From a spring 1976 pickup that started with “geeks” and “goofs” to a memorial game for Jamie Krug, Doc Feeney’s All Stars in L.A. Municipal Softball has stayed together through generations, rules, and grief—still showing up, nearly every Sunday.
On a humid Sunday afternoon at the Sepulveda Basin Sports Complex in Encino. the score was 16-16 heading into the final inning. The Six Pack led no one in this moment—until Aaron Krug. at 36. launched a booming home run in the bottom of the sixth to tie things up. In the dugout. a group of mostly 70-somethings erupted. waving their caps and hollering as if the game had simply restarted from where it mattered.
This wasn’t just another Los Angeles Municipal Softball League matchup. The Feeneys’ jerseys carried black patches embroidered with “JBK” for Jamie Bailey Krug. the first of the original founders to return to “home base in the sky. ” as one player put it. The patch sat on the fabric like a reminder: for the Feeneys. being a Feeney has never really been about sport anyway.
“We’re not a bunch of athletes—we’re a bunch of geeks. ” said Al Michel. the team’s co-founder. current coach and catcher. remembering the early days when the group was overflowing with “geeks. ” “nerds” and “goofs.” Michel said the team originally leaned into a humor-magazine sensibility. tied to National Lampoon’s “Doc Feeney’s Scrapbook of Sports Oddities. ” including outfielders making catches 40 feet in the air and a supposed guide for swimmers on proper drowning maneuvers. When it came time to name the team, Michel said he and the others decided: “Sports oddities?. I thought, well, that’s not going to work… Let’s go with ‘All Stars.’”.
In the spring of 1976, Doc Feeney’s All Stars was born.
Fifty years and thousands of runs later, six of the original players still take to the diamond nearly every Sunday. If out-of-towners are visiting, the older timers’ ranks swell by a few more.
Richie Greenberg, 72, who has been a second baseman and another Feeney progenitor, said Jamie Krug taught him what a best friend was.
“Jamie taught me what a best friend was,” Greenberg said. “I never knew a best friend was someone you’d never get tired of, or never stopped missing.”
That kind of missing is the quiet force behind the noise that fills the ballpark every week.
In the All Stars’ story. “Every city in this country has a group of morons who get together every Sunday and who have done it for a lifetime. ” Greenberg said. “They love each other and love each other’s kids. and who. for some miraculous reason. believe that this will continue with the next generation. We are bound to this thing… It sustains us.”.
The name Doc Feeney’s All Stars is built on jokes, but the loyalty—captured in a black patch on a jersey—has never been a punchline.
The founders’ early seasons weren’t neat or polished, and the league itself became part of the team’s mythology. Michel said the team’s first season was a “resounding success” even with the strikeouts and bobbled catches that followed them from the start.
Michel described a championship game as a kind of lawfare. He noticed that one opposing hitter was using a baseball bat instead of the regulation softball bat with a smaller barrel. Michel said he kept the fact close to his chest until the other team went up in the seventh, the last inning.
“The other team is celebrating, thinking they won the championship, high-fives all around,” Michel said. “We call a time out, point out the bat, and the ump comes over and says, ‘Oh yeah, that’s illegal’… It counts as an out and we win the game.”
Sugerman added, “The only way to win like a Feeney.”
Another Feeney classic came from outfielder Craig Simon, who, knowing he was weak at the plate, intentionally struck out so he could avoid an impending double play, much to the dismay of the opposing team, Greenberg said.
No one expected the Feeneys to keep going for half a century. But the team kept returning in winter and spring, with a rotating cast. Krug, Michel and Greenberg stayed near-constants. Mike Sugerman moved to San Francisco to become an award-winning correspondent on Bay Area radio. but made sure he got a spot when he visited.
Howard Lesner and Matt Kaplan became regulars in the 1980s, and other Feeneys faded to time, stuck as memories of whichever decade they called it quits.
Even the league’s rules came to shape the team’s endurance. In L.A. Municipal Softball, there is a grading system to facilitate fair competition. Over the years, the Feeneys oscillated between C and B, with plus-or-minus adjustments depending on how much time had passed since the founding.
Michel said that about a decade ago, after being upgraded, the team was blown out by a B-minus team in its first game after the change. Michel said the elder players’ eyes could no longer keep up with the heat coming off the B-minus bats.
