Reprinted courtesy San
Antonio Express-News
by David King
EXPRESS-NEWS STAFF WRITER
08/12/01 Sunday
Sports 01C
It began innocently enough,
along the lines of an unnamed scholar's "let me
show you my theory about
sailing west to reach the east, Senor Columbus" or
Wally Pipp's "I gotta
headache, let that Gehrig guy play today."
The Express-News' book
editor brought by a draft of Nelson Wolff's book
"Baseball for Real
Men," his tales of life in the Men's Senior Baseball
League last October.
That sheaf of sheets made
it to some great destinations: National League
Championship Series, the
Baseball Hall of Fame, the World Series. It never
got out to see any of the
sights, though, since it never got unpacked.
Finally, after being filled
with the holy spirits of Yankee Stadium, I
hauled it out and read it.
Cover to cover. In two days. (It's not exactly
Michener-esque in length,
but that's fast reading for a guy who takes a
month to finish most books
longer than "The Berenstain Bears Run Away from
Home.")
Filled with the enthusiasm
(or perhaps the incipient Middle Aged Crazies), I
decided to play in what my
children have come to call the "Old Man's
Baseball League."
I even recruited a baseball
buddy. The first time we went to a diamond to
practice, neither of us
could throw the ball from third base to first on the
fly.
"Are you sure you want
to play baseball?" he asked. "Man, this field sure
seems big."
A month later, he cleverly
came down with a nasty intestinal disease that
left him bedridden for
weeks. Killjoy.
So all alone, I went to the
"tryouts," a term that stirs the same sort of
inner turmoil in me as
"Bill Buckner" or "Bucky Dent" does for a Boston Red
Sox fan. Having passed my
athletic peak 23 years before (it lasted for about
a week when I was 19), I
wasn't sure how I would match up against guys who
might actually have done
something more athletic than paint the house since
they turned 30.
Fortunately, I was not the
slowest one in the 40-yard dash, although the
cobwebs did collect on the
sundial they used to time me. I did not make the
weakest throw, although
mine did flutter like a geriatric mallard. I did not
pop up weakly in the batting
cage (as I had 30-plus years before as a Little
League reject) on the only
pitch I hit. But there were no comparisons to
Pete Rose - or even Pete
Rose Jr. - either.
When we were done, the
managers huddled, haggled over the four good athletes
in the group, then wondered
how the rest of us were actually able to tie our
shoes that morning.
I was drafted by the Phillies,
given a brief pep talk about how we were
going to be competitive and
have fun at the same time, and sent on my way.
I went out and bought all
the requisite paraphernalia - shoes (less
uncomfortable and ugly than
I remember), polyester pants (just as ugly as
ever), sliding shorts
(looked like a girdle with a pocket in the front, and
it even came with the
pocket protector). I had a glove already, a softball
refugee older than my
children and decidedly less attractive (they have
their mother's looks).
Opening day, we played at
Lackland AFB. Our manager, David Hernandez, took
one look at me and wrote
"9" next to my name on the scorecard. Yes, the bane
of every Little Leaguer's
existence, the gulag of the diamond, the loneliest
place on Earth - right
field.
And as I stood out there in
the top of the first, it came to me - Ross
Youngs played right field.
And I was out there, in his spot. My favorite
player of all time. As I
stood there, lost in the historical significance of
the moment, ignoring David
's frantic signaling for me to play shallower and
more toward center, I
started my first baseball game since the 1960s.
My first at-bat came
around, and I was just lost enough to be dangerous.
Grabbing the shiniest bat
in the rack, I went up there hacking and promptly
popped up to shallow
center.
But then came a lesson that
has stayed with me ever since - run everything
out. That popup fell amid
three fielders for a single. Yep, a screaming line
drive in the scorebook.
And then I got picked off
first.
The next time up, I walked,
went to second on a single, and got picked off.
Next lesson: Watch the
pitcher's feet and don't lead off like you're Maury
(or even Bump) Wills.
The next time, after diving
into the dirt to avoid a 50-mph heater, I took a
curveball that didn't curve
off my left elbow.
Didn't get picked off this
time.
Our catcher, a veteran of
the league, looked at me and laughed.
"Man, everything that
can happen to a guy in this league has happened to you
today," he said.
"It's all downhill from here."
Well, almost. I flagged
down the only two balls that came to right field
that day. It took another
week before I stood, anchored to the ground like
some sort of concrete
artwork, and watched a ball soar over my head, utterly
clueless.
