Announcement
It’s Westford’s Little Bandbox. The dimensions at the VFW Field on Prescott Street are smaller than a typical softball field—most slow pitch softball fields require a hitter to bash the ball more than 300 feet to knock it over the fence. At the VFW Field, it’s only 240 feet to the left field fence, about 250 feet to straightaway center, and only 220 feet to right. About fifteen years ago, the town added a second tier to the fencing in left, but center field and right field fences are still the original eight feet of chain-link.
To adjust for the small physical dimensions of the field, the Westford Over 30 Men’s Slow Pitch Softball League uses bats and balls that are designed (balls are flight-restricted and bats are single walled) to make the park play like one with more typical larger dimensions.
To hit a ball out of VFW using the league equipment, you have to hit the ball just right and with a great deal of power. Home runs don’t come easy. Case and point: one team this season combined to club only 15 home runs!
Still there is a select group of power hitters who year-in and year-out continue to pound the ball over the fence in bunches. The Nashoba Valley Veterinarian Mustangs Don Cusano is one of those players. He led the league with 23 home runs in 2014. This year, he hit even more.
Below is a list of the elite power hitters of the 2015 season.
1. Don Cusano: The 56-year-old is the most dangerous power hitter in the league. His teammates call him “Donny-matic,” a pun on the word automatic because he is so reliably productive at the plate. Cusano dominated this season, hitting 27 home runs and knocking in 90 RBI in 21 games.
2. Thanh Nguyen: He’s known across the league as simply “T.” Nguyen is a five-tool player who hits some of the longest home runs in the league for team GutCheck. Opposing pitchers fear him and often pitch around him—Nguyen walked 15 times this season. Nevertheless, he managed to blast 20 homers and amass 49 RBI.
3. Simon Tripp: Ever since Tripp joined the league in 2009, he has been a perennial power hitter, his best year coming in 2013, when he hit 23 home runs and knocked in 82. This year the Floral Arts cleanup hitter swatted 18 round-trippers and tallied 53 RBI.
4. Billy Knute: The Mustang lefty is an excellent athlete, both defensively as the starting left fielder and offensively as the cleanup hitter. This year, mid-season, Knute went on a tear and hit seven home runs in nine at-bats. He finished the season with 17 home runs.
5. Jason Humphrey: Now in his third year on Shortcut Landscaping, Humphrey, an English teacher and baseball coach at Westford Academy, is one of the top defensive shortstops in the league. Always a solid hitter, this season the ball jumped off of his bat. In a game in July, he hit four home runs in one game. Humphrey finished the regular season with 15 long balls.
6. Jim Peloquin, Brian Gallardo, Mike Gross, Dave Sullivan & Brent Oakleaf: Once an all-star shortstop at UMass-Lowell, Peloquin still has great range in the field and a relentless competitive spirit. Despite starting the season way off of his 2014 home run pace that produced 20 home runs, the Floral Arts shortstop still impressed at the plate, knocking out 14 home runs in only 43 at-bats.
Willis Tent’s Brian Gallardo made a splash in his rookie season. The left-handed batter hit .708, used his great speed to leg-out eight doubles, and swatted 14 home runs in 48 at-bats for his third place team.
Pound-for-pound, Shortcut Landscaping is the biggest team in the league—a team peopled by giants. It is no wonder that nearly half of the names on this list are from SCL, including the following three:
Mike Gross is a stocky first baseman with a big personality. Grossy, as his friends call him, also carried a big stick this season, banging out 14 home runs.
Gross’ teammate, Dave Sullivan, is a fleet-footed outfielder and all-around athlete. Sullivan is known for turning singles into doubles with his all-out hustle and exceptional speed, but his bat also has a lot of pop. Sullivan hit 14 home runs this season.
Brent Oakleaf is the tallest of the SCL giants—standing at 6 feet, 5 inches. A basketball player at UMass-Lowell in his college days, Oakleaf now spends his summer evenings launching rockets out over the left-field fence. Oakleaf also hit 14 home runs for his fourth place team.
11. Matt Sepe: Most lists end at ten, but here’s one more. Sepe moves slowly, but carries a big stick. His GutCheck teammates joke that the righty’s motivation for hitting home runs is so that he can trot around—rather than run—the bases. Sepe hit 13 home runs in 13 games this year (50 at-bats) and knocked in 36. His power-stroke was key in getting his team in the playoffs for the first time.
