Notebook / Ray Ripton : If It’s Sunday Morning, That Means Play Ball at West Hollywood Park

The players may come and go, but the Sunday morning softball game at West Hollywood Park seems to go on forever. Mostly, however, the players stay--at least until they go on to that big game in the sky.

Leo Kagan, 71, a windmill-delivery pitcher, came late to the game, becoming a Sunday regular about six years ago. But he said that the game originated about 40 years ago as a pick-up contest at La Cienega Park in Beverly Hills.

He said that the game moved to West Hollywood after the original site was modified to accommodate youth baseball and soccer.

Kagan, marketing director for an automotive business, said that he believes one of the founders of the game was “Slapsie Maxey” Rosenbloom, 1930-34 light-heavyweight boxing champion of the world. After he got out of boxing, Rosenbloom became a movie character actor.

No actors play these days, he said, but Johnny Berardino, the former major league infielder who became a resident actor on the television soap opera, “General Hospital,” used to be a regular.

Players now are mostly attorneys and businessmen who get together every Sunday morning and do what they used to do when they were much younger: choose up sides.

The weekly get-together used to consist of two seven-inning games played back-to-back, but Kagan said it eventually turned into one 10-inning game played by 10-man teams.

He took great pride in pointing out that, though many of the players are middle-aged or elderly, they don’t demean themselves by playing slow-pitch softball. In slow-pitch, the pitcher serves up a ball the size of a small pumpkin in a high arc to hitters, who often are able to clobber it.

The West Hollywood game is either fast-pitch or modified fast-pitch (almost as fast). And it isn’t easy to come by a hit.

The game has gone on so long that seven father-son combinations are now competing. The toddlers who used to tag along while their fathers played are now part of the game.

The father-son duos include Bob Kaye and Ken, Norton Kirschbaum and Ken, Joe Orloff and Mike, Dennis Slee and Chad, Bill Stanley and Richard, and Marty Weinstein and Brian.

But Lou Lutz leads all the others in maintaining the game as a family tradition. He has two sons who play: Mike and Darryl.