There is nothing like coming up to bat in a tight situation and then connecting for a long one into the gap; as you dig for 1st, you blissfully watch the ball sail far out to the outfield, splitting the outfielders and rolling merrily towards the fence. You know that an extra base or two is in the offing and it puts a surge of power into your legs and a thrill through your brain that makes you the Hero, just for that one big play. Our senior leagues can do the very same thing for us, as individual players. Everyone who’s involved in the league can get in on picking up those extra bases. It’s not merely that we smack out our usual base hit, by playing in our regular league games, but the extra power comes when we also join in on other league events, which can be worked up by interested members of the local senior league.

Making regular, open-for-all practices available to all of your senior players can be an added bonus to your league and can spread into several other softball related events. First, if you can, divide the practices more or less into the large age divisions. But if there are not enough players showing up, you’ll have to go with mixing all the age groups together. Provide the practice field(s), then call your list of players to let them know they are welcome. Word of mouth works, but calling is immediate and more powerful.

So what’s the best way to set this up? Beginning in early spring, the usable softball fields can be found easily around any average town: They are behind churches, on school grounds, in parks and even some of the local city recreation fields are available. And all year long there are those empty fields located on the public school grounds: You can always work your way up to better fields once you begin. Weekends are usually the best times to arrange for these "open practices". It just takes a few practices to start things happening. Just let them know the place and time and you have done most of the required work. They will come! Actually, this is one topic of business that the managers of the senior league can initiate at their first yearly meeting. Locating the available fields is not that difficult, who else would want to be out there anyway, except a bunch of motivated seniors who know how to get what they want.

Before the beginning of any season, all ballplayers need to loosen up (carefully!) their throwing arm. This important gyration can be accomplished during these early spring, low-impact sessions. Along with the practical benefits of getting the arm loose and doing some low-impact running, is the general meaningful bonding of these vintage yardmen. Open practices help form special avenues of camaraderie, in which many of the men find not only a common ground concerning softball, but also discover other mutual interests in life. For the average senior player, just having it confirmed that there exists a bunch of other older guys who are willing to go out there and suffer through the difficulties and struggles of getting into shape.

All of this softball activity and the inner-mixing of players brings a sort of indefinable joy, which we all experienced decades ago. And just imagine how it must gladden every manager’s heart when he sees that at least some of his players are out there, running and rolling the ball around.

THE ACTUAL PRACTICE

After the beginning session of easy-tossing among the practitioners has ended, the bats start com’in out. Everyone wants to take some swings, and this is good, as the non-batters go out to the field and shag whatever comes their way. Catching and throwing, is there much more to defense? The b.p. feature of open practices soon becomes the main course. Then, after so many weekends of this, the participants will be thoroughly convinced that they are now ready to play their best game. Its no winter’s day-dream now: let’s play a ball game, the practice games have arrived.

The best ingredient of the "open" process is the total mixing of different players from the same age group but of different divisions. At the beginning of each season, a certain amount of the players will move from one team to another, or new teams altogether might pop up. So it’s best to promote the general unified concept among the league players. We are all in one big senior ball club anyway. The more readily we can mix together in a casual atmosphere, freely cook’in with this priceless ingredient, the better our senior league solidarity will be.

The next logical step from these Saturday morning practices, (which will progress into great scrimmage games) is to plan a day league. Using the player-base data from the open practices, see if there is interest in organizing a game or two during the week. If the turn out is very good, get a few managers, sit down and there is the beginning of a day league with regularly scheduled games. More on developing a Day League later.

OVER THE WALL

One surprising extra base hit of our senior league came from a source far over the other side of the wall: The local prison (housing low security inmates) has a bunch of older guys who play softball and are always looking for a game. Our mostly 60+ division has been able to round up plenty of players to go out and play on their rough, all-dirt field. Somehow, it is more than adequate and the games are always filled with the usual fun and good will of softball. Our local players come away with a sense of having done something good, although it was a little bit on the rough side. It’s a stout character builder for the players involved, and this over the waller serves to prove to these venturous seniors that they can still go the yard, even at their age.

Encourage each other to gear up for these exciting extra clouts in your senior league and work them into your game plan in the near future. Having the power of so many men involved in your senior league lends ample opportunity for swinging for the fences in many different parks and much more frequently!