Today we’ve got a curious tale to share... part sport, part history, and part heart. It begins, as so many good stories do, with a wartime memory.
My 92-year-old Mum still remembers the first time she tasted ice cream... proper American ice cream... during World War II. The Yanks had arrived in droves, bringing chocolate, charm, jitterbug records, and a strange new summer game called softball.
That’s where this story begins: in the swirl of war, sport, and shifting summer traditions. One side of the Tasman would fall in love with softball. The other already had a national romance... in whites, with an Australian National hero..... Don Bradman. But Mum's brother, Uncle Pete, fell in love with softball.
Last night, I rewatched The Battered Bastards of Baseball, a fantastic Netflix doco about a ragtag baseball team in 1970s Oregon... the Portland Mavericks. No big-league contracts, no corporate control, just a bunch of outcasts playing their hearts out. It was gritty, funny, and full of rebellion.
That spirit reminded me of something… and it got me digging into how softball landed in New Zealand and why Australia, well, gave it a bit of a swerve. But before we head down the road to softball, a quick story about the Portland Mavericks and then back to softball....
In the early 1970s, after Portland, Oregon lost its minor league team, Bing Russell, a lifelong baseball lover and former actor (notably in Bonanza), stepped in to form an independent team: the Portland Mavericks. In 1973, without any ties to Major League Baseball (MLB), Bing defied the traditional baseball system by creating a team that welcomed outcasts, has-beens, and dreamers.
At a time when all minor league teams were affiliated with MLB franchises, Bing’s Mavericks were completely unaffiliated - a bold, almost unthinkable move. Instead of scouts and contracts, Bing held open tryouts, attracting hundreds of hopefuls who had been discarded by the system. He emphasised fun, integrity, and love of the game over profit or control. The Mavericks played hard, had swagger, and connected with the community. Bing refused sponsorships, avoided corporate branding, and even made players’ contracts more generous than the majors often did. Despite being a ragtag bunch, the Mavericks became wildly popular and successful, setting minor league attendance records and embarrassing MLB teams. Bing’s son, Kurt Russell (yes, the actor), played for the team and later co-produced a documentary about it. In 1977, MLB wanted back into Portland. To reclaim the territory, they had to buy Bing out. He didn’t go quietly: he demanded and received a record payout for a minor league territory ($206,000 at the time).
The Mavericks weren’t just a quirky team... they symbolised freedom, defiance, and heart in a sport that had become rigid and corporate. Their story lives on in the brilliant 2014 documentary “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” on Netflix, which has helped cement their cult legacy.
It’s a feel-good, underdog tale where passion trumps power, and joy beats politics...a love letter to baseball at its most human. Please watch it because it really matters in the scheme of things. Fun. The joy of the game.
Now, back to my original story.
Softball’s origin is something I never expected. On Thanksgiving Day 1887, stuck indoors by a freezing Chicago wind, young men awaiting the Yale–Harvard football score rolled up a boxing glove, tied it with string, and swatted it around the Farragut Boat Club with a broom handle. They chalked bases on the floorboards and called their improvised pastime “indoor baseball.”
Over the next forty years that winter diversion evolved - larger ball, shorter basepaths, underarm “windmill” pitching - into a recognised sport. By the 1930s, softball was woven into American schoolyards, factory leagues, and, crucially, military recreation manuals. It travelled light: one rubber‑centre ball, one bat, four canvas bases...sport in a duffel bag.
When the United States entered World War II, more than 100,000 American servicemen spent staging time in New Zealand between 1942 and 1944. They built PX stores, danced at town halls and filled idle hours with softball on makeshift diamonds from Auckland Domain to Wellington’s Hutt Park.
" I can remember American soldiers everywhere.... and then the most exciting thing about them was they must have organized an Ice cream shop in Newmarket . Newmarket was a rather nice suburb of Auckland about a mile or so by tram from the main Queen street. It was a very fancy shop and everyone would actually travel to it to buy an American Ice Cream. We kids thought it was marvellous. - Redhead "
Incidentally, The ice cream shop she recalls in Newmarket, Auckland, was the New American Milk Bar, established in 1942 by dairy farmer Christopher Montague Peck. Located at the corner of Teed Street and Broadway, this American-style ice cream parlour was created to serve U.S. servicemen stationed in New Zealand during World War II, offering them a taste of home. Peck utilised surplus milk and cream from his South Auckland dairy supply to produce ice cream, securing contracts to supply both Pan American Airways and American troops. The milk bar became a popular spot for locals as well, introducing many New Zealanders to American-style ice cream for the first time. ( I feel an article coming on.... )
After the war, the New American Milk Bar continued operating as a small family business, eventually evolving into the New American Ice Cream brand. It remained a beloved part of Auckland's dessert scene for decades, remembered fondly by many who experienced their first ice cream there.
US Marines marching through Auckland, New Zealand, 1943
Having had our ice cream, it is back to softball.
Kiwi spectators were intrigued. Cricket...summer’s established game...was prestigious but slow, and wartime rationing squeezed equipment supplies. Softball, by contrast, was quick to learn, inexpensive, and inclusive; women’s factory teams formed within months. Māori communities, already strong in rugby, embraced the pace and togetherness of the diamond. When the GIs shipped out, they left hundreds of gloves and a seed that sprouted into local clubs like Poneke Kilbirnie and Ramblers. By 1946, New Zealand Softball Association boasted fourteen provincial affiliates.
A Saturday tournament could host dads pitching, mums catching, teenagers patrolling the outfield, and toddlers chasing foul balls. The game’s smaller field slipped easily onto school grounds and empty paddocks. It was a summer complement... not competing with...winter rugby.
By the 1960s Kiwi men were upsetting visiting U.S. military sides. In 1976 the Black Sox won their first Men’s World Championship; they have lifted the trophy seven times since. Success validated affection, cementing softball as New Zealand’s diamond game.
Across the Tasman, a different sporting ecology reigned. Cricket was not merely popular; it was mythic, personified by Sir Donald Bradman, whose wartime‑era batting average of 99.94 still induces awe. Bradman’s legend colonised the Australian summer: schoolyards echoed with backyard Tests, newspapers dedicated inches to Sheffield Shield intrigue, and the Australian psyche measured resilience by long afternoons at the crease.
In such light, softball struggled to cast a shadow. American troops stationed in Queensland did introduce the game, and women’s school competitions flourished. Yet every January the nation turned its gaze to the SCG or MCG, not to suburban softball diamonds. Resources, media coverage, and hero‑making machinery were already pledged to cricket (and to Australian Rules or rugby league in winter). Bradman didn’t personally veto softball; his towering legacy simply left no cultural oxygen for an upstart cousin.
We may be cousins, but isn’t it striking to remember that in the 1960s, “overseas” truly felt like a foreign land? What’s now an easy three- or four-hour hop across the ditch was, back then, a journey into the unknown. We were distant cousins in every sense - separated not just by ocean, but by culture, pace, and summer traditions.
Have things changed?
Yes.
The world has opened up - flights are faster, screens are smaller, and borders feel thinner. But with that openness has come a kind of exposure. Not everyone who arrives now brings goodwill or a desire to connect. It’s hard not to feel a quiet longing for the time when visitors brought jukeboxes, gloves, and jitterbug records - not suspicion, resentment, or ideologies at odds with our way of life.
The summer of 1942 had its own shadows, but it was, in many ways, a gentler kind of invasion... one marked by laughter, curiosity, and the simple joy of sharing a game in the sun.
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