He literally died doing what he loved,.”

Rob Scott, teammate to Richard Root

By Cyrus Guccione
Mail

The Fountain Hills Senior Softball Drop-In League recently lost an important member of their team when Richard Root collapsed on the field.

A longtime Fountain Hills drop-in softball player, Root was playing in the 2024 Senior Softball-USA Spring World Championship in St. George, Utah (SSUSA), when on Monday, March 19, Root collapsed and died during the course of play.

According to Donna McGuire in the April 4 issue of the SSUSA Newsletter, the Minnesota Masters 80s were playing the Scrap Iron 85 Legends in their second pool game. Root was managing the Masters who were up 19-12 in the bottom of the seventh inning.

When the Legends were preparing to bat, Root fell to the ground.

The tournament director and umpire immediately began resuscitation measures but Root did not revive.

The results of the autopsy are unknown at the time of this writing.

“I took a vote of the team, and everyone voted to finish the tournament,” said John Remington in the newsletter, the Minnesota Masters’ then field manager and now manager. The game ended and Scrap Iron ceded the game to Minnesota.

From then on, the Masters played and won every game in honor of Root,  winning the SSUSA 2024 Spring World Series.

When the Masters took their team photo, the championship trophy and a team jersey were placed on an empty chair in honor of their late manager.

Impact in Fountain Hills

Root played often with the Fountain Hills Senior Softball Drop-In League which plays Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 a.m. at Golden Eagle Park.

According to the team’s acting commissioner Bob Kane, Root was “very well-liked by the crew of guys.”

“Richard, he’s one of those guys that had a good sense of humor,” Kane said. “It’s true of all of us, occasionally we go out there and we want to be competitive but you botch your play or drop a fly ball.

"For Richard, he would come in and say something like, ‘This glove is made of iron’ or ‘Maybe I won’t bother with the glove next time.’ He could laugh at himself.”

Roy Lack was one of Root’s Fountain Hills teammates who says Root was a leader on the field. If something needed to be done like preparing the field for a game, Root was the first one to step in and do it.

“We miss him,” Lack said. “He was a good guy.”

Rob Scott played softball with Root from Fountain Hills to Apache Junction for more than a decade. When he read Root’s obituary, Scott said his biggest regret was not talking to him about his illustrious career in asphalt.

“I never got the chance to but I would have loved to have picked his brain on things like asphalt, but we always talked softball,” Scott said.

Root was quite the subject matter expert in asphalt. According to his obituary from the Serenity Funeral Home of Southern Utah, Root worked as a research engineer and then a district engineer at The Asphalt Institute. He later became the vice president and then president/owner of the Chicago Testing Laboratory.

He worked at the Minnesota Department of Transportation and taught mix design methodology to contractors around the country. He was a past president of the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists and continued to be an expert legal consultant in pavement designs into his retirement.

Root and his wife Carol lived in Scottsdale for nearly 30 years where Root used early computer-aided design (CAD) capabilities to design and develop the plans for their Scottsdale home as well as their summer home on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota where he and Carol made countless memories with their kids, grandkids and great grandkids.

Root was a lifelong athlete as a runner, cyclist, golfer, volleyball player and of course, a softball player.

When Kane first started picking up softball again after a two-decade hiatus, Root was always there to offer an encouraging word.

“When somebody hit a line drive, I’m praying, ‘Please don’t let it come my way,’” Kane said. “Richard was very supportive of me. He just kept on saying, ‘Keep at it. Don’t give up. You’ll get better in time and just have fun.’ He was the guy that believed in playing hard but he also knew how to have a good time and enjoy it.”

After hearing of Root’s passing, his Fountain Hills friends held a moment of silence for their fallen teammate.

“He literally died doing what he loved,” Scott said.

Rich leaves behind his wife Carol of 58 years, two daughters, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren as well as his two brothers.

Richard Root was an active member of the Fountain Hills Senior Softball Drop-In League at Golden Eagle Park. The team held a moment of silence following the news of Root’s passing. (Photo courtesy of Tom Glasgow)

We invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Cyrus Guccione can be reached at cguccione@iniusa.org.