Brothers Mike and Rocky Hill have spent the past 35 years trying to answer one question: Who’s better at softball — athletes or hippies?
In 1976, the brothers took their sibling rivalry to the softball diamond and enlisted their friends to play. Mike Hill, a University of Colorado track star, recruited his teammates and other CU athletes to play against his big brother’s “free-spirited” friends.
On Saturday, the teams played their last game as Mike Hill plans to move to California, and the other players claim they’re getting too old.
“Everyone is punking out because they’re getting new hips and limbs and things,” said Rocky Hill, 66.
But regardless of their age, the brothers can fling insults better than two teenage boys.
“He’s always had this complex,” Mike Hill, 60, said of his brother.
“Yeah — complex of being better looking,” Rocky Hill quipped back.
The brothers have lived in Boulder since the 1970s. Mike Hill works with disabled adults and Rocky Hill is a special education professor at CU.
Over the years, Rocky Hill said, the teams have both won their share of games. The loser has to buy the beer for the players, and the winner takes home the “Gloria Trophy,” named for the Hills’ mother.
The idea came when Mike Hill organized a game with his fellow CU athletes and Rocky Hill brought along his “hippie” friends. But 35 years later, the teams have gotten a little older and changed habits.
“Now we’re a bunch of old guys taking ibuprofen before the game instead of LSD,” Rocky Hill said.
Some of the players still managed to pull off some impressive moves though. Peter Dordick, who’s played in the game since the ’80s, hit a home run for the athlete team, but felt the consequences afterward.
“I’m in so much pain right now, but you can’t miss this game — it’s classic,” Dordick said. “I play catcher, and now when I get up to throw the ball I can feel every muscle burning — unlike the old days.”
John Gregorio has played since the first game back in ’76 and remembers how the times have changed.
“We used to barbecue after the game,” Gregorio said. “Then we all started having kids so we had to get back home to take care of them. And now those kids are playing in the game.”
He hopes as the older guys hang up their baseball bats, their kids will keep up the tradition.
As the last game came to a close, the brothers might have an answer to their original question. The hippies beat the athletes 8-7.
