Bert Smith once told his teammates he visualized a softball hanging on a string every time it left the pitcher’s hand.“It was just like hitting it off a tee,” said Dennis Punch, a former teammate of Smith’s. “He was so focused, he just pictured it hanging there in front of him.”“Fans came to see him,” said Punch. “Wherever we would go, half of them would come because they couldn’t believe some of the statistics he (Smith) put up. And the other half had seen him and came to get on him because he was so good.”Besides being a tense, competitive player, Smith was flamboyant. He would tell you he was good, but he’d back it up.“Nobody could go against his numbers,” said Rick Howard, one of the sons of the team’s former sponsor, Richard Howard. “We probably had eight or ten of the greatest players who played the game over 32 years from the mid-50s to the late 80s. There was no one better in big games.”Those big games were often in the ASA national championships and Smith was outstanding, batting .669 in nine national championships, driving in 160 runs and smashing 74 homers among his 148 hits. He earned All-America honors four times and twice led the national championship in homers with 21 in 1973 and 11 in 1968. Three times on three different teams Smith was named the MVP in the Men’s Slow Pitch National Championship, 1968, 1971 and 1973. He is the only male to accomplish this feat in the history of slow pitch softball. Smith was born March 2, 1945 in Wantagh, Long Island and passed away on February 25, 2012.
