LYNNWOOD — As the years pass, waistlines grow and hairlines recede. For men in their 50s and beyond, these are the facts of life.
But for many men there is one thing that never changes, even as they age — the love of sport and the joy of competition. And as proof that games are not just for the young, a team of men in their late 50s and early 60s, all from in and around Snohomish County, headed to Las Vegas earlier this month for the 2014 Senior Softball-USA World Masters Championships.
Competing in the Men’s 55 and over AAA Division, the squad known as Team Pound split two games during the seeding portion of the three-day tournament. But once the field of 37 teams was in brackets for a double-elimination format, Team Pound caught fire. Over two days the team went undefeated in six games by a combined score of 112-73, including a 20-11 victory over the R&R Strokers from Oxnard, California, in the championship game.
When the final out was recorded — a ground ball that first baseman James Lewis of Everett scooped and carried to the bag — Team Pound erupted in jubilant celebration. “You had a team of 60-year-olds jumping around like 12-year-olds that’d just won the Little League World Series,” said Steve Goodrich, an IT specialist for the state’s Department of Corrections who lives in Snohomish. “It was nuts.”
“All heck broke loose,” said Tom Gorney of Lake Forest Park, who grew up in Everett and is a teacher in the Edmonds School District. “At the end of the game everybody was jumping around. It’s something I won’t ever forget.”
“We were just giddy,” added Lew Dickert of Mill Creek, an elementary school principal in the Snohomish School District. “It was a great moment.”
Before long, elation gave way to new emotions. “I was so choked up for the first couple of hours, I almost couldn’t talk,” Gorney said. “To win it with (longtime friends) … I really had trouble talking for a couple of hours. It was very emotional.”
And he was not alone. When Goodrich called his wife with the good news, “my voice cracked (with emotion),” he said.
Softball is one of the most popular team sports for seniors, both men and women. Indeed, at the Las Vegas tournament there were two brackets for teams 80 and older, and even a three-team bracket for teams 85 and older.
There are special rules to accommodate aging bodies. Some players have trouble making it to first base, let alone all the way around to home, so there is free substitution for pinch-runners. Also, to avoid bone-jarring and perhaps career-ending collisions at the plate, a special base line veers off a few feet from the plate so runners and the catcher miss each other (every play at home is a force, not a tag play).
But the biggest difference might be preparation. Senior softballers not only need ample time to warm up, but also to don knee braces, compression wraps and the like. Also, many players use liniments, and most takes regular doses of ibuprofen, an anti-pain, anti-inflammatory medication that Goodrich calls “senior softball candy.”
Years ago, Gorney saw older players downing ibuprofen pills before games, “and I laughed at them. I said, ‘If I ever have to do that, shoot me.’ But now they’re the lifeblood of the whole senior softball circuit.”
Along with his shoes, mitt and other equipment, Matt Schunke of Mountlake Terrace, a truck driver and a 40-year softball player, totes an extra bag of pharmaceutical supplies to every Team Pound game and practice.
“I have everything you need in my bag,” he said with a grin.
A year from now, Team Pound expects to defend its title at the 2015 World Masters Championships, this one scheduled for Phoenix. In the meantime they will continue playing their regular schedule of spring, summer and fall leagues, as they did last week on a balmy Thursday night at Lynnwood’s Meadowdale Playfields.
Schunke said he loves softball so much, “I wish we could play it year-round.” And Goodrich expects to keep playing “until I can’t.”
Gorney, who had surgery for a torn biceps muscle on July 30 and hurried to rehab for the Las Vegas tournament, says the team “is kind of like a family for all of us. And for me the camaraderie is everything. Rather than sitting on the coach and watching TV, you get out and play softball with a group of guys, you banter back and forth, and it’s just a great time.”
“It keeps you sharp, it keeps you connected, and it’s just fun to hang out with the guys,” Dickert said. “And if you don’t have to (quit), why let it go?”
For this team, Dickert added, there will always be the memory of a special tournament in Las Vegas. And to help them remember, each player will receive a special championship ring, expected to arrive in a few weeks.
“We’d already been connected before this, but now we’ll all be connected forever around this experience,” he said. “It’s a shared moment and a pretty profound moment, and it’s one that all of us have.”
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