Date: Fri 26-Jul-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Slo-Pitch-Rose-Dennis

Full Text:

Slo Pitch - Chris Dennis & Doug Rose

B Y K IM J. H ARMON

It was the annual Windmill Softball Classic in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and the

Heritage Pension team - made up of Newtown slo-pitch players - came to the

sick realization, in a motel room well after midnight the night before the

tournament began, that it wouldn't have enough players.

But at that moment the door banged open and in walked Chris Dennis, who had

been cursed out and given up as a no show hours before as the team settled in

their digs and started playing cards.

Dennis, though, had a good reason for being late.

He was playing softball.

Rather than leave for Cape Cod after work, like the rest of the team had done,

Dennis went to his regularly scheduled eight o'clock game in Danbury and only

when it was over did he hop in his car and make the three-and-a-half hour trip

to the Cape.

Tired or not, he proceeded, that weekend, to go 14-for-18 (.778) and make the

All-Tournament team.

And that is just one - and not even the most outlandish - example of what

lengths Dennis would go to play softball (this year he drove back from

Florida, non-stop, sleeping off and on, in time to get to Vernon for an April

tournament) and he isn't the only guy who goes around with a bat in one hand

and a schedule in the other.

Last year alone, Chris Dennis and his friend, Doug Rose, played in nearly 800

games all told, combining for well over 3,000 at bats. Sometimes they were on

the same team and sometimes they weren't but together or not, there was hardly

a day gone by that one of them wasn't playing.

" Those guys are nuts, " said Tom Wyatt, who plays against Dennis and Rose in

the Newtown Sunday Slo-Pitch League and with them in the Bethel Businessman's

League. " I don't know how they can play softball every single day of the

week. Yeah, they were good players to start with, but over the last few years

they've blossomed into two of the best in town. Anybody will tell you that. "

Doug, 29, started playing softball with the Pizza Palace back when he was 16

years old. About 1987 or so, he met up with Don Kachur and started playing in

Danbury. After he graduated college, his relationships with Tom Fey and Tee

O'Grady and Gene Chappell brought him in even deeper into the softball mania.

" It was the tournaments that really turned me onto this whole thing, " Rose

said. Chris, 26, began his softball career back with Hawleyville Fire

Department team in the Fireman's Softball League and that isn't so far back in

the folds of time that he can't remember the first time he picked up the

aluminum on the softball field.

" My first at-bat, I used a 38-ounce Black Magic Easton playing for Tommy

Ramsdell in the fireman's league, " he said. " I hit a bomb to right field,

dead right field, and I was trying to pull the ball. I was just so late

swinging the bat that's where the ball went. "

Dennis played there for two years, started playing in the Newtown Sunday

Slo-Pitch Softball League with K's Korner with his friend, Rick Kasbarian, and

then, in 1995, hooked up with Catering By George when it moved up to the A

Division after winning the B Division championship.

Things have gotten a little bit more complicated since then.

And for both Dennis and Rose, it's basically the same.

On Sundays, they will generally play in Newtown on Sunday morning and then go

to Danbury in the afternoon (Rose will sometimes be in New Canaan on Sunday).

On Mondays and Wednesdays, both play in Westport. On Tuesdays, both play in

the Bethel Businessman's League and the Newtown Weeknite Slo-Pitch League,

with a return to the Weeknite League on Thursdays. On Saturday nights, the

pair play in a Danbury open league. And The Danbury Industrial League that

both men play in (but on separate teams) can schedule games any day from

Monday through Friday.

Throw in the tournament schedules and it can't be much of a surprise, then, if

Rose was to go to a game in Bethel only to find out he brought along the wrong

shirt. The game of softball is fun for both Dennis and Rose, but it has gone a

little bit beyond that, too.

" A lot of it is ego, " said Rose. " There are a lot of places we can go where

someone will say hello or someone will be talking about how good we're doing

or how far we can hit a ball. There's a lot of recognition that goes with it,

that's for sure. "

Dennis added, " It makes you feel good when people say stuff like that. And

people are good people, most of the time. "

Playing more 300 to 400 games in a summer (well, their season actually extends

from as early as March all the way through November and just ask them about

the tournament in Poughkeepsie which got snowed out) is a daunting enough task

for anyone, even someone driven like Dennis or Rose.

" Sometimes in the middle of the summer, when you get into the doldrums, you

can kind of lose a little bit of the focus. " Rose said.

While Dennis added, " It depends on if you're hot or not, too. If you just

came from a doubleheader one night going 7-for-7 and you got a game the next

day, no matter how tired you are, you're going to hit. But if you were 1-for-8

or 2-for-8 and you're tired, it can be tough. "

Hot or not, they play.

A couple years ago, the Dennis and Rose went to Virginia for the Nationals and

after one team, coached by James Jordan, was eliminated they were quickly

picked up by a team coached by Newtown's Jack Matern.

" Next thing you know, " Rose said, " we're hiding behind a Port-o-Let and

putting on new shirts and stuff and before you know it, we're on another team.

" Then in Vernon last November, they played five games for a team out of

Westport and then got picked up by a co-ed team for four more games . . . all

the while not trying to let on to their girlfriends that they had upped and

switched teams.

These two guys find themselves changing their shirts so many times they might

not be quite sure who they are playing for and, in fact, . . . well, who they

are. If there were an APB (all points bulletin) out on Doug Rose or Chris

Dennis right now, it might include a couple of aliases they have used to,

well, bend some of the residency requirements that most leagues try (although

not very hard) to adhere to.

It doesn't matter, though, what they might be calling themselves on any

particular night. It's the reputations they feel they have built for

themselves that say who they are.

" There's really something, " said Rose, " about going in front of people you

have no idea who they are, and you may never have known them before, but when

you shake hands after the game they single you out and said you hit the ball

good or you did something good. "

It is same for the people they play.

" Chris and I can go to fields all over the place, " he added, " and we know

somebody, remember what team they were on and who they played for . . . I

don't know, there's just something about it. When we went to Virginia, all

around us, there's just people we know because we played them in Massachusetts

or God knows where. "

Lots of guys play in two or three softball leagues. Some play in four.

But no one seems to have attacked the game of softball much like Chris Dennis

or Doug Rose - a couple of guys who should put a sign on their car with huge

block letters that's going to say . . .

HAVE BAT, WILL TRAVEL.