At first glance, you're certain you're seeing a boys' American Legion baseball game.
On a blustery Saturday morning at Hillcrest Union Park, the players are wearing full uniforms right down to their socks and pitching the ball from full windups. A handful of women soothe children or knit in the stands. But upon closer inspection the eye takes in a few more details. Many of the players have graying hair, if any, and their faces are dried and lined. Some have a good start on some serious paunch.Those aren't kids on the field, and those aren't their mommys in the stands.
"C'mon, honey, hit it!" a woman shouts down to the field.
"Nice try, Daddy!"
Middle-aged men, decked out in Major League uniforms, are playing genuine, hey-batta-batta, real-thing, hard-ball baseball. It's the Cubs versus the Cardinals this morning, and the lineup includes a plumber, a TV anchorman, a computer consultant, several construction types, three trucking company executives and a real estate businessman. For several hours each week they leave all that behind to pursue their real love.
"There's nothing like that feeling of standing in the batter's box again," says pitcher/anchorman Doug Jardine.
That could stand as the theme of the Utah 30-Plus Baseball Association, a sort of Little League for grownups, ages 30 years and older. It's an idea whose time has come.
Because sports in this country are tied to the school system or tailored to the young and gifted, graduation often means the end of competitive athletics for adults. At best, there are only poor substitutes. Track athletes turn to road racing, basketball players to church or rec league ball, football players to golf or racquetball. For baseball players, it's softball.
For Jeff Thompson, a Salt Lake salesman, that wasn't enough. For years, Thompson, a former high school baseball player, made do with softball, but it wasn't the same. Would Jimmy Connors replace tennis with Whack-A-Mole? "There's just something about leading off base, something about the feel of the smaller ball in your hand," says Thompson. "I grew up playing baseball, not softball. I don't know of any kids who grew up playing softball."
Thompson saw a magazine article about senior league baseball in 1988. He contacted the league in New York and learned how to start a league in Salt Lake City. He donated more than $5,000 of his own money to purchase uniforms and equipment, and in 1989 the league was born. There were six teams that first year; there are 15 this year, and there could easily be many more.
"The only thing that's limiting our growth is the availability of fields," says Thompson, the league president. "High schools won't allow us on their fields, and none of them have lights. By the time we can get on their fields, if they'll let us, it's dark. We can't play in the afternoon. We have to wait until we get off work."
The sporting community would do well to accomodate the older set. Masters sports are on the rise. Today's adults - the aging baby boomers - are no longer as willing to give up their games. Masters track and field meets are held every weekend in Southern California. Road races are giving more attention and recognition to master's runners. There is a 30-and-over, full-contact football league in Utah.
Utah's 30-plus baseball league is an affiliate of a national organization - Men's Senior Baseball League - that includes leagues in more than 200 cities and more than 35,000 players. The league also has a rival organization for the 30-plus set, the Roy Hobbs League.
Utah's 30-plus league has attracted men from all professions, ranging in age from 30 to 55: attorneys, surgeons, airline pilots, schoolteachers, salesmen, contractors, painters, businessmen. Most of the league's players played high school baseball; some of them played in college; a handful of them played professionally. Ex-Major Leaguers Thayne Woodard, Doug Howard, Rick Sofield and Mickey Mahler now pay to play a game they were once paid to play.
Not even 16 years of professional baseball, nine in the Majors, was enough for the 41-year-old Mahler. He retired in 1987 at 35, but not really. He continued to play in various amateur leagues - with a brief detour to the short-lived professional Senior League - and finally joined the new 30-plus league in Salt Lake City.
"I love the game," he says. "You just don't up and quit after all those years. Jim Bouton had a wonderful quote in his book, `Ball Four.' He wrote, `You think you have a grip on a baseball, but it turns out to be the other way around.' But for most players, if the game had a grip on them, they couldn't reciprocate. They had no opportunity to continue playing baseball after their school years. A few Major Leaguers notwithstanding, the heart and soul of 30-plus baseball is the players who never got the chance to fulfill Major League dreams.
Howard Reynolds, who co-owns a trucking company, didn't even play high school baseball. He had to quit the game at the age of 10. His family was on the move or living in the country, and he had to work to support himself during his senior year in high school. After graduation, there was a church mission and college and marriage and children and a growing business to attend to.
"I had to get on with life," says Reynolds.
There was no time for ball. Then the 30-plus baseball league came along five years ago. Reynolds, 36, is a catcher and centerfielder for the Cubs, as well as one of the team's sponsors.
"He never had a chance to do this growing up, so I'm real supportive of it," says Reynolds' wife, Corrin, who also serves as the league's statistician.
"It's a second chance," says Reynolds. "There are a lot of second-chance people in this league."
Scott McAfee, who at 35 is one of the league's best hitters, was a good high school player, but he didn't pursue the college game. "I was in love," he explains. He married at 20. When the Salt Lake Trappers came to town a couple of years later, he had a mortgage and a family. He played in the Beehive League for a few years - a summer league for college players - but finally quit to spend more time with his family. Then one night, at the age of 32, he was asked to fill in for a missing player in the 30-plus league. "I was hooked," he says.