“Couldn’t even see it coming,” Michel said.
Still, numbers didn’t explain why people kept showing up. Kaplan put it plainly between innings as dust from home plate lingered and tears gathered.
“I’ve had a great life and an enjoyable life, but no sense of bond and family,” Kaplan said. “This became my family… This gave me what I was missing.”
As with any long-running community, the Feeney legends can get messy, too. On a recent day outside the Apple Pan burger joint—a Krug favorite—Michel, Greenberg and Sugerman, all nearly halfway into their 70s, argued about Feeney history.
“Who was it that got kicked off the team for being too competitive?” one asked.
“Did he marry the girl in this picture?” another asked.
Someone insisted, “He never hit a home run in his life.”
“There was kind of a jerk,” a claim surfaced.
“You think so? I thought he was nice,” came the reply.
But every detour led back to the same conclusion.
“Who cares, he was a Feeney.”
That answer landed differently in the memorial game for Jamie Krug.
Krug died last May. and the weekend leading up to his death had been filled with plans that never reached Sunday. He had planned to play Sunday after attending his grandson’s musical performance Friday and going out to dinner with his wife. Simone. and friends Saturday. Greenberg said Krug heard the music and enjoyed a “lovely night out. ” but he never made it to Sunday’s game.
The All Stars won, but learned Monday that Krug had gone to sleep and never woken up. Heart complications.
Family and friends remembered Krug as a reliable laugh. a saint of a father. a hell of a second baseman. a competitive but altruistic coach. At his funeral. Greenberg said. almost every speaker called him their “best friend.” Michel said while some wives wouldn’t bother coming to games every Sunday. many children saw the Feeney fathers as proper heroes.
When she turned 14, Krug’s daughter Ali became the first woman to make an appearance as an All Star and broke Municipal League barriers.
“My whole childhood was centered around baseball,” Ali said, recalling playing with her dad. “He’d set up these scenarios that were like, two outs, bottom of the ninth, World Series, bases loaded; he’d hit a huge fly ball and I’d catch it.”
Aaron Krug—the Jamie Krug memorial game’s on-field spark after his home run that tied the score 16-16—joined the team at 14. Aaron said he played alongside his father whenever he wasn’t too busy with his own sports schedule.
“Playing with your dad,” Aaron said. “It’s hard to not get romantic about it.”
Michel’s son, Matt, has sought to modernize the team. He has a score-keeping app now that has proved more reliable than Michel’s antiquated paper method.
“They used to pay me $20 to keep score,” Matt said. “I don’t have to pretend anymore, though.”
In a modern Feeney game, the plan revolves around strategically placing the elders in the batting lineup to avoid having two quick strikeouts or slow runners on base. Lesner said the combined age of every Feeney in the infield could be 350 at any given time.
Even as the team has gotten more competitive under junior Michel’s management, the original “rascal-on-the-field ethos” still prevails.
The memorial game itself carried that tension—especially once the action turned.
Due to sloppy defensive errors from the silver-haired infield, the Feeneys allowed more runs in the top of the seventh. The Six Pack led 18-16.
For the final stretch. Greenberg stepped up to the plate with two outs. grimacing under hazy sunlight while an ankle injury that had plagued him the last couple of weeks bothered him. For the memorial game. the Feeneys had reverted to their old batting order so that after Greenberg. the lineup would be wholly composed of Feeney elders.
For the first time all game, all the players glued their eyes to the plate. Conversations and catch-ups stopped mid-sentence.
Greenberg faced a high-arc pitch that rose above him. He yanked his bat back, striking the ball hard, sending a one-hopper straight toward a third baseman no older than 40. Greenberg made it only about halfway up the basepath.
Out at first. The Jamie Krug memorial game ended in a loss.
But instead of kicking up dust. breaking bats. or throwing fits. the Feeneys coalesced into a green-and-yellow mass behind the dugout. They high-fived. They asked about each other’s families. They went to dote on Ali’s 1-year-old daughter. Krug’s granddaughter Eloise. who wore a shirt that traveled “traversed 50 years of family and friendship. ” reading “Littlest Feeney.”.
The game ended. The bond didn’t.
L.A. Municipal Softball Doc Feeney's All Stars Jamie Krug Richie Greenberg Al Michel Aaron Krug Ali Krug Encino Sepulveda Basin Sports Complex Matt Michel