Karl Petty: Founder of EECS Softball

Karl Petty

Occasionally in life you come across someone whose selfless devotion to his fellow man is eclipsed only by his innate modesty and engaging personality. Actually, Karl isn't that someone. However, Karl IS solely responsible for the herculean effort necessary in creating the EECS Graduate Student Softball League. Karl coordinated the formation of teams, generated a season schedule, reserved the softball field (using his own money until he was eventually reimbursed), organized and chaired Captain's meetings, helped generate what must be the most complicated set of softball rules in existence, made certain an umpire was present for every game, brought softball equipment (bats, balls, markerboard, 'Barry line') every evening, kept scores, statistics, and photos of the teams on the softball web page, and held a softball picnic for the players after every season for three years. All this was performed with a sense of professionalism akin to the major leagues. As a reward for his efforts, Karl was hounded by special interest groups, accosted by the police, and threatened with litigation. We'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you, Karl, for everything, and that you'll be missed (partly because we now have to do the work ourselves).