Anyone who followed softball in Napa from 1997 to 2005 probably knew who Frances Dellwardt was — or Fran Finch, wife of James, after that.
After playing, coaching and teaching softball for 20 years, the Finches welcomed Cash Hudson Finch into the world in 2017. With the couple having a steady income from their wine shipping business, she was able to be a stay-at-home mom for their son.
“What was nice was she had been out at our field the last couple of years — not coaching, because she had just had her son a few years ago, but watching friends who were out there playing,” said longtime Napa Junior Girls Softball League president Karly Michie. “She always had this big smile and was saying ‘Hi, how are ya?’
“She was just fun, fearless and full of life. It was always like she was at a party.”
But others will now have to carry on Finch’s legacy.
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Finch, 35, sustained fatal injuries when she was ejected from her car in a crash at the intersection of Trancas Street and Monticello Road the night of Saturday, Nov. 21, according to the Napa County Sheriff’s Office. Her westbound vehicle crossed a dirt median and struck an eastbound vehicle, the California Highway Patrol reported. James Finch, 37, was the only passenger and sustained major injuries. Another car was struck and that driver received minor injuries, the CHP said.
Longtime Napa Valley Girls Fastpitch Association president Pat O’Brien said a candlelight vigil was held in the outfield at Kiwanis Park shortly after Finch’s passing.
“I was not able to go, but it was really well attended,” O’Brien said. “Emma, my daughter, and her wife went and reported back that all these people were there that I hadn’t even considered who were all connected to Fran in some way and wanted to go and pay their respects. It’s so awful that this year, because of the pandemic, you can’t do justice to those things.”
O’Brien and Michie hope to be able to honor Finch if the COVID-19 pandemic subsides and their leagues can hold opening days this year.
Finch started playing in the NJGSL a few years after moving to Napa in 1988 from Corpus Christi, Texas with parents Hal and Kathy Dellwardt and younger brother Hal IV. By age 12, she was a top player on the Napa Valley Express 12-and-under travel team and also played for a few other travel clubs.
She continued on with the Napa Valley Girls Fastpitch Association recreational summer league at Kiwanis Park. She played softball and basketball for Napa High but only at the junior varsity level, in 2000 and 2001, because she had to work.
“Her first job other than babysitting was at Sizzler and that girl would come home on a Sunday with $200 to $250 in tips because that’s when the older crowd went in and they loved her,” said Kathy Dellwardt, who now lives in Reno. “I went in on a Sunday and watched her and she was just bebopping around with these older people and just having a good time with them. She was just that good with people, old and young.”
Her father opened Hal Dellwardt’s Steak House in 1997 and started Hal Dellwardt’s Full Service Window Washing Service in 2002. He and Kathy divorced in 2002 and later that year he married his second wife, Kerry Ann Frank, who would succumb to cancer in 2007. Hal died of cancer himself in 2011 at age 54. According to an obituary in the Register, he was also a very skilled martial arts instructor, holding a black belt in the Okinawa ‘Tae American Ryu Association, and liked to ride his motorcycle.
The spring before her father’s passing, Finch helped Rick Robben coach the 2011 Justin-Siena softball team to the North Coast Section Division 4 title. She also worked with him at the Napa Valley Softball Academy on Jackson Street before taking over the business for a couple of years.
Longtime Napa High softball assistant coach DeAnna Bowers, whose daughter Brianna was the 2017 Napa County Player of the Year after leading Napa High to its first-ever section title in softball and now plays for Sacramento State, said Finch never let a favor not be returned.
“When she used to run those cages, she was trying to cobble things together and we kinda helped her out with the pitching machine,” Bowers said. “Instead of charging my daughter, she just let her hit for free until the earthquake knocked the whole building down in 2014. It seems like every kid knew Fran — every kid — so her impact was pretty impressive.
“It was,” she added, sighing, “such a short life that she had.”
Although Finch’s slight Texas accent made it clear she wasn’t a Napa native, longtime NVGFA president Pat O’Brien said Finch and the community embraced each other.
