Inductees

It’s amazing if you think about it. In sports, you can be a kid just hanging around a ball field and, years later and thanks to happenstance, you’re traveling across the country getting to play a game you love.

Roy Burlison was one of the lucky ones in life. In fact, he still remembers the first day of his journey. The journey, that is, in fast-pitch softball.

“When I was about 14 years old in California, there were about six of us. Whatever the sport was, that’s what we played,” Burlison said. “We were hitting fly balls on a baseball field, and I look down and there was a guy throwing a ball funny.”

And so Burlison walked down to the other field for an explanation and, within a decade, fast-pitch softball was his life, for all intents and purposes.

And now look. Burlison can call himself a Missouri Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Class of 2015.

In many respects, Burlison’s induction is a nod to the thousands who built a national reputation for the premier American Softball Association, a huge draw across the country from the 1960s to 1980s. Teams back then took on the persona of big-league baseball clubs, traveling all over the country.

Burlison earned a reputation as one of ASA’s most feared pitchers, as he won more than 700 games and lost fewer than 100. He led the 1973 St. Louis Browns softball team to World Series against Montreal and then played the next six seasons for a team out of Springfield, leading the club to five ASA national tournaments, including three third-place finishes.

“He is the most dominating pitcher I’ve seen in the state of Missouri, and not only Missouri but the entire United States,” said Bonus Frost, a Missouri Sports Hall of Fame inductee in 2014 for his softball prowess. “If this were basketball, you’d have a better shot at making a half-court shot. You weren’t getting a hit.”

Burlison was a seven-time ASA All-American National Team selection and the 1969 and 1971 MVP of the ASA National Tour. He was named one of the top fast-pitch pitchers of all time in 1997, with his induction into the ASA Hall of Fame. Burlison also is a member of the Missouri ASA Hall of Fame, the Springfield ASA Hall of Fame and the Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame.

“When he joined us in 1974 (in Springfield), we would play the very best teams we could schedule every year, whether we had to travel to Canada, California, anywhere,” Frost said. “We were good without him before he came along. But when he came along, we were 100 percent better.”

Burlison, an Arkansas native, took the scenic route to Missouri, so to speak.

Out of high school in Dixon, Calif., he joined the U.S. Navy and pitched on an intramural team out of Guam. For many, the anonymity of such a team and any success might have been fun enough.

Not for Burlison. He forged ahead. The team won the All-Navy trophy, and the success enhanced his transfer to San Diego, where his new team won the All-Services trophy before Burlison was selected for the All-Navy team, which played 140 games a season.

In 1969, he joined a civilian team out of California, earning MVP of a national tournament. A year later, he was working for a Chicago company, joined a new team and took it to nationals. The club placed third a year later, when he was named MVP.

Transferred within his company to St. Louis, Burlison naturally migrated to nearby softball fields.

“The level of softball back then was impressive,” Burlison said. “It had many Class A and Double-A (professional baseball) players that had been dinged up a little bit and couldn’t go on with their careers. It was the toughest of the tough. If you won it, you earned it.”

The competition piqued the interest of the cities that housed the teams. Springfield embodied them.

Many of Burlison and Frost’s teams drew a couple of thousand a game. The pinnacle was in 1978 when Springfield hosted the ASA national tournament. One game drew an estimated 10,000.

“It was unreal,” Burlison said. “Many times, we had our backs against the wall. The guys gave everything they had and would never give up. They played until the game was over.”

“Out of Springfield, we’d go to Iowa, Illinois, Jefferson City, St. Louis and Vancouver, California,” Burlison added.” We’d play out in Seattle, and wherever the national tournament was being held, we’d go there. We played 80 games a year. It was very much like the minor leagues.”

These days, Burlison is retired and living in Sherwood, Ark. He and his wife, Linda, are parents to Kevin, Brent, Shannon and Aaron as well as three grandchildren, including Halley Gamewell. Burlison also heads the Arkansas Fast-Pitch Academy, teaching the game to teen softball players.

Frost still marvels at his friend’s career.

“In 1997, when he was inducted in Oklahoma City (in the ASA Hall of Fame), he was recalled as one of the top five fast-pitch pitchers of all time,” Frost said. “And that’s saying something.”