It’s not the major leagues, but it’s a blast
Published 10:22 pm Wednesday, July 28, 2010
LYNNWOOD
By day they have careers, families and other grown-up responsibilities. But for a few hours every week the men of the Puget Sound Senior Baseball League – and a few women – turn the clock back to childhood.
Ah, the magic of baseball.
For those few precious hours, slacks, ties and other professional attire are replaced with caps, spikes and gloves. And at that point the cares of the work-a-day world dissolve into bliss.
“This is the most amazing thing you could ever do,” said Ken Jones of Edmonds, a 57-year-old business owner. “You forget all your troubles. You forget about work, home, money, everything. You’re here to play ball and have fun.”
Of course, none of these guys will ever see the inside of Safeco Field without buying a ticket. In this league, if a ball goes over a fence it’s almost certainly a foul at the plate. Long throws across the infield have more loop than zip. And the chubby guy over there who looks like a coach, he’s the second baseman.
But that’s the beauty of senior baseball. A guy can resemble someone’s grandpa – chances are, he is – and still go 2-for-4 with three RBI.
And whatever the league lacks in athletic brilliance, it returns tenfold in joy.
Playing baseball “is just a passion, and everybody here has that passion,” said Jones, a pitcher in his 15th PSSBL season. “Nobody is saying, ‘Oh, I wish I had something else to do.’ Everybody is here because they want to be here.
“You look forward to this all day, and then you leave work early to get here. And when you’re there in the dugout, you can’t even believe you’re doing it,” he said.
The PSSBL has more than 1,000 players between the ages of 21 and, if you can believe it, 88. Most played baseball through high school. Some went on to play in college. A few even played professionally. But most, over time, drifted away from the game.
The opportunity to play again “is kind of a great re-awakening,” said 58-year-old Tom Evans Krause of Edmonds, who is in his 15th PSSBL season and is also the league president. “I’d forgotten how much I loved this game, how great it is and that I can still play it. You’re not as good as you were in high school and college, but that doesn’t matter. Because you’re still going to enjoy it.”
The PSSBL began in 1989 with a handful of teams and has since grown to 68 teams in eight divisions spanning five age groups. It is the third-largest adult baseball league in the United States behind leagues on New York’s Long Island and in the Washington D.C. area.
Twenty-one is the PSSBL’s minimum age, but most players are 30 and older. A good many are already than 50.
“And age is a great equalizer,” chuckled Bill Foltz, a 52-year-old manufacturer’s representative who lives in Bothell and is a third baseman/pitcher.
The league represents an array of profession- doctors, lawyers, teachers, laborers and even former politicians. At a 45-and-older game last week, a team called the Timbers had a first baseman named Phil Talmadge. The 57-year-old Talmadge is a onetime Washington state senator, and later a member of the Washington Supreme Court.
The opposing squad that night, the Sugar Kings, had a roster that included Marlin Appelwick, 56, the presiding chief judge of the state’s Division I Court of Appeals (wonder if he ever argues with umpires); Bart Waldman, 61, the executive vice-president of legal and government affairs for the Seattle Mariners; and a first baseman named John Olerud. No, not the former Mariners first baseman. This is his 66-year-old father, and an ex-pro player himself.
Of course, senior players don’t hit the ball as far, throw as hard or run as fast as they did years ago. Probably the only thing they do better these days is hurt themselves, with pulled muscles being the most common injury. But even getting out of bed the next morning often involves some discomfort.
And wives tend to be less than sympathetic.
When 45-year-old Steve Keefe of Arlington, an engineer at Mount Vernon’s Skagit Valley Hospital, gets hurt, “I don’t even tell my wife,” he said. “She’d just say, ‘If you’re going to play, you figure it out.’”
“You definitely don’t discuss injuries,” Foltz agreed.
“I can’t whine about (injuries),” Jones said, “because then my wife’s all over me.”
Still, he went on, “my wife thinks this is terrific. She knows how much I look forward to it. So she’s very supportive. And I think I’m a better husband and a better father because of it.”
Many PSSBL players once played slowpitch softball, which is the other primary diamond sport for middle-aged athletes. Among them, Jones and Keefe.
“But once you’ve played hardball, you’d never go back,” Jones said.
“I’m a hardball player now,” echoed Keefe, a utility player in his sixth season. “And I wish I would’ve started doing this way earlier.”
Although time has eroded their talents, it doesn’t seem to matter much. A younger player’s delight might come from a towering home run or a diving defensive grab, but for these guys it’s simply the chance to play what Keefe calls “the greatest game on earth.”
“I still try hard to do the things I used to do,” he said. “And if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.”
“Regardless of the years having (diminished) your skills, there’s still lot of pride that goes into it,” Krause said. “And I mean pride in a good way. Because you still want to play your best and have fun doing it.”
Rich Myhre writes for The Herald in Everett.
