To say that Joan Joyce was the greatest softball player ever and a conqueror of MLB legends is probably an understatement. She was also one of the best golfers -- competing on the LPGA tour for 19 years. She had a career low score of 66, drove it 30 yards longer than most of her opponents and holds the Guinness record for fewest putts in a PGA or LPGA round with a minuscule She was a player-coach and all-east regional player in the United States Volleyball Association.
She took her team to four National Tournament appearances. She was hired to be a professional bowler, she was a runner-up in ABC's Superstars tennis competition, she has more than wins as a coach at FAU. She's a living, breathing tall tale of the sports world. She joined the professional, Connecticut-based Raybestos Brakettes team at the age of She traveled the country, compiling a ridiculous record and.
Her famed slingshot windup helped her throw no-hitters and 50 perfect games. She routinely led the league with a. She went on to explain that she was involved in a study at USC where a graduate student took a bunch of pitchers from the Pacific Coast League and attempted to measure their speeds using various throwing techniques and stop watches.
Her father was a baseball player and coach for local teams, and Joyce and her brother tagged along to the ball fields. Naturally athletic, she showed an interest and aptitude for the game. With her family's encouragement, Joyce began practicing softball by throwing against a home-made target. She yielded only earned runs in games for an earned run average of 0. Her highest batting average was. In , a year before retiring from amateur competition, Joyce added to her legendary career by hurling the USA team represented by the Brakettes to the ISF world championship.
It was the first time the United States won the gold medal. Joyce was undefeated in five games. She pitched 36 consecutive scoreless innings with two perfect games, one no-hitter and two one-hitters.
Her earned run average was 0. While she was unbeatable on the mound, Joyce also was among the best offensively, batting. The league lasted until She was a member of 12 national championship teams. Her parents, Joe and Jean, worked at factories in town and had overlapping shifts -- with her dad often at home with the kids during the day.
A talented softball and basketball player, Joe liked to take Joan and younger brother Joe Jr. Their dad also brought them to many of his own games. They were always the first to run on the court after a basketball contest to scoop up the ball and shoot it around, or the first to run onto the softball diamond to play catch after the final out. Joyce quickly displayed natural athletic ability.
She excelled in local recreation leagues from age , dabbling with pitching, even though she had no grasp of the technique and didn't throw fast. But as luck had it, one of the pitchers from her father's team was a mailman named Tony Marinara. During the summer, Joyce would race up the hill to meet him and help deliver the mail on his route, just so he'd have minutes to throw the ball around with her when he reached her house. That was the women's softball team, miles away in Stratford.
Joyce didn't think much about the suggestion at the time, because her thoughts had shifted to baseball and her brother's Little League team. She began by tagging along to his practices, but decided to try out -- and made the squad as a catcher. The ruling stung, but did nothing to douse the fire inside. If anything, it made her more determined. A year later, Joyce, 13, was a high school freshman and soon excelled on an intramural girls' basketball team.
One of the older standouts on the squad, a girl named Bev, asked if she played softball, too. After a game of catch, Bev saw that Joyce had talent and said, "You need to come down and try out for the Brakettes. That made two people who'd mentioned the Brakettes. This time, Joyce listened, because Bev was a member of the team herself.
Raybestos was a big brake liner company that sponsored men's and women's softball teams. Both were the best in Connecticut and perennially among the top teams in the country. Joyce tried out as a second baseman and outfielder -- and made it. That was the easy part. The challenge was convincing her mother to let her play, and she succeeded only when Bev's family agreed to drive her to and from practices and games. She started playing at age 14 and never looked back.
Though she didn't pitch that first season, Joyce gradually got her chances. And I didn't like it. But she stuck with it, throwing batting practice and getting sent in for mop-up duty in blowout wins. By the time she was 16, she was a starter for the powerhouse team, going But the turning point came a year later in , when she was on the Raybestos field one day, preparing for the new season.
And I was pitching down below. He hollered down to me, 'Have you ever tried to throw slingshot? He came down off the ladder and showed me how to do it.
The man was Cannonball Baker, a standout softball pitcher and future member of the Connecticut Hall of Fame, and he knew a few things about pitching motions. Unlike the over-the-top windmill style, the slingshot delivery started with Joyce's right hand outstretched high behind her, then whipping the ball with a hard flick as it crossed her hip. Baker gave her a minute lesson, and told her he thought she'd get better velocity with the slingshot.
I might as well try this. I stayed with that motion -- and it was the whole difference in my career. Later in that '58 season, Joyce pitched in her first national tournament with the Brakettes, and threw a no-hitter.
Her prowess with the slingshot soon made her the dominant pitcher on the scene.
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