“Regardless where she was born and raised, she was from wherever she was,” O’Brien said. “She just naturally adopted that place, that person, that thing, whatever it was. If she loved it, she was all about it.
“I had her as a guest hitting coach on several occasions and I really valued her ability to break down a swing. She would watch our hitters and tweak things here and there and immediately be able to identify some glitch in their swing. I’m always in awe of that ability, and it came so naturally for her, and she was a great motivator. Her energy was always so good, the kids would get swept up in that and feed off her energy and bring that energy to the field and not every coach has that ability, either.”
Michie said she met Finch for the first time — or thought she did — when she took daughter Alyssa to the Napa Valley Softball Academy for hitting and catching lessons.
“I remember the first time we walked in, she had the biggest smile and she was like ‘Heyyyyy, how’s it going?’ I was like ‘Heyyyyy’ (and to herself), ‘Who are you? I don’t know you.’ When you first met Fran, it was like you had been friends for a while. She was very welcoming. But she had known me from helping out with the pitching at our clinics. Ever since then, we were good acquaintances out on the field.”
Finch coached the Team Xtreme 12-and-under travel softball squad in 2013 and Napa High JV softball after that.
“She was always willing to help with softball, always. No matter what it was, she would be there,” Michie added. “She loved the sport. She was always smiling and always willing to do whatever was asked of her for the love of the game.”
Finch organized a NVGFA 20 & Over women’s league in 2012, scheduling the games and playing and coaching in them.
“She was the type of coach that she could connect with a lot of different ages,” O’Brien said. “She was very encouraging and bubbly and fun, and that kind of shone through no matter where she was. The only time I heard Fran criticize someone was when they were refusing to try, and that was with the older girls. She could really bear down on them and push them to be better players. There are people that don’t respond to that, but those who do just really appreciated that in her because it built their confidence and it got them to get out of their comfort zone and really, really push past whatever their fears were.
“That was the thing about Fran: she was fearless. Absolutely fearless. She would take on any challenge and just go for it. That is what I think people saw that they just cherished in her, that fearlessness. The rest of us would be like ‘Ooooh, I don’t know.’ But Fran was just ‘Forge ahead, let’s do it, let’s go for it.’ That was how she was.”
Finch wasn’t someone who lied through her smile, though.
“You didn’t want to get on her bad side because she’ll tell you like it is, straight up,” said Dellwardt. “Sometimes when she told you the truth, it stung. I’d been on that end of it a couple times and I’d get mad at her but after I saw back and thought about it I knew there was some truth in what she said. “She was a straight shooter and she got that from her dad. He was a good guy.
“She went to all the doctor’s appointments with him because she wanted to make sure she knew everything that was going on with him and she made sure he took care of himself to the best of her ability. She still had his ashes at her home. They had a special Harley Davidson gas tank made to put his urn in. When she was younger they would always sing ‘Do Wah Diddy’ together. For the father-daughter dance at her wedding, they broke into that song after starting with some slow country song.”
Dellwardt watched her daughter start playing in the “bird league,” as the NJGSL was called in the 1990s because of all the teams named after birds.
“She was always the first to bat because they knew it was a given run if she got on base because she was so quick and had long legs and could steal base,” Dellwardt said. “When her dad went to a game and she would steal the bases and come home, he’d yell out ‘Way to go, Turbo!’ She played catcher and pitcher, but her favorite position was shortstop. I began calling her ‘Pigpen’ because she would always lay out to catch a ball and end up in the dirt. She played for Mickey Gourley on the Blackhawks her last two years out there and it was usually between his daughter, Mikali, and Fran who pitched.
“I was Mickey’s assistant coach and I tried to bench her once and Mickey’s like ‘You can’t bench her.’ I said ‘Why not? She’s got an attitude.’ He said ‘Because, she’s the best player we have and I don’t have anybody else to play shortstop.’”
