There’s no bond like the bond made on a softball field, particularly when it’s between family.

The Paquette family made that bond during the early 1950s, in the Twin City Merchants Softball League. The team — made up of Edmond Paquette and eight of his sons — stormed through the softball fields of southern Maine.

Though fastpitch softball is often classified as a women’s sport, it became popular among men during World War II in the 1940s. As explained by Armand Paquette, the eldest of the Paquette brothers, the Twin City league began in 1947. At one point, as many as 20 teams were part of the league during its 20-year run.

Softball wasn’t the only family love growing up.

“Some of us played hockey,” Armand said. “In those days, we had pickup teams. Biddeford would pick up a team, we would pick up a team. It wasn’t organized. We played baseball and hockey, volleyball. My father had played baseball, and was a good horseshoe player. We played horsehoes, too.”

The Paquettes entered the softball league in 1949. Edmond and Armand were joined by Armand’s brothers: Rene, Bob, Gerry, John, Tony, Ralph and Lou.

“The name of our team was the ”˜Rocky 9’s,’” Bob said. “There were, I think, 12 teams, and each team had a name. Our name was the Rocky 9’s, because we had eight brothers and a father.”

Armand led the team on the pitcher’s mound. Bob was the catcher, John the first baseman, Ralph the second baseman, Tony the shortstop, Rene the third baseman. Lou patrolled center field, while Gerry played in left and Edmond played in right.

“They were all good players,” Bob said. “Armand and Gerry, they were both good pitchers. Tony played third and shortstop, and boy, he did a good job. We all had a job to do and we played it well. I couldn’t tell you which one was the best.”

As Edmond was the eldest of the group, Armand and his brothers used a special strategy for particular hitters.

“He was older than us,” Armand said. “We put him in right field, and sometimes if we felt there was a left handed hitter, we’d switch one of my brothers, like left field, to right field and send my father to left field.”

Armand may have had the greatest achievement of anyone on the team, as he pitched in the York County championship. In the championship game, he faced off against none other than Art Descoteaux, a Biddeford sports legend. Descoteaux was a three-sport athlete at Biddeford High School, and later coached and served as athletic director at the school. Descoteaux was also an assistant coach at the Univesity of New England for 17 years, and held the scoring record on the men’s basketball team at the former Nasson College in Springvale.

“I pitched four games in one day, that’s a record,” Armand said. “We beat the state champions. We beat Art Descoteaux, he was the state champ the year before. That’s how we beat them, in four games.”

Bob may have had the hardest moment of the team, in a state championship game lost to Portland one year.

“We won here in Biddeford, and we played against Portland,” Bob said. “We were winning the game. The batter from the Portland team hit a fly ball in the infield. If I would have caught the ball, we would have won the ballgame. Nobody hollered, my brothers never said anything to me. I dropped the ball, and we lost the game. If I had caught that, we would have gone on and played in Connecticut. We would have been the State of Maine champs. We played that game over and over again in our heads.”

Despite the loss, the Paquettes did get to use their talents beyond southern Maine.

“We played in Lawrence, Mass., in Lowell [Mass.], we played in Dover, N.H.,” Armand said. “We didn’t lose many games, we won nearly all our games.”

The team soon dispersed, though the brothers played on various teams througout the years, and the league eventually folded in the late 1960s.

“It just started to go down, down, down,” Armand said. “Pretty soon, we only had four teams left. We would play Portland, Brunswick and Sanford. I think they just decided to go to slow pitch. I pitched slow pitch, but I didn’t like it.”

But for Armand and Bob, the memories of playing with their father and brothers still remain.

“It’s something that you just didn’t see too often,” Armand said. “There may be families of 12, but maybe only four or five brothers would play.”

“Every time we had a game, we had a little club, a little shed my father had in the back of his house,” Bob said. “We had a pool table there, that was our recreation. Every time we played there, we would just talk [about the games] over and over again: ”˜We should have done this, we should have done that, why did you do this, why did you do that.’ We played that game for many years.”

Men’s fastpitch softball still exists today in the United States, though not in York County. Slowpitch or “beer league” softball has come to be the popular way of play today. There are multiple slowpitch leagues in Biddeford, both a men’s and co-ed league. Information on both leagues can be found at the City of Biddeford Web site, www.biddefordmaine.org.

As for men’s fastpitch softball, the North American Fastpitch Association (NAFA) annually hosts a national fastpitch softball tournament. More information can be found on the NAFA Web site, www.nafafastpitch.com.