Rick Hagen, a 35-year-old pitcher, thought his career was finished after graduating from Granite High. He made do with softball for a decade but grew tired of it. When Hagen found the 30-plus league, he rounded up many of his old high school teammates and formed a team that went on to win the first championship.
"I thought there was no way in my life I'd ever get to step on a mound and throw a hardball in a game situation again," he says. "There is still nothing like hardball and the game situations and hitting curves and fastballs."
Up in the aluminum stands, the women sit and watch their husbands live their second childhood. This is where the real entertainment is. Snippets of conversation on a Saturday morning: "How come he never slides?" one of the wives wonders aloud, watching a base runner.
"Well, if he doesn't slide, I won't have to wash his uniform," says the base runner's wife.
Moments later, a player strikes out swinging. His wife sighs. "I'm glad we took separate cars," she says finally.
With an outsider's sympathetic ear in the stands this morning, the women warm to the task of commiseration. Clearly, they are in a league of their own. "What I like is when we get home at 10:45 (p.m.), and they get on the phone and rehash the game for hours," says one lady.
"Yeah, till midnight," says another.
"You should see all the icepacks back at the house after the game," says one woman. "They all think they're 18. By the end of the season not one of them doesn't have a hand or a leg or something that's hurt."
This notwithstanding, the women, like any good Little League mothers, are good sports and show up when they can to watch the 20 or so games that comprise a season.
Because of the lack of fields, the season doesn't begin until late July and finishes in October with a post-season tournament. Teams retain largely the same roster from year to year, but each spring they hold tryouts and a draft for new players or players who want to switch teams. In November, the league assembles a team to send to a "World Series" in Phoenix. Last year's series attracted 160 teams.
"I'd like to see the league played up and down the Wasatch Front and throughout the state," says Thompson. "Right now, it's just in Salt Lake City."
The league boasts that it is independent and uses no taxpayer money. Each player pays a fee as high as $160 to play, depending on the amount of sponsorship his team has secured. The money pays for replica Major League uniforms, umpires, rented fields, lights for night games and equipment. With all this, they can throw, catch, swing a bat and batter their old bodies for three months.
As Jardine says, "We might all be over 30, but this is serious business. We're into it. We play hard."
Reynolds, a catcher, has collected broken ribs, broken fingers, torn ligaments in his wrist and knee and countless bruises. "You catch for seven innings and the next day you feel it," he says. "It's three or four days before you're ready to play again. We have two players at this position."
Along with catcher, the league's other hazardous position, league officials say, is pitcher. "We've had two spontaneous fractures of the humerus (the large bone of the upper arm)," says Thompson. "It's happened 50 to 60 times nationally. As the pitcher throws, the bone snaps like a twig. Bone deteriorates and loses strength with age. There's a theory that you can bring the muscle strength back, but not necessarily the bone. The muscle can become stronger than the bone. It can overpower the bone."
Batters can find their swings again easier than a pitcher can reclaim his 80-mile-per-hour fastball or his curveball. It takes conditioning and time, something few players afford themselves.
"It's probably not very smart to throw a curve ball at our age, but when you get up on that mound you think, I gotta do it," says Jardine, who last pitched some 14 years ago as a BYU freshman before the 30-plus league came along.
Perhaps that's why Mahler says, "I don't like to pitch now. It's hard work. I like to hit. I don't train to pitch. If I did, I would dominate the league. But this isn't the pros. The bad thing for me is, I don't want people saying, `I saw Mahler pitch, and he's not worth anything.' " The league has modified the rules to protect and accommodate the older player. Collisions with the catcher have been banned. "He's got to go to work tomorrow," says Thompson. There are unlimited defensive substitutions, and the batting order can consist of any number of players, from nine to 12 or more. Courtesy runners can be designated for as many as two batters. Players are allowed to play defense without batting and vice versa.
"Guys are paying to play ball," says Thompson. "This gives more players a greater opportunity to play. One guy might not be a good hitter but an outstanding shortstop. This gives him a chance to contribute to the team and play."
How good are these guys? Two years ago they took two of three games from Dixie College, but this year Dixie swept the series.
"It's way below the big leagues," says Mahler. "It's just for fun."
Says Reynolds, "We have guys in the league right now who throw 80 or 85 miles per hour. But most of the pitchers have to rely on junk. You won't overpower a lot of batters in this league. There's good hitting talent. We have a lot of knuckleball pitchers."
Like most players, Renolds and Mahler have contemplated the day when they will leave the game behind. Mahler takes it a year at a time. "My wife keeps reminding me that I'm getting older," he says.
Reynolds, faced with the prospect of quitting someday, will know that he found what he was looking for.
"This league has given me the chance to do things I never experienced as a kid," he says. "I've hit home runs; I had never hit a ball over the wall before. I know what it's like now to hit a two-out RBI single to win the game. I've played all the positions. I got a chance to develop as a player, and I was a better player when I was older than when I was young. It's been fun, and I'll do it as long as my body holds up and I've got the support of my wife."