Softball players know Tony Thompson and the Roundtree Bar & Grill teams. They’ve been a mainstay for years in Ann Arbor slow-pitch leagues.

Thompson, the 54-year-old rotund owner of the Ypsilanti bar, has participated in local softball since the glory days in the 1980s, when more than 400 teams competed in Ann Arbor. Now, as the loss of local sponsorships and businesses took a toll, there’s about 100 teams.

“I play four nights a week, and have forever,” Thompson said between innings of a recent men’s league game for Roundtree.

While Thompson loves the game, he’s made his real mark by sponsoring more teams than he can count. A 2008 inductee to the Michigan Amateur Softball Association Hall of Fame, Thompson sponsors four teams this summer, split between Roundtree and Fenders, the bar he owns in Milan, and has fielded teams for several other bars he’s owned, including the former Bombay Bicycle Club in Ann Arbor, which is now Damon’s Grill.

Thompson is a dean of Ann Arbor softball - that becomes obvious when someone from another team interrupts a conversation to thank Thompson for speaking during a mediation session involving a couple players in the league. “We had a little altercation in the parking lot,” Thompson explains, shrugging it off.

Roundtree, which Thompson has owned for 17 years, is as well known for softball as for the brewed beverages that flow through its taps. “When people see Roundtree in a tournament on the west side of the state,” Thompson said, “they know it’s a pretty good team. We’re proud of that.”

Even Grek Powers, an Ann Arbor Community Recreation & Education site supervisor who admits to not liking softball, notices Roundtree’s prominence.

“I give ’em a trophy every year,” Powers said. “It doesn’t really matter the season - they have a good team.”

In the beginning, softball sponsorship was simply a way for Thompson to keep the cash registers ringing after games.

“It started out probably as a business decision,” Thompson said. “But now it’s personal for sure. It’s become like a family.”

And when Thompson calls it a family, he’s not kidding. Ryan Fox, the pitcher for Roundtree’s men’s team, met his wife, Tera, while playing softball with her in 2002.

“We played together so much, we were always around each other,” Ryan said. “At first, it was just friends. We didn’t start dating until ’05.”

For as long as they’ve been together, summertime has meant softball - until this year, because Tera is pregnant. But Ryan still plays up to 10 games a week.

“I’ve got my group of friends I’ve had since childhood,” Ryan said, “but in the summer, I don’t see them. I’m around the guys I play softball with.”

Jonnie Ray Smith, the 45-year-old pitcher for the Roundtree men’s team, worked as a dishwasher for Thompson when he was 17. He’s been playing softball for Thompson’s teams ever since.

It’s these relationships, Thompson said, that have catapulted Roundtree to softball dominance. Roundtree’s co-ed team won a national championship in Florida last year, and its men’s team is an annual competitor for state titles. But no one makes much of an effort to attract good players, Thompson said.

“The good thing is, it all started as just friends playing softball,” he said. “We didn’t go out to get the best team in the league.”

But they do set out to have a good time, whether winning or losing - and in that way, Roundtree Bar & Grill carries on a long tradition of recreational softball in Ann Arbor.

“Is (the league) competitive?” Thompson asks, thinking it over. “Yeah. But not as competitive as when we go play in a tournament.

“Now, do a lot of us end up over at the bar? Yeah.”