TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/121889/12188900.075

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 6KB | 98 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.