Finch’s temper even got the best of her when she was coaching in a NVGFA game years later.
“An umpire had made a really bad call on one of her girls, she stood up for her girls, the umpire heard something he didn’t like and he told her she was out of the game,” Dellwardt recalled. “She had to leave the ball field and she and her husband sat across the street and still yelled for the team. The ump was going by the book and she was trying to get her point across. After the game she talked to the team and apologized.”
With Finch having played with or coached several players who went on to play in college, one wonders how she would have done had she had the financial wherewithal to even play high school varsity softball.
She tried to play for Napa Valley College but had to quit to go back to work. When it was announced that the 2008 Beijing Games would be the last to offer softball in the Olympics, Kathy persuaded her daughter to attend the August 2007 tryouts in Dallas.
Recalled Dellwardt, “I told her ‘It’s the thrill of a lifetime, Fran. I’ll pay for your plane.’ She went there with James and called me and said ‘Mom, I’ll never make this team. There are some women out here who are 35 and they are damn good.’ She was only 22 and the experience will still that of a lifetime. She got two Olympic shirts, one to practice in and one to keep. She met so many people that James said he hardly saw her. She had a wonderful time.”
One of the Junior Girls moms called Finch one day and asked her if she could help her daughter with her hitting.
“She went out and was helping this little girl from behind the plate,” Dellwardt recalled. “The little girl hit the ball really, really well because she did it exactly how Fran told her to do it. She would go help these girls because she had such a passion for softball.”
Kathy, who moved to Reno in 2015 to be closer to her older daughter Crystal’s children, said the Napa Valley Express team Fran was coaching came up for a tournament in 2016 and needed Kathy’s help.
“She calls me up and says ‘Mom, we’re out here at these ballfields in Reno and there’s no shade. Can you go get a tarp to cover the girls’ dugout?’ I said ‘Sure’ and she said ‘and if you happen to have one of those pop-up tent things (EZ Ups), bring that along, too.’ I went and bought one, because it was hot up here.
“I have a picture of her with the girls all sitting in the dugout giving them their pre-game talk and there was some song playing and she started dancing around. It was hilarious. She had all the girls laughing, she had them all relaxed and ready to play ball. She was like that. She was a lot of fun.”
Cash is named after the Finches’ favorite musician, Johnny Cash.
“We didn’t think she was ever going to have a baby. She was having so much fun with life and she considered the girls she coached to be her children,” Dellwardt said. “She and James were married for 12 years before she finally produced the baby. She said if it had been up to James, she’d have had 12 kids by then.”
Dellwardt said she got off work early enough to watch most of Finch’s home games. When Finch played out of town, she stayed with a teammate’s family and Robben would often cover her $250 tournament fee.
“She was that good, so he wanted her to play,” Dellwardt said. “Somebody was almost always covering her fees.”
Or taking her to the hospital. At one tournament, Finch was running to first base and suddenly collapsed in pain.
“A mom had taken a picture of Fran being put on the stretcher and it looked like she had the softball on her ankle. Whatever she did, her ankle swelled up real quick,” Dellwardt recalled. “But she didn’t break it. She had a brace on her foot and she was on crutches and she was supposed to be out for at last four weeks. Two weeks later, she had a brace tightly wrapped around her ankle and was back on the field practicing and playing ball. She was a toughie.”
Finch would have turned 36 on Dec. 17. A GoFundMe page for her husband and son at bit.ly/3hxzCuV started with a goal $5,000 and had raised $26,040 as of Friday.
“James was in the hospital for two weeks after that. He had 13 broken ribs, which is over half the ribs in your body, and a broken collar bone,” Dellwardt said. “They’re staying at his mom’s now and it could be months before he can get back to work, if he’s able to. He and Fran were the perfect fit. He treated her like the queen she thought she was.
“But she gave back as much as she got, and that little boy became her world. They were joined at the hip, literally, unless Cash was riding his bike. He could stand up on his bicycle while he was riding. The kid has no fear, like his mom.”
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