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As summer prepared to fade into fall, the teams in the Indianapolis lawyers’ softball league spread across the diamond one last time Thursday evening to play for the championship trophy.
Four coed teams — B8Zims, Coots Henke, the Pokers and Riley Bennett Egloff — battled in a doubleheader that ended under the lights. The Pokers finished regular league play in first place and captured the bragging rights yesterday when the final out was called. Coots Henke was runner up.
“I loved it,” John McLaughlin, outfielder for the Pokers, said of playing in the league.
The teams have been playing doubleheaders every Thursday since June 2 at the Chuck Klein Softball Complex in Indianapolis. As the season progressed, the number of errors declined as the legal professionals honed their skills in throwing, catching, stealing bases and swinging for the fences.
McLaughlin, partner at Parr Richey Frandsen Patterson Kruse, and his teammate, Lee Christie, partner with Christie Farrell Lee & Bell, encouraged other attorneys to form teams and join the league next year. The time on the field offers the chance to take a break from the normal routine and just concentrate on the ball.
“Work and family are the two most important things in life,” McLaughlin said, “but you have to have something outside of that.”
Pokers coach Robert Ebbs of Glaser & Ebbs was not in the dugout for Thursday’s championship contest; he had already left town with his family on vacation. And on Friday, McLaughlin and Christie — as well as likely many of the other attorneys who played — had put away their bats and gloves and were in their offices serving clients.
Yet McLaughlin was still savoring the victory.
“I know it’s not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things,” he said, “but it’s a big deal to me.”
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