BIO:

James A. “Jim” Spelbrink has been playing softball for 53 years, but it has been during the last 21 years, when he began playing in the Senior program, that his career really exploded.  Since 1992, Spelbrink has played in 35 World Tournaments and won an incredible 26 of them while competing with Greater Cincinnati teams like the Tri-State Masters and Joseph Chevrolet, and national powerhouses like Nothdurft (Detroit, Mi.), Papa Johns (Louisville, Ky.), Dixie Gas (Miami, Fl.), and Suncoast Orthopedics (Venice, Fl.).  Spelbrink spent much of his early career playing Industrial ball with the G. E. (General Electric) Jets, with whom he won eight plant championships from 1960-1970, and with the G. E. Aces, whom he helped power to an ASA Industrial Metro title in 1987.  In between that time he won thirteen league titles with Bramble Inn and 43 Bar, and later captured eighteen tournament championships with The Hut Café.  Spelbrink got his first taste of Senior ball in 1992, when his Tri-State Masters team captured an SPA National title, and Spelbrink was named to the All-American team.  Since then he has been selected an All-American seventeen times.  A solid infielder at any position, Spelbrink’s primary position is 3^rd base.  But he is best known as adept line-drive hitter and a run-producer, with a career batting average of over .675, and more than 250 home runs to his credit.  Once while playing in the 2009 SPA National Tournament in Dalton, Ga., Spelbrink went 23-for-24 (.958) and was named a 1^st team All-American.  Spelbrink was one of thirteen individuals to be inducted into the inaugural Senior Softball Hall of Fame in 1996.