To Barry Weaver's softball titles of player, coach and league president, we can now add hall of famer.

To Barry Parmer's career as a dominant, flame-throwing pitcher over three decades, add the same honorific.

Both men were among the top players of a Golden Age of fast-pitch softball in Lancaster County, and both were inducted into the Amateur Softball Association of Pennsylvania Hall of Fame at a banquet March 6 in Sunbury.

It's appropriate that Weaver and Parmer enter the hall together.

They started in the sport together. Weaver, a catcher, was the first guy to catch Parmer, when Parmer was a 15-year-old with serious control issues.

"I sometimes had trouble hitting the wall," Parmer said Friday.

When Weaver reminded Parmer of that at the banquet, Parmer acknowledged that, "you were the only guy willing to catch me."

This was in 1962. The year before, Weaver came home after a stint in the Cleveland Indians' organization.

Weaver was looking for a place to play ball, at a time when the Lancaster City-County (baseball) League was disbanding.

Weaver's dad, longtime local softball player and coach Richard "Pissy" Weaver, suggested he try softball.

"You've got to be kidding me," Weaver said at the time. "Then I went to a practice, and I realized what a challenge it was."

A lot of former hardball players were learning the same thing at around the same time.

The Lancaster Rec League became a monster, filled entirely with high-level (Class AA and A) teams. The Lancaster Industrial League wasn't far behind.

"This area really became a hotbed for softball," Weaver said. "They got the cream of the crop."

Weaver played for South End in the Rec League and Hamilton Watch in the Industrial. With both leagues plus tournaments, he often played two games a night, as many as 10 per week and, including tournaments, at least 70 games per year.

South End won the state A title in 1962, and finished runner-up in '63.

Weaver drove in the tying run in the bottom of the seventh of the '62 state final, and then was thrown out at home, after colliding with the third-base umpire.

Fortunately for Weaver and South End, they pulled it out in the ninth.

Weaver later was part of a state A championship team with Thrifty Beverage in 1972, hitting .318 for the tournament.

Meanwhile, Parmer was developing into a pitching ace, a hard thrower with vicious breaking stuff and, eventually, superb control.

"As I got stronger and more coordinated, the control came along with the speed," he said.

He pitched in the local A-AA leagues and then in the AA Atlantic Seaboard and Pennsylvania Major Softball Leagues with Reading Rising Sun.

Rising Sun won the national fast-pitch title in 1975, played in the national tournament 20 times and competed internationally. It became the first team inducted into the Pennsylvania ASA hall at the March 6 banquet.

Parmer twice beat pitching legend Eddie Feigner's King and his Court.

Parmer said he has lost many of his personal records and statistics to water damage, but has been able to document a 375-115 record with 4,025 strikeouts and just 450 walks.

He guessed the true numbers are closer to 500 wins and over 5,000 whiffs.

"He worked hard and became one of the best out of Lancaster County," Weaver said of Parmer. "He was a hard thrower, and had all the stuff to go with it."