As you amble on over to Caswell Park this week to witness the North American Fastpitch Association national tournament, pay special attention to the pitchers.

Pitching is the crucial element that makes fastpitch softball the exciting, fast-paced game that it is. The 2008 World Series began Thursday in North Mankato, and it continues through Aug. 24. As the tournament brackets get higher, the riseballs, dropballs and curves get even more explosive.

As one who has played fastpitch since high school and still tries to stay relevant at 51, I love what Twin Cities sports columnist Pat Reusse wrote about the game many years ago. Yes, I saved the clipping.

Reusse quoted an Indiana softball official who explained fastpitch’s well-documented shrinking numbers. “A lot of baseball players go into softball when they are done playing in college,” said the man. “They might have hit .300 in baseball. So, they have a choice: They can hit .600 in a slowpitch league and never strike out, or they can play fastpitch, hit .150 and strike out twice a night.”

The promise of low batting averages isn’t the only reason many would-be fastpitchers opt for slowpitch — or golf. Good young hurlers are hard to find, and there’s not enough of them to replace the veterans who are retiring. Young athletes who might become fastpitch players are often led away from the sport by high school baseball coaches who opine that fastpitch is for girls and baseball for boys.

And yet, throughout the decades I have yet to find a baseball player who hasn’t enjoyed fastpitch softball when they’ve tried it. In fact, I’ve known many ballplayers who prefer it to the slower-paced and often pitching-poor amateur baseball played in some corners of Minnesota.

Fastpitch pitchers vary in style, speed and ball movement. The best ones are hard to forget.

Lew Heller is one of the veteran warriors, a hard-throwing righthander in his 50s who last year helped pitch Odin to a second-place A-major finish in Des Moines, Iowa. Shrugging off the infirmities of age, he throws a hard and heavy ball that drops inside and low to exasperated right-handed hitters, then he dares them to catch up to risers thrown high in the zone.

Many remember the wizardry of Leigh Hohenstein, who won well over 300 games for Lakefield area teams employing an amazing changeup as his signature pitch. It’s a pitch Johan Santana would die for, starting above the strike zone before diving down and away, disintegrating like a weakly-packed snowball.

They represent the present and former stars of fastpitch, men who rarely see headlines but are known and respected far and wide by their peers.

So do attend the World Series this week. And marvel at the pitching artistry of today’s best competitors.

(And now that this column is over, a personal aside. I’ll be playing in the AA portion of the tournament beginning Thursday and, pitchers, if you appreciate my effusive praise for your talents, please, don’t thank me. Just ... well ... you know ... when you see me in the batters box, if you could just ... well ... groove one.)

Doug Wolter is night news editor at The Free Press. Contact him at 344-6384 or dwolter@mankatofreepress.com.