HARRISONBURG - Mark Siciliano knows he wouldn't be commissioner of the Rockingham County Baseball League if not for Karl Olschofka. Because if there hadn't been an Olschofka, the nation's second-oldest semi-pro wooden-bat circuit would no longer exist.

"I don't think there's any question that if it weren't for Karl, the County League wouldn't have survived," said Siciliano, who has been commissioner since 2006. "He did everything for this league."

But now, the league, the county, and everyone who knew the long-time RCBL commissioner must move on without him.

Olschofka, 81, died Monday night at Rockingham Memorial Hospital. His son, Mike, said the family did not have an official cause of death, but he said Olschofka had been in and out of the hospital for the past year with kidney and heart problems.

"His heart was real weak," Mike said. "We haven't received the death certificate yet, but I think it was just heart failure."

Olschofka's family will hold a viewing at the Grandle Funeral Home in Broadway from 6-8 p.m. Saturday, then a service at the funeral home at 2 p.m. Sunday. Burial will follow at Lacey Spring Cemetery.

Sicilliano said the RCBL's managers will meet tonight to discuss plans to honor Olschofka, both in funeral proceedings and throughout the 2008 season. Last summer, Olschofka was honored at the RCBL All-Star Game, where he received a jersey with signatures from every player in the league. This year, Sicililano said, the RCBL might name its championship trophy after the transplanted Brooklyn native.

"He just meant so much to the County League and to baseball in the area," Siciliano said. "We're going to do everything we can to honor what he's done."

Born on March 13, 1927, in New York City, Olschofka moved to Harrisonburg with his parents in 1949 after a stint in the Navy for World War II, though he never lost his Brooklyn accent. His parents purchased the Blue Stone Inn in Lacey Spring, just north of Harrisonburg on U.S. 11, and Olschofka became a Valley fixture.

He eventually took over the restaurant, and then handed over ownership to Mike in 1984, while continuing to work for his son.

Olschofka had always been a baseball fan, following the New York Yankees religiously since his youth. On Monday, even his favorite team seemed saddened by Olschofka's passing - the Yankees' opener was rained out on the day of his death.

Olschofka got involved with local baseball in 1957, and it happened by chance.

"He was working at the restaurant, and back then you worked seven days a week," Mike Olschofka said. "He got fed up one day, jumped in his mother's car and started driving on back roads, and he ran into a baseball game and started to watch."

Shortly afterward, he got involved with the Twin County Baseball League until it folded in 1960. He then joined the RCBL's front office, and was involved with it in some capacity until his death, serving as commissioner, secretary, treasurer and head of umpires. He last served as commissioner in 2004, and was treasurer from that point until after the 2006 season.

It was in large part because of Olschofka that the league, which was established in 1924, survived to offer generations of high school, college and adult players a high-level outlet for their skills. In the 1970s, several teams faced financial problems, and at one point, the eight-team circuit was down to five squads.

"If you go any lower than that, you're in trouble," said Steve Lough a former player and manager for the Clover Hill Bucks who has been involved in the league since 1971. "If you only have four teams, you play each other so often that it becomes a lot less interesting, and Karl did whatever he could to keep the thing going. He'd go to the businesses and the towns and try to get backing for teams. He'd loan the teams money before the season until they could pay us back with gate receipts. I'm sure a lot of that was out of his own pocket, but he was the force that kept the thing going."

Said Richard Tysinger, who has served as a player, manager and administrator for the league: "He's done a lot more than most people would have even thought about doing."

He's also kept a lot more than anyone would have thought about keeping. His friends say his basement is practically a memorabilia museum, with pictures, bats and balls signed by big-league Hall of Famers on the walls.

"It's unbelievable," said Mike Burtner, former manager of the Elkton Blue Sox. "I'm a big memorabilia collector and I go to a lot of card shows and things, but I've never seen anything like the stuff he's got."

His collection of RCBL memorabilia was even bigger. According to Siciliano, Olschofka kept scrapbooks on the league with photos, stories and box scores that go back decades. In recent years, with his health dwindling to the point where he couldn't hold an administrative position in the league office, he was still known as the league's historian, and filling his spot there seems almost impossible.

Siciliano's hope is to eventually have a small museum created for the league with Olschofka's memorabilia and in his memory.

"There will never be another Karl," he said. "There will never be anyone with all of his knowledge of the history of the league, so I hope we can build some kind of museum to preserve that."

Said Bob Wease, an RCBL veteran and owner of the Valley Baseball League's Harrisonburg Turks: "To me, Karl was the County League."