SHOTS

Welcome visitor to the Hotshots softball team's homepage, introducing Hotshots Part Deux!

Here you can find out about the league we play in, who we are, where we play, how we've done in the last few seasons and what we look like.

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The Publishers' Softball League

The Hotshots team was formed to compete in this London-based league for employees of book, journal, newspaper and magazine publishers. For the 1999 season, the League consists of three divisions of teams and promotion and relegation between them happened at the end of last season, much like in the UK football league.

Matches are played in public parks on pre-booked pitches across the city, on weekdays from May to August. The teams in each division play each other throughout the season to determine promotions and relegations for the next season. The divisional structure of the League has varied considerably over the last few years depending on how many teams want to take part. It also changes when teams like us refuse to be promoted to the first division because they take it a bit too seriously for our liking!

As well as intradivisional matches, there are also some one-day tournaments and a knockout tournament for the second and third divisions that runs throughout the season. More on these elsewhere.

The PSL's rules for playing softball have one or two restrictions, such as the fact that all teams must be mixed and the League requires a minimum of five female players per team, per game. From 1999, all teams will be required to have two male and two female outfielders to conform with the ASA's rules.

Some team history

The Hodder Hotshots team, as it was in the early days, started up in about 1991. A lot of the parent company, Hodder and Stoughton, was based in Sevenoaks, some 30 miles south of London. The main aim back then, it seems, was to have a good night out in Town, drink barrel-loads of beer and pull women (so I've been told), rather than to win games. What the female members of the team got up to, I don't know, but major league success wasn't forthcoming. When Hodder and Stoughton merged with Headline in 1993, funding for the team dried up and the Hodder part of the name was dropped as Hodder Headline Hotshots was felt to be too much of a mouthful.

The leaner, meaner Hotshots had matured into a more serious-minded affair by 1995 when we were in division 2. We only won just over half our matches that season. Despite this, we were offered the chance of promotion, but refused on the grounds that we'd be depressingly outclassed in division 1. The following season we had some financial support from the company and we came third in our division overall after it had been split into divisions 2a and 2b (we weren't the only ones who refused promotion!). In 1997, there were four smaller divisions to allow for several new teams joining the league and we ended up in division 3 along with many of the teams we'd played the season before. We won all our matches and came top. For 1998, we were back in the second division again, having been promoted, and came third overall.

Consequently, we reached the dizzy heights of division 1 for the first time ever in 1999. We had new team shirts printed with a redesigned logo and invested in some smart new equipment to fit ourselves for our first season playing with the big boys (and girls). We had full funding from Hodder Headline again and reinstated the 'Hodder' part of our name, so are Hodder Hotshots once again. We'd like to give a big thank-you to the company for their support!

Of course we enjoy it when we win, but we play softball as much for the social side of it as the sporting side, and there's nothing we like better than a nice pint in the pub after charging around a park in the sunshine...

Steve and Damian know what softball's all about.

The Hotshots now

The current team consists of a motley bunch of employees of Hodder Headline, ex-employees, their other halves, friends and siblings. We've got a committed core team of regulars who turn up to most games, and a sizeable group of other people who come when they feel like it/are able/can be bothered. The regulars usually end up in pretty much the same place in the fielding arrangement and the irregulars tend to slot in wherever they're needed.

If you want to find out a bit more about us individually, you can meet the Hotshots. To see some really silly stuff about us, check out the Hotshots Hot Shots pages, our photo archive dating back to 1995. You can also read the full match reports from our triumphal, division-winning, no-losses 1997 season and find out how we did in the 1998 season, including seeing pictures of our end-of-season awards ceremony.

The 1999 season is over and done with; see the fixtures, results and match reports from a very up and down season. We finished joint third in the first division (actually fourth on run difference) which is better than we'd hoped considering that we only won half our games. We fielded a full team for both the PSL Cup and PSL Shield competitions for the first time and there are some pictures from the Cup tournament taken from our very own Tricky Dicky's digital video camera.

For the 2000 season, not only are the Hotshots back in division 1 but we also have a brand new, all-Hodder-employees team competing in division 3 called Hotshots Part Deux and very keen they all are too.

True to the generally light-hearted nature of this website, there is also a Pseud's Korner of the Net's greatest softball wisdom. Or rather, I know a lot of drivel when I see it!

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