Cat Osterman still dominant as career drawing to a close
Cat Osterman played on two Olympic teams. The 2004 team won gold medal and the 2008 team that took the silver medal.
Cast Osterman has 80 wins and more than 1,000 strikeouts in her NPF career.
She transcends softball not just because of the success she has had on the field but by the way in which she prepares for those moments.
She has won championships at just about every level, been recognized with just about every reward and honor, and has established herself as the standard bearer of softball.
Like the greats in other sports, she is recognized by those who follow the sport simply by her first name.
Cat.
For the past eight seasons, Catherine Leigh Osterman has wowed her fans, frustrated opponents and gained respect from her peers in the sport of fastpitch softball.
Now, that is coming to an end.
Osterman is making her final trip around the National Pro Fastpitch softball league before announcing her retirement following the season. The 6-2, fireballing left-hander will make her final appearance at Consol Energy Park this weekend when the USSSA Pride takes on the Pennsylvania Rebellion in a four-game series.
Friday night’s game is a 7 p.m. start. The two teams play a doubleheader Saturday with a 5 p.m. start and Sunday’s first pitch for the single game is 2:35 p.m.
As always, players from both teams will be available for autographs – weather permitting – after each day’s games. Osterman said she does not know what game she’ll pitch.
The lines are always longest for the 32-year-old Osterman.
“It’s been a long run, longer than I imagined,” said Osterman. “It’s hard to pinpoint one thing that stands out. So many things do.”
Start with the four titles in the NPF – three with the USSSA Pride, which is based in Kissimmee, Fla., and one with the now defunct Rockford (Ill.) Thunder. She was named the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2009, the Pitcher of the Year in 2013 and shared the award with Chicago’s Monica Abbott in 2011.
She played on two Olympic teams, the 2004 one that won the gold medal in Greece after a 5-1 win over Australia and the 2008 team that took silver after losing 3-1 to Japan in Beijing.
Osterman was a four-time All-American at the University of Texas and the only three-time winner of USA Softball Player of the Year, college softball’s top award.
And it all began when she volunteered to pitch for her youth league team in her hometown of Houston.
“I wasn’t always tall,” she says. “I volunteered to pitch for my Little League team and I fell in love with it. I was a late bloomer. All the members of my family are incredibly tall. In my junior year in high school, I was just average until then. I shot up.”
Osterman credits her father, Gary, for her development.
“He sat on the bucket my whole career,” she said.
When Osterman practiced with her father, there was one rule to the session.
“You worked as hard as you could,” she said. “I think the biggest thing my dad taught me was to have a good work ethic. That’s how I lived my life. I’m very dedicated. I’ve been pitching four or five times a week for what seems my entire life. It’s been a way of life for me. I don’t want to be mediocre.”
As the youngest player and one of the few not from the West Coast on the 2004 Gold Medal team, Osterman pitched in relief as Lisa Fernandez went 4-0. But Osterman did get two wins, one over Japan and the other Chinese Taipei.
In 2008, Osterman took the loss in the Gold Medal game against Japan, one of the few moments in her career that did not live up to expectations.
“We lost and it (stunk),” she said. “There is nothing more I want to say about it.”
That type of attitude helped Osterman propel the national team to four World Cup titles (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010); two Pan Am gold medals (2003, 2007) and two World Championships (2006, 2010).
Her college career produced three trips to the College World Series for Texas. She left the school with nearly every pitching record, including no-hitters (20), perfect games (9), strikeouts (2,265), innings pitched (1,105.2), wins (136) and career earned run average (0.51).
Osterman joined the NPF in 2007 and has played with the Pride since 2010. She has 80 wins and more than 1,000 strikeouts.
Osterman thought she had enough in 2013 when she announced she was going to retire and devote more time to her job as assistant coach at Division II St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. But she changed her mind and continued to play.
“I don’t really have much time away from softball,” Osterman said. “I’ve never taken a vacation. If I do get time, I’d like go to Greece because it’s so beautiful.”
Osterman has traveled extensively from softball but the time has not been entirely her own. If one happens to bump into her at an airport or rest stop, she will probably be reading the latest Michael Connelly book. Connelly’s books features LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. Her favorite is “The Burning Room.”
Her other refuge is her home in Austin, where she lounges in the yard with her two dogs.
“One is a chocolate lab and the other is a mutt,” she said.
The other project for Osterman is a first. She will be the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Joe Battaglia, who produced the series for FloSoftball.com. The video has interviews with her, teammates and friends, and is titled “The Last Ride.”
“It’s an online documentary,” Osterman said. “Joe tried to get me to film it and it finally happened. He followed me around for two or three days and put it together.”
Osterman will have little time to enjoy retirement. She was named an assistant softball coach at Texas State University, a half hour trip from her home. Before that, she intends to add another NPF title to her resume.
“I really enjoy that aspect of softball,” she said. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do when I finally retired.”