New League: West KY Hardball
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| The dugouts of Paducah are once again teeming with activity since the West KY Hardball League formed. |
By Jeff McGaw, MSBLNational.com
It is the home of the Museum of the American Quilters Society, a center for uranium enrichment, a historical steamboat and railroad town, and the burial place of Mr. Charles "Speedy” Atkins – arguably the most famous mummy this side of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Now Paducah, located in Western Kentucky near the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, about two hours from everything and three hours from Louisville, has a new attraction – an adult baseball league.
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The new Western Kentucky Hardball League is slowly taking root and gaining strength thanks to the diligent and sometimes selfless efforts of a group of players and managers led by league President Michael Johnson.
Johnson didn't set out to start the league or even be its president. Like so many players in the MSBL the 35-year-old, former high school player rediscovered baseball while coaching his young son. Nearly two decades after grabbing his diploma, he thought it would be fun to dust the cleats off. |
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| Seized by similar inspiration, a group of about 10 guys started talking about |
Michael Johnson |
forming an adult baseball league last fall, Johnson said. Johnson, a construction industry salesman with a civil engineering background and a hankering to play some ball, emerged as a group leader.
"I wasn't sure if we had a big enough market to do it,” he confessed. Running the league "became a little bit of a hobby,” Johnson said. "I was enjoying that we were moving along and getting people interested. It made sense for me (to assume a leadership role)” he said.
Soon things started happening. They created a web site (westkyhardball) on League Lineup. Johnson, with his own money, incorporated the league to gain legal protection. "I could get a checking account for the league so that people could pay the league instead of writing checks to Michael Johnson,” he said. Scrimmages and tryouts were held.
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To Johnson's delight, Sean Yarbrough, the baseball coach at Mid-Continent College, a Baptist college in Paducah, allowed the league to schedule games on his team's field. "He said ‘just don't wreck it,'” Johnson recalled. "I couldn't believe it.” The league also uses historic Brooks Stadium in Paducah.Though small, the league didn't want to appear to be "small time,” according to Johnson. |
| The West KY Venom (red) take on the Paducah Chiefs (blue) |
To that end the league |
required two umpires per game and insisted that teams have proper uniforms. "We wanted to stick to the premise that this is the real deal and that it's a quality league. If it can't be quality, you shouldn't do it at all.”
On June 3 the Paducah Chiefs , an homage to Paducah's minor league past, squared off against the Western KY Venom in the season opener. Word got around and a third team, the Paducah Panthers, leapt into the mix mid-season.
Now, Johnson said, things are starting to look up. Next year the league, which allows wood and BBCOR bats, will start in late summer or early fall to accommodate the guys who can't play because they are coaching or watching their kids play, he said. "We've got a waiting list for a fourth team,” Johnson said, adding that there's rumor of still another team forming for the fall season.
In the end it's about playing baseball, Johnson said, adding that the church softball circuit just didn't cut it. Now, the Livingston Central HS graduate is having a ball. "It's a blast. I love it. I enjoy baseball. I'm still in good shape. I exercise and I'm able to play."
That's more than can be said for Charles "Speedy” Atkins, one of Paducah's best known former residents. Atkins drowned in the Ohio River in 1928 and his body was given to a local mortician for a pauper's burial, but that mortician, A.Z. Hamock, used Atkins to test a home-brewed preservative. The concoction worked so well that it essentially turned Atkins to Wood, according to published historical accounts. Instead of burying Atkins, Hamock put the petrified pauper on display at the funeral home.
In 1937 Paducah flooded. Atkins was whisked away, again, by the waters, found again, and returned to the funeral home as a flood victim.
People from around the world came to the Hamock-Bowles Funeral Home to see the suit-clad, modern mummy of Paducah. Atkins was featured in books, countless articles in respected rags like the Lexington Herald to sensational ones like the National Enquirer. He appeared on TV in episodes of Ripley's Believe it or Not and even made the Discovery Channel.
Finally, on Aug. 5, 1994, 66 years after he drowned and 57 years after he drowned again, sort of, Atkins was buried at Maplelawn Cemetery in Paducah.
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| Players gather for a pregame prayer in Paducah during a scrimmage last February. |