About

Born 1940 in Elkhart, Indiana, Patrick Bidelman relocated to Detroit where he grew up.

Patrick played baseball on Detroit's best teams from the age of 14 until the Baltimore Orioles sent him to their minor league training camp in Thomasville, George, in 1958 when he was 17 years old. The Orioles recommended that I go to Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo) to play baseball, which he did. 

WMU was a national baseball powerhouse at the time, they played in the 1961 NCAA World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1962, Patrick graduated cum laude from WMU, made the Mid-American Conference baseball team, and was selected by WMU as its Scholar Athlete off the year (1962).

He received a MA in History from WMU in 1964 and his PH.D from Michigan State University shortly their after.

Over the years, he taught at WMU, Michigan State, Purdue University, Schiller College (Paris, France), Flagler College, University of North Florida, Santa Fe CC, Manatee CC, University of South Florida, and the Ringling college of Art and Design.

Patrick began playing senior softball when he turned 50 (the minimum age) in 1990 and had the good fortune to play 27 years for the Florida Legends, one of the best senior softball teams ever with more than 110 national tournament championships.

In 1997 Patrick was inducted into the National Senior Softball Hall of Fame.

Over the years Patrick became very aware of how dangerous it was to be the pitcher in slow pitch softball, so he began designing and building a portable pitching screen to protect pitchers in 1995. Soon thereafter, he received a patent for the Pitch Safe Pitching Screen which have been built and supplied worldwide.