For His Next Trick: The Boy Pitcher Will Attempt To Win A Minnesota Girls' Softball Championship With Just Four Fielders On His Side

We Might Have Found the Next Eddie Fiegner -- or "Edwina" -- "The Queen And Her Court."

Some might think that my continuing to write about this young man and mocking what he has done is cruel.

I hope his mother thinks so because she has herself to blame.

But yesterday I flew overnight from Hawaii and then drove 90 miles in order to be home in time to watch my two youngest daughters in a softball playoff game, so I’m a little bit invested in the subject.

They lost by 2 runs when the game was called after 5 innings because of darkness, denying them one last chance to rally to win. That set off some “sparks” among the parent groups — it was for a spot in the next round of the playoffs and it wasn’t dark yet — and I said my peace. Imagine my on-line persona in person, with my two girls as the objects of my fatherly protective instinct.

That was just a dispute over whether it was too dark to play one more inning. At least there were 11 girls playing for the other team.

Yesterday the Champlin Park Girls Softball team was given the Champion’s trophy for a 6-0 win* over their opponent. The true winner of the Minnesota Championship for all teams that fielded only girls was Bloomington Jefferson High School, whose only loss* in the tournament came at the hands of the male player who pitched for Champlin Park.

I first wrote about the season-long exploits of Marrisa Rothenberger in this article last week. My friends over at the Powerline blog — based in Minnesota — posted a link to that article and it picked up quite a lot of views. I followed that up with an article written for Powerline that ran yesterday ahead of the start of the Championship game. In that article I suggested that the Coach for Champlin Park should give his team the chance to prove they were the best girls team in Minnesota by starting his sophomore female pitcher who had gone 9-1 on the season with an ERA of 1.32.

I noted in that article — as I had in my article here last week - that through the first 20 games of the season, when Champlin Park had a record of 18-2, he had mostly alternated the starting pitching assignment between the sophomore female and the young man on the team. But, when it came time for the Section 5 Championship back on May 23, the Coach decided that the you man would start all three games in that tournament — not only start them, but pitch every inning in them. His statistical dominance is laid out in the first article above.

On June 3, when Champlin Park played its first game in the State Championship Tournament — not just this year, but its first EVER game in the State Championship Tournament — the Coach had a decision to make. Demonstrating the depth of his committment to the farce, he sent out Marissa Rothenberger to s start every game of the three games of the State Tournament. Just like the previous week, the young man threw every pitch of every inning of every game, culminating the 6-0 win yesterday to “win” the Minnesota Class 4AAAA Girls* State Championship.

That asterisk will always be there.

As noted in my earlier articles, when Champlin Park won* the Section 5 Tournament to advance to the State Tournament, it won* back-to-back games over Rogers High School by scores of 2-0* and 1-0*, with Rothenberger starting both and pitching complete games. Rogers High School was the defending Class 4AAAA State Champion.

Here is a statistical breakdown of the combined three games pitched by the young man in the State Championship tournament wins* over Eagan, White Bear Lake, and Bloomington Jefferson High Schools:

This is against the BEST All-Girls teams in Minnesota. If I add in the two wins* from the Section 5 Championship against the Defending State Champion Rogers High School, the young man’s stats are as follows:

There you have it — every 5 games the best teams in Minnesota could score a single run of this young man. Quite impressive for a strapping 6 footer with long arms playing Girls Softball.

One thing that is noteworthy here for me — a guy who played catcher up through college (badly) and then played this game of fastpitch softball for 10+ years after that — don’t get me started on the abomination called “Slo-Pitch”:

The lack of walks — 1 in 35 innings which is unheard of — means the young man was throwing pitches in and around the strike zone. The fact that his number of strike outs were relatively modest means he wasn’t blowing the ball past the batters. But they struggled to string together hits that would score runs. That suggests that while he wasn’t able to blow them away with his pitches, they were still overmatched to the extent that they weren’t really able to attack him and swing aggressively at strikes. It also suggests that they likely swung at a lot of pitches out of the strike zone — suggesting some were overmatched — because it is much harder to having success as a batter swinging at pitches that are not in the strike zone.

Eddie Feigner was famous for 40+ plus years barnstorming the world as part of a fastpitch softball exhibition team called “The King and His Court.” Eddie had only 4 players with him — a catcher, shortstop, and first baseman. Yet Eddie could so dominate the game with his pitching — he was once clocked by early radar devices at over 100 mph — that with just those four players they were almost unbeatable. He could strike batters out almost at will, and when he did give them pitches they might be able to hit, the pitchers were located in such a way that the batter was almost certain to hit the ball at his well-positioned players in the field.

There are several videos on YouTube about his exploits, including this Exhibition from a MLB All Star game weekend where he struck out Willie Mayes, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Harman Killebrew, Roberto Clemente, and Maury Wills.

Maybe Marrisa and his coach can try to duplicate this feat during his Senior season, and repeat as State Champions* with only other 4 players in the field.

As I noted above, in my article for Powerline Blog, I challenged the Champlin Park coach to start his very good sophomore female pitcher who had gone 9-1 during the regular season so his girls could prove to everyone that they were the best girls team in Minnesota. They might well have been that. But they will never know because the coach continued with the fraud.

I’m sure his fear was that had he taken my advice, and his team lost the Championship game, it would have been obvious to the softball world — it it wasn’t already — that a delusional mother and a bunch of adults not willing to confront the lunacy had made a mockery of the 2025 Minnesota Class 4AAAA Girls Softball Season.************************************************************

I’m not one of those adults (and neither is my wife — she’s the one you don’t want to PO over her daughters.).

Fun days ahead.