The next few weeks were,
indeed, all downhill. No, not quite. I didn't let
any balls roll between my legs.
I did fall into a McGwire-sized hitting
slump, going 0 for the rest
of April, May and half of June with a collection
of swinging strikeouts,
called strikeouts, limp groundouts and one popup
that must have soared a
majestic 20 feet into the air and 45 feet down the
first-base line.
At the same time, the
Phillies also went into a funk. Turns out the previous
management had folded the
team out from under David and Charlie Rendon, our
first baseman, so David was
constantly hunting for players.
Especially pitchers.
Effective pitchers, it seems, are just as rare in the
over-40 set as they are
everywhere else. (I'm convinced that some evil
genius has a couple
thousand of the world's best pitchers slaving away for
him on a remote Caribbean
isle. Where are you, 007?)
He did not get desperate
enough to let me pitch right away, even after I
spent three weeks learning
the St. Mary's screwball by osmosis (I covered
the Rattlers during their
run to the Division II national championship,
missing only one Phillies game
in the process). It does have a tendency to
entertain teammates during
warm-ups, though.
"What the hell was
that?" Rendon asked one afternoon in Seguin.
"Throw me that riser
again," second baseman David Flores said jokingly.
I did escape right field
for a couple of games, filling in at first base.
One was against the
Diamondbacks, a gang famous for a team batting average
of about .600 and a guy who
lets out an Indian war whoop when he connects
with a pitch.
It was in that game, at Southwest
Texas State, that I got the yellow badge
of clumsiness, taking a
warm-up throw - I don't think we recorded an out in
the infield, so it was a
slow day at first - off my leg.
A friend of my son's
noticed the black-yellow-and-blue, baseball-sized
bruise on my thigh and
asked "Gee, Mr. King , what have you been doing?"
We struggled to score runs
most of the season, losing by football-sized
scores like 24-3 and
waiting right up to game time to have enough players.
Some teams generously
loaned us an outfielder for games, and one, the
Texans, let us use a
pitcher who was as good as or better than their
starter. As the season
progressed, David 's phone messages reminding me of
games sounded increasingly
worried.
"Was that your
manager?" my wife asked one day. "He sounded so ...
depressed."
David was a great manager,
limping around on a surgically repaired knee and
handing out advice like
"go home and take several naproxen sodium" (the
generic version of Aleve,
Unofficial Sore Legs, Back, Neck and Shoulders
Pain Reliever of the Old
Man's League).
It was about midseason when
people started to recognize me as the "guy from
the paper."
"Tried to hit that one
all the way back to the Express-News, huh?" the
home-plate umpire said jokingly
after an enormous swinging strike.
"You ought to write
something about all these old guys out here, sweating,"
one team's catcher said in
jest on a sweltering afternoon.
We finally won our second
game, holding off the Pirates at Southwest Texas.
In that game, I stranded
six runners on base, but finally got another hit -
a line-drive double down
the left-field line. They wouldn't let me keep the
ball, though.
That started a four-game
hitting streak (and an 8 of 9 to end the season).
Not exactly DiMaggio
numbers (neither Joe nor Dom), but extremely
satisfying, even if it was
mostly those "nobody on, two out, No. 10 guy in
the batting order and the
pitcher needs a Gatorade" singles.
Through it all, it was
obvious that everybody in the league was having fun.
Many players are on more
than one team, joining us in the over-40 bracket
and another team in the
over-30 or over-50s. Everybody was helpful and
encouraging to a rookie
("Reflexes are the first thing to go," one first
baseman observed after I
was plunked by a pitch), especially one who doesn't
run, throw or hit very
well.
And then came the last game
of the season.
After hinting around about
pitching all year, I finally got David to let me
pitch. And as a pitcher,
well, I made a fine right fielder.
The pitching equivalent of
"everything that can happen to a guy" happened in
that game: Walked the
leadoff guy and two more. Balked one of those runners
to second. Hit a batter
(fortunately, I was not throwing hard enough to
break a pane of glass). Gave
up four hits.
"Time," David
says, coming to the mound with a grin. "Not nervous, are you?"
He let me finish the
inning, bless him. I got out of a two-runners-on jam
with a curveball that was
so far out of the strike zone that all the hitter
- who by that time was
exhausted from running the bases - could do was pop
up.
Numbers only a mother could
love: 0-1 career record, 45.00 earned-run
average.
Wait 'til next year.
dking@express-news.net