About Us

THE BEGINNING…..

My name is Johnny Nuanez, I currently manage and play on the team. I, along with my brothers Joe and Jaime, have been around the game of Fastpitch Softball all of our lives. Our dad, Jerry, began playing on League and Travel teams out of Oceanside, CA, our home town. I began playing Fastpitch softball when I was 17 years old when several of my dad’s friends started up a Men’s Fastpitch League in Vista, CA.  This was after several years of Fastpitch softball being dormant in our area.

During my first year of League ball, I was asked by the Tri-City Fastpitch team to join them for a tournament and after my first tournament, I was hooked.  I had the opportunity to play with a lot of experienced ball players who taught me how to play the game.  Players like the legendary Ron Ortega, Brian McNaughton, Barney Lopez, Joe Gonzalez and Vaughn Murphy to name a few.  I also had the opportunity to face great pitching like Cary Weiler and Russ Snow along with and against the infamous Villalobos family in the Fastpitch rich Escondido leagues. One of the most memorable times I had with Tri-City was when we went to Canada and played 3 double headers.  The first against Ravens Fastball Club, the second against the ‘The Hill’ Sr. Men’s Club, and  the last against the powerful Payless team, whose team included 8 players who had played for the Canadian National team.  Although we won ONLY 1 of the 6 games, with Glen “the Rocket” Davis recording a 1-0 win during our very first game, it was an experience I will NEVER forget.  It was a thrill facing pitchers like Terry Bell, Kevin Careless, Korrey Gareau, Rick Smith & seeing Doug Chase hit a couple of monster bombs.

After a couple of seasons with Tri-City, I chose to play with my dad and brothers on a new start up Men’s Travel Fastpitch team called Ruben’s Auto Body, which was sponsored by Ruben Obregon, who also played for the team, out of Oceanside, CA. Our most successful tournament was winning the Las Vegas tournament beating our rival and my previous team, Tri-City, in the finals.

After this, I played a few seasons with Manny Macias and Darin Garland in the now defunct SoCal “B” travel league going to two different “B” National Tournaments.

 

THE BIRTH OF SAN DIEGO FASTPITCH…..

Along with my brothers and our cousin in-law Jerry “Speedy” Speedon, I started the San Diego Fastpitch team.  It primarily consisted of several of us from Oceanside including my younger cousin Michael Romero.  We also picked up some others from our San Diego City League, such as Dan Zupp, Woody Woodworth and Brian Webb who play with the Saddles and Mike York, Terry Brightwell, Jay Crawley who play with me on our San Diego Fastpitch League team.

 

THE BIRTH OF PRIMETIME FASTPITCH…..

Eventually, the San Diego Fastpitch uniforms that we had for several years fell apart and in 2005, with the help of my brother Jaime, were able to get Butch Smith who owned PrimeTime Sports Batting cages (Vista, CA and Murrieta, CA) to purchase new uniforms for us, hence the name change to PrimeTime Fastpitch.

 

THE PRESENT PRIMETIME FASTPITCH….

Last year, we petitioned to be dropped from the ASA ‘B’ classification to the ‘C’ classification and were approved. This move allowed us to attend the ASA Men’s Class ‘C’ National Fastpitch tournament in Prescott, AZ which was much closer than Mankato, MN. On Friday morning, we lost our first game 5-4 to a very tough G2 squad from Wilcox, AZ after leading through the first 5 innings, which dropped us into the Loser Bracket. On Friday afternoon, we had to face a team that we were very familiar with, The Amigos who play in our local Travel League., in an elimination game. We ended up winning a very wild game, coming from behind, by the score of 8-5.

On Saturday morning we faced the Boise River Dogs and again rallied from behind, scoring the tying and go ahead runs in the bottom of the 7th inning with 2 outs to win the game 7-6. This moved us to our 3rd elimination game against a Cedar Ridge, UT team. After getting behind 2-0 early in the first inning, we rallied yet again, this time run-ruling Cedar Ridge by the score of 10-2 to advance to a 6 PM elimination game against the Las Cruces Wolfpack. However, the tournament was postponed for a couple of hours due to a thunder/lightning storm. We finally resumed play around 9 PM, but lost a very hard fought game by the score of 6-5, in which the lead changed hands several times. Both pitchers, Dan Zupp and Tony Mancha (Wolfpack) went the distance. We ended the tournament with a 3-2 overall record and tied for 13th place out of 50 teams. Notables were Homeruns by Dan Plesetz, Val Cervantes and Russ Roberts, “Nobody Beats Mitch.com” Mendenhall finished with an impressive 2-0 record. Dan finished with a 1-2 records, however, he faced two very tough teams, both of whom finished in the top 10, one of which finished in the top 5 out of 50 teams.