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1940 – 1950
The game: In the 1940s, men's fastpitch softball was nearly as big as baseball in South Bend — a factory sport played at a national level, with the great industrial teams of the Midwest meeting in the ASA national tournament. South Bend's entry was the Bendix Brakes, and for two years they stood at the top of the game.
The title: The ASA's own champions list records it plainly: in 1940 the Bendix Brakes of South Bend were the national runners-up, losing the final to Kodak Park of Rochester; in 1941 the Bendix Brakes were the ASA national champions, beating the Schlitz team of Atlanta in the final. It is a national team championship won by a South Bend factory club, and it stands in the city's record alongside the Blue Sox' titles as the factory game's peak here.
The pitcher: The Brakes' ace was Ike Bierwagen, named the tournament's most valuable player in 1941 in the local accounts. Those accounts credit his 1941 season with ten no-hitters — in one of them he struck out twenty of the twenty-one outs — and an extra-inning marathon in which he struck out fifty-one; on his retirement in 1950 the newspaper clippings put his career at ninety-three no-hitters. The figures are printed as the local record recounts them.
Sources:
- ASA national champions list (Fastpitch West archive) — 1940: champion Kodak Park, Rochester; runner-up Bendix Brakes, South Bend. 1941: champion Bendix Brakes, South Bend; runner-up, Atlanta.
- South Bend local history accounts (Aaron Helman, South Bend News-Times) — Bierwagen's 1941 MVP season, the no-hitter figures as recounted from newspaper clippings, his 1950 retirement.