United Professional Softball League (1981)
Tombstone
Born: March 18, 1981 – UPSL expansion franchise
Folded: Postseason 1981
First Game: May 17, 1981 (L 4-1, L 8-5 @ Rochester Express)
Last Game:
UPSL Championships: None
Stadium
Marketing
Team Colors:
Cheerleaders: The Saltshakers
Ownership
Owners: A.J. Kalil, Peter Silvanic & G.A. Saumell
Background
The Syracuse Salts were a brief attempt to field a men’s professional softball team in upstate New York in the summer of 1981. Owner A.J. Kalil and his partners paid $25,000 to place an expansion franchise in the United Professional Softball League that spring. As things turned out they were comically overmatched. The Salts played a 60-game schedule, which consisted of 15 home doubleheaders and 15 road doubleheaders. The team finished the season with 4 wins and 52 losses.
The Salts’ lineup included outfielder Ed Ricks, who was a 6th round draft pick of the New York Yankees as a pitcher in 1972. Ricks made it onto the Yankees Major League roster in September 1977 but never appeared in a Major League game. He would later pitch in the Senior Professional Baseball Association for retired ballplayers in 1989-90.
Home games were played at Hopkins Road Field in Liverpool, New York.
The club mercifully folded at the end of the 1981 season. The United Professional Softball League followed Syracuse into oblivion one year later.
Trivia
The Salts had a cheerleading squad known as the “Saltshakers”.
Links
Men’s Professional Softball Media Guides
Men’s Professional Softball Programs
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4 Responses
One thing that didn’t help the team is that they had only one pitcher listed on the roster: a guy named Rooster Russo. *One* pitcher? No wonder the Salts got battered. (Heh.)
Apparently Russo is now into competitive eating: http://southwhitehall.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/prepares-for-the-wing-bowl
That’s not the same guy as the one who played for the Salts. The Salts pitcher was Gary Russo…also nicknamed Rooster.
This is why I love the internet: someone responds to me five years later, and I respond to him three years after that!
Oh, and what I should’ve said was that the Salts got *peppered*, not battered. (Ah, skip it.)
Salt production has been a major industry in Syracuse for several centuries, hence the adoption of “Salts” as the team’s nickname.