Bud Stebbins did more than sponsor slowpitch softball teams in the Flint area for 40 years. He
brought the entire game to town.
Stebbins, a Flint Central graduate who owned Grand Blanc Printing and the Grand Blanc News,
is acknowledged as the man who introduced slowpitch to an area that had known only fastpitch and
blooperball to that point.
That pioneering move and his lifelong support of the game have earned Stebbins induction into
the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame as the Special Service Award honoree.
Stebbins, who died last January at 79, had already been sponsoring blooperball teams in Flint
for a decade when he happened upon a slowpitch game in Battle Creek in 1971. Blooperball was
like slowpitch, except that the pitcher could deliver the ball as high as he wanted, making it difficult
to hit.
