WATERLOO - Jim Ciesielski always wanted the call on the black.

We followed a pattern, week after week during those summers years ago. Early in the morning, the phone would ring. Ciesielski was on the other end, and he'd give me the linescore on his latest fastpitch softball game.

Invariably, at the end of the conversation, Ciesielski would ask a question. Every time.

"Can we get black print on this one?" he'd say.

It was Ciesielski's way of requesting a story as opposed to a small item in The Courier's scoreboard section. A few times, he got his wish. More frequently, he struck out. But he always wanted the call. He wanted the black.

"We had some conversations, didn't we?" said Ciesielski, laughing. "You were the only guy who would listen to me."

I don't know about that. I do know this: Maybe it's a few years late, and maybe it's not enough, given the role Ciesielski played in softball in the Cedar Valley and the country as a whole. But here it is - black print, or what passes for it in the 21st century.

I turned the tables on Ciesielski this time. I called him. Why? For one, I hadn't heard from him in years, quite possibly since 1993, when he decided to fold his last fastpitch team, Kent Feeds. Did he have any connection to the game at all at the age of 70? And where did he think fastpitch stood now?

Ciesielski, of course, doesn't play. Golf, and more golf, occupies a lot of his time. For a while, he dabbled in auto racing.

But softball is still there for Ciesielski. Tiger Woods will take up badminton before Ciesielski gives up fastpitch. He still cares, just as he cared for 28 years as a player and manager. He was a man who guided local teams to national prominence, who made the Iowa Amateur Softball Association Hall of Fame in 1993.

And, he was the guy who fought, and fought, and fought to keep fastpitch alive, even when people in the media told him his sport was dead in the 1970s.

"We kept it going for over 20 years," said Ciesielski, laughing. "I felt like I accomplished something."

Eventually, though, Ciesielski couldn't find a sponsor. The end of the road came. Sixteen years ago, he decided if he couldn't do it the right way, with the resources to compete at a world class level, he wouldn't do it all.

"It hurt," he said of that decision to hang it up. "I would have kept going, but we lost the sponsorship. It takes money to do it. That's the only reason. I'd probably still be doing it if I had a sponsor. But we're talking a lot of bucks - $40,000 or $50,000 a year. It's not there."

When there's a big fastpitch game on a diamond, Ciesielski is there. This August, he'll be in Moline, Ill., watching the International Softball Congress World Fastpitch Tournament.

"If you want to see the good stuff, that's the place to be," said Ciesielski. "I sort of keep up with things. I see what's going on."

There's just one problem, Ciesielski said. There isn't as much to see anymore. The reason? The same one that knocked Ciesielski out of an active role in fastpitch - money.

Softball has been hit hard by the recession. The ISC tournament field consists of 24 teams this year, down from 40.

"It's really hit the low spot," said Ciesielski of fastpitch. "There aren't that many teams around anymore. … It's really taken a nosedive. There's not much in Iowa. I think there are only three open teams."

More and more, fastpitch has become an international sport played by men from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Argentina and so on. Locally? Ciesielski has yet to be approached about jump-starting fastpitch and fielding a team that could compete against the best in the world.

"Nobody has contacted me for any advice," he said. "I would even get halfway involved with it. I don't see it happening, but we'd love it - love it - if it did."

And so it went. Over my years here, I've heard many voices - angry, happy, satisfied, passionate, disinterested. Ciesielski's lingered because he cared, and cared a lot, about his sports. Good games or bad times, he loved what he did.

And that alone is worth a little black print.