Former Sox slugger Soderholm helps people at Willowbrook wellness center

Editor’s note: This story is part of an occasional series about former professional baseball players who live in the suburbs.

Forty-seven years ago, Eric Soderholm was one of the hitmen on the South Side, thrilling fans with a series of home runs as a third baseman for the pennant-chasing Chicago White Sox.

For Söderholm, 75, life is clearly more peaceful today. He co-owns his SoderWorld Wellness Center & Academy, a Willowbrook facility that offers yoga classes, massages by qualified therapists, meditation, workshops, and other soothing activities in a tranquil setting. .

With mystical therapy rooms and gardens with winding walkways, meditative alcoves, and water features, Soderworld is home to the sights and sounds of Comiskey Park as old as Soderholm has known. , and frankly far from the smell too.

“It’s been quite a journey,” said Soderholm of Willowbrook.

Born in New York but raised in Florida, Soderholm was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in 1968 and made his major league debut with the club three years later.

Soderholm remembers being overwhelmed when he first walked into the Twins’ locker room, a club that included future Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew and Tony Olivia.

“Should I wear my pants the same way?” he thought. “Can I play with these guys at this level?”

He was able to do that and remained in the big leagues for nine years. Soderholm missed the 1976 season with a knee injury, but then signed with the White Sox as a free agent and became a star for the team in 1977. Despite having a strong summer, the South Siders finished in third place in the American League West. .

“(I) loved playing for the White Sox and Bill Veeck,” Soderholm said of the team’s eccentric owner at the time. “He gave me a big chance to play again.”

Soderholm was traded to the Texas Rangers during the 1979 season and ended his career with the New York Yankees in 1980.

Soderholm, whose family settled in the Chicago area, remained involved with baseball for many years after his retirement, working as a scout for the Cubs, running a youth baseball camp, and providing private hitting instruction. He later achieved financial success with a ticket brokerage business called Front Row Tickets.

But SoderWorld brought him peace and helped him move beyond the greed he now admits drove his previous ventures.

“I wasn’t happy with the space I was in,” Soderholm said. “(SoderWorld) changed my life.”

Soderholm started his eponymous business in 1997 with his daughter Misty, who was working as a therapist at author and alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra’s center in California. One day she called her father and said she wanted to run such a business in Chicago. After an exploratory trip to the west, Soderholm entered.

“We started Soderworld without a business plan, just the belief that if you build it, they will come,” Soderholm said.

Initially located in the Willowbrook Shopping Center, business took off. The center was expanded twice and moved in 2004 to its current facility at 16W501 Neilson Lane, just off Route 83.

Operating out of an A-frame building on nearly two wooded acres, SoderWorld is staffed by therapists trained in a variety of wellness techniques. In addition to individual and group sessions, SoderWorld also hosts art classes, live music performances, film screenings, and other activities.

“We are building a community of like-minded souls seeking a safe place to heal and work on themselves,” Soderholm said.

All members of the Soderholm family are involved in the business. Misty manages the facility and teaches yoga, meditation sessions, and more. Her younger brother Cha-hye is also a staff member. Soderholm’s wife, Ginny, is in charge of the book.

“This is our mission,” Misty Soderholm said.

Eric Soderholm meets with clients as a life coach. He primarily works in an outdoor space with Adirondack chairs overlooking a pond that is home to a pair of swans.

“I’m more proud of building this place, Soderworld, with my family than I am of playing in the major leagues for nine years,” Soderholm said.

Soderholm participates in charity golf as a White Sox alumnus and receives about a dozen autograph requests in the mail each week. But most of the time baseball is behind him.

He said he didn’t even watch the game today.

“It was part of my life at the time,” Soderholm said. “I appreciate it. But that’s not who I am right now.”

Talk baseball with Eric, Randy, and Bill

‘I’m very, very lucky’: Former White Sox hurler Don Paul reflects on his baseball career and life afterward