Three Area Softball Standouts Will Be Inducted Into Hall of Fame This Weekend

(KNSI) – Three St. Cloud area players will receive the highest honor in Minnesota softball Saturday.

The Minnesota Sports Federation will induct Bob Zwick, Gary McCarney, and Gary Tripp into its Softball Hall of Fame at the Holmes Theater in Detroit Lakes. McCarney spoke with KNSI News about getting started 56 years ago by stepping up to the plate for an area church team.

He says, “A distraught high school classmate called me. So, his Bethlehem Lutheran softball team did not have people showing up for games. He said, ‘We need help.’ And I said, ‘But I’m Catholic.’ So for that third game, we had five Catholics, an Episcopalian, a Jew and an atheist, and two Lutherans.”

McCarney has been a player, manager, umpire, district commissioner, and MSF board member at various points throughout his amateur career. In 1994, McCarney’s team finished fourth in the Class A 35+ national tournament.

McCarney has the highest praise for the other local standouts, Bob Zwick and Gary Tripp. “I tried to wrap my head around Bob Zwick’s achievements. He’s the winning pitcher in over 1,000 slowpitch softball games. Gary Tripp for 30 years was one of the finest shortstops. He was just a lethal leadoff hitter. His lifetime batting average was around .667.”

McCarney says over the years he has played against the two. They have been teammates together at other times. McCarney jokes that he prefers to share a dugout with them.

McCarney says locally that slow-pitch softball is still going strong, particularly in Sauk Rapids. Overall, though, the game is losing players. McCarney says his own story holds some hope, though. Before getting that fateful call from a friend to suit up for the Bethlehem Lutheran Church team, he says he had never given the game a ton of thought.

From humble beginnings, it has turned into a lifetime of memories for McCarney.

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