On the Jahnwiesen last weekend it was about the sausage – the German champion in the slow pitch was wanted, a kind of family-friendly variant of baseball.
by Hans-Willi Hermans
Mungersdorf. The field is smaller, the racquets are lighter and the ball’s trajectory is curved. That speeds things up a bit. Which doesn’t mean that things went quietly at the German Slowpitch Championships on the Jahnwiesen: “We have to hit something really hard now,” a player from the Darmstadt Whippets, whose name is “Machine” on her jersey, drives her team on. “They have real power.” After that, her team members give her high fives encouragingly.
“You develop a sense of community very quickly at the slow pitch,” says Max Zerhusen, Managing Director of the Cologne association UCE Travelers, which is organizing the championships this year after a two-year Corona break.
Twelve teams with illustrious names such as the Aachen Greyhounds, Berlin Donkeys and Ubuntu Underdogs have traveled from all over Germany to compete in either “Mixed” or “Coed” mode.
In “Mixed” there must be at least two women or two men among the ten field players, in “Coed” five women and five men play together: “It is strictly ensured that the women are not assigned the supposedly easier positions,” says crush. “It’s a particularly inclusive sport.”
Another plus of the slow pitch, according to Zerhusen: there is no need to fear one-sidedness. The player trains a wide variety of movement sequences: running, catching, throwing, hitting. “Beginners also have a sense of achievement very quickly,” says Zerhusen, who once played in the second tennis league. Incidentally, the Travelers share the Circlewood Stadium at Walter Binder-Weg 1 with the baseball cracks of the Cologne Cardinals.
So if you want to try out Slowpitch, you can stop by there on Mondays at 6:30 p.m. “Some of the Cardinals also take part in our championships,” reveals Zerhusen proudly.
And as far as the race for the big trophy is concerned: the UCE Travelers from Cologne were able to secure the title in their hometown. In the final, as organizers of the German championship, they defeated the Ladenburg Romans with a score of 22:18.
