Keith Westergard’s namesake tree no longer in play at Westwood Park

By John Burbridge
sports@charlescitypress.com
CHARLES CITY — Keith Westergard remembers a time when if you swung a big stick in adult softball play it was usually a wooden stick.

“To hit a home run with a wooden bat … you had to really hit it,” Westergard said.

When players began to transition to aluminum bats, Westergard and many of his Colwell Parks teammates were reluctant to change clubs.

They didn’t need to.

Colwell Parks consisted of a crop of power-hitting farmers who could hit the ball a country mile without any synthetic technology.

“There were no home-run limits back then,” Westergard said. “If you wanted to go head-to-head with us, you had to match us. There were no rules in place to help win the game for you.”

Dominant for so long at a local level, Colwell Parks often had to hit the road to seek worthy competition.

“We played in 48 different towns and cities,” Westergard said. “Some places and tournaments wouldn’t allow us back after we won the year before … teams wouldn’t bother to enter if they knew we were coming.

“We took it seriously,” Westergard said. “If we didn’t bring back a trophy, it was a bad weekend for us.”

During its reign, Colwell Parks had more good weekends than bad when considering all the championship hardware the team accumulated. Included are three “Lawler All-Nighter” trophies from an annual tournament played non-stop over a weekend in Lawler.

“For that, a lot of it comes down to the luck of the draw,” Westergard said of the “All-Nighter”. “If you are lucky enough not to draw any night games to where you can get some rest … that helps.”

Westergard played softball for 36 years before a nagging shoulder injury forced him to walk away from the game in 2007.

“It got to the point that whenever I played I would be in so much pain the next day,” Westergard said. “It was hard to give it up, but softball today — with all the game-deciding rules in place — kind of helps me in not missing it too much.”

Though Westergard hasn’t played in 13 years, his legacy managed to stay rooted at Westwood Park in the seasons hence.

“We called it the ‘Westergard Tree’,” said one of Westergard’s Colwell Parks teammates, Tom Brunner, about the gangly maple tree adjacent to the left-field foul pole on Westwood’s East Diamond. “Keith just loved hitting foul balls into this tree, so it didn’t take long for it to be known as the ‘Westergard Tree’.”

And as if to prove the tree’s notoriety, Brunner randomly quizzed numerous players from the Charles City Men’s Softball League of the tree’s name.

“The Westergard Tree.”

“Westergard Tree.”

“The Keith Westergard Tree.”

“That used to be the Westergard Tree.”

The used to be is in reference to the tree no longer standing.

The maple, whose branch growth expanded to a point where it interfered play like a giant Steve Bartman, had succumbed to age and rot and was recently cut down. Only a stump remains.

“A legend is gone,” Brunner lamented.

Though it was nice to have a living landmark bearing his name, Westergard is quick to point out that he wasn’t the best player on Colwell Parks’ all-time roster.

“Ken Squire is probably the best hitter I ever played with,” Westergard said. “And ‘Bowser’ (Brunner) was a heck of a player, too.

“During the 80s, someone actually made a music video about Bowser to the tune of the ‘Devil went down to Georgia’. It was the ‘Legend went down to Westwood’.”

About the time his namesake tree was coming down, Westergard retired as a longtime sales representative for Pioneer, a United States-based seed company.

“They just dropped this off for me today,” Westergard said of the crystal plaque commemorating 25 years of service.

Another memento for the trophy case.