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The Pekin Lettes is a fast-pitch softball team in Pekin, Illinois, and is the oldest member-sanctioned Amateur Softball Association team in the United States.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2009) |
The Pekin Lettes is a fast-pitch softball team in Pekin, Illinois, and is the oldest member-sanctioned Amateur Softball Association team in the United States.
The Lettes were started in 1936 and were then called the "Caterpillar Girls" because the team was sponsored by and composed of women from Caterpillar Tractor Company in nearby East Peoria. Caterpillar sponsored the team from 1936 until 1955. [1] [2] They became the Caterpillar Dieselettes in 1940, the Sunnyland Lettes in 1956, [3] and the Pekin Lettes in 1959. Chuck McCord managed the team from 1947 and brought the team to Pekin. [4]
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the Lettes average attendance-per-season was over 100,000, with thousands of spectators attending each game. The 1963 season averaged over 5,000 fans per game, setting a national ASA attendance record of 122,000 for 21 home games. In 2005, the Pekin Lettes team was inducted into the ASA Hall of Fame.
The Lettes play home games at Pekin's Mineral Springs Park. The Pekin Park District renamed "Diamond 1", the historic playing field of the Lettes, "Lettes Field" in 2002. [5]
On June 25, 2008, Pekin mayor Dave Tebben named it "Pekin Lettes Day" for 50 continuous years of softball. [4] A five-day celebration included the current Lettes team versus former players at Lettes Field in Mineral Springs Park. [4]
The Caterpillar Visitors Center hosted a public exhibit from April to October 2015, featuring artifacts such as a signed softball from the 1946 state championship, team jacket and uniform, team pictures, and other mementos. [6] [20] [21]
Pekin is a city in and the county seat of Tazewell County in the U.S. state of Illinois. Located on the Illinois River, Pekin is the largest city of Tazewell County and the second most populous municipality of the Peoria metropolitan area, after Peoria itself. As of the 2020 census, its population is 31,731. A small portion of the city limits extend into Peoria County. It is a suburb of Peoria and is part of the Peoria Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Peoria is a city in and county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, United States. Located on the Illinois River, the city had a population of 113,150 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Peoria metropolitan area in Central Illinois, consisting of the counties of Fulton, Marshall, Peoria, Stark, Tazewell, and Woodford, which had a population of 402,391 in 2020.
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Eugene "Squeaky" Melchiorre was an American basketball player. A point guard, he was drafted by the Baltimore Bullets and was the first overall pick in the 1951 NBA draft. Melchiorre never played an NBA game due to his lifetime ban from the league for point shaving when he was a college player.
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Ronald Yngve Bontemps was an American basketball player who competed in the 1952 Summer Olympics. He was born in Taylorville, Illinois, and attended Beloit College. He was a captain of the United States men's basketball team, which won the gold medal in the 1952 Olympic Games. He played in all eight games. Bontemps died on May 13, 2017, in Peoria, Illinois, aged 90.
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Delbert Ray Chandler was the founder of the Carolina Cardinals, a girls' softball program from North Carolina. Ray Chandler was known as the "Father of Fastpitch" and was instrumental in helping 100 of his former softball players sign college scholarships.
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Melinda Fischer is a retired softball and basketball coach who was active from the 1970s to 2020s. As an AIAW coach, Fischer coached the women's basketball and softball teams at Eastern Illinois University during the 1970s. With Illinois State University, her team reached the second round of the 1981 AIAW National Division I Basketball Championship and the third place game of the 1982 National Women's Invitational Tournament. The following year, her team won the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament and reached the first round of the NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament. In 1985, Fischer's team competed in the first round of the NCAA Division I tournament and she received the Coach of the Year for the Gateway Conference.
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