Tribe Softball

The official begining of The Tribe began with the introduction of the signature lime green back in 2002. I can remember talking with Ty Jones in the off-season about getting lime green shirts. Ty, being the fashion queen that he is, wasn't real keen on the idea, but he produced the first set of lime green uni's for us. Why lime green? No particular reason. I just hate having the same ole uniforms as everyone else. Either gray or some version of blue, maybe red or kelly green. I wanted something different that no one else had. I wanted people to know exactly what team they were playing against or watching when they showed up at the field. The unofficial begining of this team begins back in 80's when Rick Pratt began playing at the Brandywine YMCA on Sunday's with the Sheller Oiler's. The team was sponsored by lefty 1B Bruce Sheller of Sheller Oil, who was also a relative of Rick's wife. Rick asked my father to play on the team, Ron, Sr. and, eventually, in the midst of my college years, he would get me to come join the team bright and early on Sunday mornings - fresh off of a late Saturday night in Millersville. I joined the team in 1995, although I made a few guest appearances here and there starting back in 1992. The mid 90's team eventually was taken over by Rick's future son-in-law Billy Wasko, who was better known in the earlier years as one of "the 4 Woodsmen". Billy, Denny King, Greg and Mike Takach would come strolling out of the woods on the upper field about 45 seconds before game time. Other members of the team included my classmate Bear Stephens, "skinny, black" Mo, big Shawn...Billy got tired of coaching and collecting money and getting sponsors and he was starting to put a family together himself so he gave the book to Bear and the little cub decided to run the team around 1998. Bear brought Jeff Miller, Chucky Brown and Paul Carpenter to the team, (along with those hideous orange with red lettering shirts) and I added another infielder in bringing my Dad's longtime teammate in the Phoenixville league, Steve Forgue. Bear started camping a lot down the shore and he too was starting up a family of his own so the coaching thing was geting a little more difficult to committ to. I had just moved back from living in Reading for 9 months and decided that after only playing about half the season in 1999, that I wanted to play full time again in 2000. When I came back, Bear basically handed the book down to me and said that I was welcome to take over if I wanted to. I gladly accepted, although my Dad warned me of what I was about to get myself into. So I took over in 2000 and mid-way through we wore the navy blue shirts with the Merrill Lynch bulls on them - yeah, I know. Navy blue - plain, but hey, the shirts were free and Jonesy did the numbering pretty cheap so, who cares? I think that was the year we added Adam "Smokey" Miller and Brian Pugh to the team and starting losing "the Woodsmen". Bear still played, however, not as much. Each year we somehow managed to get him enough games to be playoff eligible. Just as Billy, Denny and the boys were parting with the team, Billy mentioned he had a friend that wanted to play so we added Rodney McKee to the mix, Rodney played a couple of years with us in the outfield. Sometimes he was coming off of a double shift over at Lukens. In the playoffs in 2004, Rodney blew out his knee and hasn't made it back to the field since then.