TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121889/12188900.075

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.6 KB | 108 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 76

Never Having to Grow Up


The latest geriatric jocks are (creak, groan) baseball players

By Richard Corliss


    It was a perfect day for baseball. Now if only the baseball
had been perfect. At McKechnie Field in Bradenton on the Gulf
Coast, the midweek weather might have been auditioning for a
Florida picture postcard, but the hometown Explorers committed
three errors, looked orphaned on the base paths and lost by
nine runs. After the game, Wayne Garrett, the former New York
Met, who entered the lineup in the eighth inning, was asked if
he was exhausted from playing. "No," Garrett sighed, "but I was
tired of watching."

    Welcome to the Senior Professional Baseball Association,
where the crack of the bat meets the creak of the bone. Founded
this year by Arizona real estate developer Jim Morley, the
S.P.B.A. is into its first three-month season, fielding eight
Florida teams of ex-major leaguers 35 or older (catchers may be
32). Most of the superstars are missing: Reggie Jackson is
occupied with his classic autos, Jim Palmer with his underwear,
Pete Rose with hawking his tarnished name. But enough good ole
boys of summer are participating to help ease the winter of
discontent every baseball addict endures between the last out
of the World Series and the first bud of spring training.

    They will also be tapping the deep font of goodwill toward
aging sports idols. The American male wants to keep seeing
athletes do what they once did best. In golf, the senior circuit
earns more money than the entire women's tour. Former tennis
aces draw big crowds in their own slots at the major
tournaments. Boxing, aside from Mike Tyson's bum-of-the-month
festival, is one big Over the Hill Gang. Last week's waltz
between Sugar Ray Leonard, 33, and Roberto Duran, 38, was the
top-grossing fight in history. Next month George Foreman, now
bigger than Mount Rushmore and twice as old, will face perennial
white heavyweight Gerry Cooney. Someone will get hurt --
probably the first one who throws a punch -- and people will pay
to watch. Like rock 'n' roll, sports used to be a young man's
game. But with the graying of America, the Stones go rolling on,
and geriatric jocks are big business.

    Well, maybe not big Senior Baseball business. The eight
S.P.B.A. owners, each of whom staked a reported $850,000 for
the first season, are not expecting quick profits. With some
games attracting as few as 100 paying customers, a team or two
may fold before the scheduled February play-offs. The players,
whose salaries average $23,000, won't get rich either. But what
they want is to prove, to themselves and others, that there is
life after Fan Appreciation Day. "Hell," says ex-Yankee Graig
Nettles in the S.P.B.A. yearbook, "if I can stay in baseball,
I may never have to grow up." The same goes for the fan,
especially at long distance. Just checking S.P.B.A. stats in USA
Today keeps the faithful in touch with the game's liturgy. To
catch a Senior game on a remote radio signal -- to hear "Bobby
Bonds now batting against Rollie Fingers" -- is to be
time-warped into any fan's favorite baseball era: Back When.

    And to see a game in person is to watch The Natural
replayed in super slo-mo, but often only the outtakes. Mopey
grounders duck under the gloves of groaning shortstops. The 90
ft. between bases can loom like a C-5A runway when a Senior
tries stretching a single into a double -- except that
outfielders frequently concede the extra base on elusive fly
balls. The players, as considerate of their team's equipment
manager as they are of their own vulnerable bodies, rarely dirty
their uniforms with stabs at a circus catch or a headfirst
steal. They know that those feats of reckless grace are mostly
memories.

    Age inflicts its cunning humiliations on any sportsman's
skills. At times gravity takes its toll too. Though an S.P.B.A.
locker room reveals plenty of movie-star musculature, other
athletes have surrendered to paunch lines. Wags assert that you
can't tell the players from the sportswriters. "A good team
from the rookie leagues could beat some of the Seniors," says
Jim Brown, a Tougaloo, Miss., college professor and an
aficionado of minor league baseball. "These guys don't have the
speed or the hunger."

    Maybe not, but if enough fans get hungry, it won't matter.
Proponents of all-weather, all-age baseball can take heart from
the rallying cry of Cy Young winner Vida Blue, now with the St.
Lucie Legends: "Hey, the majors will become our minor leagues."
Or fans can sit back in the Florida sun and enjoy not the best
baseball but a whole lot of it. On that midweek afternoon in
Bradenton, the visiting West Palm Beach Tropics put on a
big-league display of power and wiles. Mickey Rivers, spark plug
of the last Yankee team to win a World Series, slapped six
comely hits, though he was hurt and hobbling. Ron Washington,
late of the Minnesota Twins, bopped two of the Trops' five home
runs. The manager, cranky Dick Williams, chugged onto the field
to dispute a close play at first base and informed the umpire,
"I'm seein' 'em a helluva lot better than you're callin' 'em."

    By the eighth inning the line score looked like bowling
frames; West Palm led the Explorers 22-13. Yet the local fans
stayed put, stoking their enthusiasm with valiant quips as the
game got further out of reach. When it ended, after three hours
of ramshackle thrills, someone gaily shouted, "Let's play two!"
The Senior Leaguers might not be up to it, but the hot-stove
leaguers will never be tired of watching.