush the same team in the second game - and then win all of the next eight over the course of the summer. One other team went 10-0 so we only got second place, but it was our first trophy, and it was great. We finished for the year at 17-18, again one victory short of a winning year.

2003 was "the year." We got a lot of new players and fielded three teams in the spring, and one went 9-1 to capture first place (and third place in the tournament) while another went 8-2 to take second place in its league; the third went 4-6 in a tough league. Both summer teams took first place, with 4-1 and 10-0 records; the latter team won every game by the slaughter rule. In the fall, we fielded two teams again, and both took second place with records of 9-1 and 5-5. Our overall record for the year was 49-16 - easily our best year ever.

For 2004, we started with the usual two teams, Sunday and Thursday, but excessive absences/subs resulted in inconsistent lineups, and those teams went 7-3 and 3-7, the former missing the playoffs by one win. After the spring season, Dekalb County decided to renovate the park...which dragged out into a huge project and ended up closing the fields for the year. Undeterred, we signed up at nearby Keswick Park for the fall. New opponents and a softer ball kept us to 3-7, though we had two close, one-run losses. Our overall record for the year was 13-17.

2005 saw the return of the Sunday team at Blackburn and the Thursday team at Keswick. The Thursday team went 5-5 after a slow start, capturing fourth place out of eight teams. The Sunday team went 6-3 to take third place, falling just short of a tournament slot. A short summer season at Blackburn saw that Sunday team compile a 4-1 record, good for second place - and then we rolled into the tournament with a first-round bye. Round 2 was a hard-fought 15-12 win over the one team who'd beat us in the regular season, and round 3 was another tough 14-11 win for the tournament championship and the big trophy! After that, our fall seasons weren't so good, as we posted 4-6 and 2-8 records (three of the losses for the 2-8 Keswick team were one-run games.) The overall record for 2005 was 21-23, plus 3-2 in playoff games. Here's a link to our best games of 2005.

2006 saw the resurgence of the Sunday team as a contender; with an 8-2 record we took second place in the league. However, we faltered in the tournament and lost to a monster team from another park, who ended up winning the whole thing. The rest of the year was mostly a shuffling of tired, injured players back and forth between the Sunday and Thursday teams, taking it one week at a time and barely scraping by. Our overall record for the year was 21-25. Here's my take on our best games from 2006.

2007 had its ups and downs. The Thursday league got tougher, and we developed a habit of playing the strong teams well and choking against the weak ones. Other times, we played great ball for 5 or 6 innings and then had one bad inning, losing by a run to a team we dominated for most of the game. Nevertheless, the Sunday team took first place in the league for the summer season, and the Thursday team took four of its last five to finish 6-6 and capture third place. The overall 2007 record was 22-26. These were our best games of 2007.

We fielded three teams to start 2008, but more and more good teams were making their way into our leagues, and only the Tuesday team avoided a losing record. In the summer/fall, the Keswick league people took too long to get their leagues going so we jumped ship to Blackburn on Thursdays...only to see that season truncated after two games due to vandalism to the park's lights. Our Sunday team posted a winning record, but our Thursday team (which was very strong) never got the chance to, and the overall record for the year was a miserable 29-45. Here are our best games of 2008.

For 2009, we once again fielded Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday teams. I implemented a new rule for the latter two: ten players on each team, with no extra hitters. This was a radical departure from my strategy of the last 12 years, but I've come to believe that having a tight team of reliable players is more important than having the safety net of extra players who don't get to play the field. It seemed to work out fine - the teams batted better (and more) and worked better together with ten batters. We finished the year with an overall 32-29 record with six really close losses. And, as always, we had a number of best games of 2009.

In 2010, we fielded the standard Sunday and Thursday teams and nothing else - no random teams, no tournaments, just the two basic teams. We ended up with a 21-26 record, but there were a few best games of 2010 as always.

2011 saw our Sunday co-ed team go 8-3 in the regular season and 1-1 in the tournament, as we reached the finals only to be crushed by a team that had brought some new (and likely illegal) ringers out that day. Sunday ball ended in June, though, because Dekalb County closed Blackburn Park for renovations. As for the Thursday team, we went 5-5 in both the spring and the summer seasons, though we did make it to the tournament finals at the end of the summer season. The overall DH co-ed record for 2011 (counting tournament games) was 20-16. Of course, we had the usual best games of the year too.

2012 was the beginning of the "we only play Thursdays and only at Keswick" era. Blackburn's management (Dekalb County) was disorganized and apathetic, along with numerous other teams, just gave up on them. We fielded Thursday teams for the spring and fall seasons, and they each went 3-7 with a collective 1-2 record in postseason play. Desepite this overall 7-16 showing for the year, we did manage to have a couple of inspired games.

In the spring of 2013, we had a strong 6-3 season to take second place in the league, and also made it to the tournament final, losing by a slim 18-22 margin. In a long fall season, we went 4-8 followed by a 1-1 postseason.

After a mediocre 5-5 spring season, we got it together in the summer/fall season. Three rainouts preceded a loss, then we won three, had another rainout, followed by two more losses...and that was the last loss of the year. We proceeded to reel off four consecutive wins to end the regular season at 7-3 and in second place, then swept the postseason 3-0 to win the tournament championship, our first ever at Keswick Park!