The Decline of the Company Softball Team

The Decline of the Company Softball Team A Former Office Staple Is Losing to 5K Races, Dodge Ball and More Work By RACHEL BACHMAN Updated July 2, 2014 6:01 a.m. ET

Softball gives Patricia Thornton the rare excuse to get out of her Midtown Manhattan office early, where she works into the evening most days "power-lawyering," she says. As she and her colleagues took batting practice and waited for the opposing team to show last Thursday, a tougher opponent loomed one field over: 20-somethings playing kickball.

The New York Corporate Athletic League in which Ms. Thornton plays had about 30 teams in 2008.

Now it has eight.

Summer has long been prime time for company softball leagues. They give workers a chance to relax outside the office, compete together for industry bragging rights and mingle with everyone from top executives to file clerks.

But nationwide, fewer companies are choosing this traditional antidote to office drudgery. Despite its perks of fresh air, good times and an early exit from the office, company softball is an increasingly difficult sell, according to league commissioners and former players. From kickball to distance running, options have exploded as free time has shrunk, they say.

Patricia Thornton, center, and teammate J.C. O'Brien, right, play for the law ďŹ rm Heidell, Pittoni, Murphy& Bach.Brian Harkin for The Wall Street

Journal

Just 12% of U.S. organizations sponsor a company athletic team, down from 29% seven years ago, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. The Amateur Softball Association doesn't track corporate leagues, but says its adult-team registrations in 2013 had dropped 56% in 20 years.

Jon Deutsch's @companysoftball Twitter feed is frozen on July 14, 2010. The coed team of employees from Richmond, Va., marketing firm Royall & Company disbanded after repeated struggles to coax players away from family commitments and other interests, Mr. Deutsch says. A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment.

Graham Maloney is a partner at Greene Radovsky Maloney Share & Hennigh and the longtime commissioner of the San Francisco Lawyers Softball League. Over four decades, the league has helped melt tensions between teams of public defenders and district attorneys, as well as lawyers from competing firms, he says. But after peaking in the mid-1980s with 82 teams, the league is down to 21, despite the city's population of lawyers surging 65% in the same span.

"We all think the current generation of younger lawyers who would have played softball grew up playing soccer and playing less baseball," says Mr. Maloney, who is 65. He says his profession's rising requirements for working hours also make lawyers less inclined to knock off early.

Peter Eisenman of Eisenman Architects says the firm's standing in a softball league featuring prominent New York firms was so important in the 1980s and '90s that the sport "was part of our

hiring process. We wanted the best architects and the best players." He recalled one employee who had played in the Boston Red Sox's minor-league system.

Eisenman hasn't had a team for years. Most of its work is in Europe and the Middle East and its architects are more interested in the World Cup than in softball, Mr. Eisenman says. "I miss it," he says.

Ms. Thornton bats against the ďŹ nancial services ďŹ rm AXA at New York's Randall's Island Park. Brian Harkin for The Wall Street Journal

Ancillary businesses are feeling the pinch. Alex Cosgrave, general manager of the Mad River Bar & Grille near New York's Central Park, says he's seeing fewer company teams coming in after games, and that team captains no longer toss their corporate cards on the bar and spring for the whole tab. As a result, per-player expenditures are about half what they were before the financial crisis, Mr. Cosgrave says.

In recent years, competition has come from so-called sport and social clubs that appeared in the last 10 years in nearly every major and midsize city, offering a range of playground sports like Wiffle ball.

At Richmond's River City Sports & Social Club, the club's mascot is Sudsy, a smiling-faced mug of beer hoisting another mug of beer. Its sales pitch is "a tall order of socializing with a splash of sports," owner Sean Small says. More than 6,000 people register for a River City team each year, mostly as individuals.

Most sport and social clubs offer softball, but without the interpersonal risks of playing on a company team, says Galen Beers, executive director of the Sport and Social Industry Association.

"I think if you're smart, you might think twice about getting too social with your co-workers," Mr. Beers says. "You want to not have to worry about what someone's going to say you did or said at your next company meeting."

Christian Long runs the bases. Brian Harkin for The Wall Street Journal

Some companies are even outsourcing their softball teams to sport and social clubs, or hiring them to organize activities such as volleyball tournaments, says Steve Stoloff, CEO of a San Diego sport and social club called VAVi. At some companies, softball teams have been replaced by broader health and wellness programs that emphasize inclusion, says Jeff Galloway, a 1972 Olympic runner who designed an eight-week fitness program for companies to prepare employees for 5-kilometer races.

"There's no limit on this, and there's a limit to how many people can get involved on one of these [softball] teams," Mr. Galloway says. "There's also a skill threshold that's needed. There's no skill threshold in running and walking."

Industrial softball leagues thrived in the early and mid-20th century as companies sponsored teams that generated publicity and boosted employee morale. As manufacturing jobs ebbed in the 1970s

and '80s, leagues in white-collar fields like architecture and accounting grew. Now they're dwindling, too.

The Bronson Bombers of the now-defunct San Francisco law firm Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon pose for a team photo in 1976. The San Francisco Lawyers Softball League, still run by Graham Maloney, lower left, is down to 21 teams after peaking at 82 teams in the mid-1980s. Sandy Ahrens

The coed team at Verdasys, a Waltham, Mass., software firm, was a big part of the company's culture, employees said. The squad made photo cameos during the CEO's quarterly speeches and even steered Internet traffic: Late last year, Google first suggested "Verdasys softball" when people searched for the company.

But after the 2013 season, the league Verdasys played in folded. The closest comparable league was about an hour away.

Waltham city recreation supervisor Anna Connelly says the longtime corporate league was done in by an increase in work-at-home and flextime employees, younger people's interest in other activities and companies declining sponsorships over worries about worker liability.

Verdasys team manager and team webmaster Andrew Wolan laments the lost camaraderie fostered by softball. "We don't have that connection anymore, that little silly thing you talk about on the side," he says.

The website Mr. Wolan created and stuffed with statistical minutiae ("Rainbows observed: 2") remains a recruiting tool for the expanding company, which has about 150 employees. "I would say

50% of candidates who walk in the door have seen that website and comment on it," Verdasys chief marketing officer Connie Stack says.

Its softball numbers may be down, but the New York Corporate Athletic League, where Ms. Thornton's team plays, isn't going quietly. Its basketball league is thriving. Last year it added Skeeball, kickball, bocce and dodgeball. It promotes them on a separate "Play Big Apple" website with photos of grinning teammates and promises of free beer parties.

"We're diversifying," league commissioner Steve Frenchman says. "It's what the people want."

Write to Rachel Bachman at rachel.bachman@wsj.com Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved