We are all headed there: As senior ballplayers, the long, winding road is full of exciting stories and years of adventures, calamities and triumphs, mixed with gaps of absence and then seemingly unending seasons of fruitfulness; but somewhere, way out there, is the real end of ball playing days. When that will come, no one really knows, for it is totally an individual situation; but even for seniors, there is a terminus, a final at bat, the last out. Trying to stave this off is the unspoken goal of each player. Of course there will be another game, we all think, there always has been and after all that I have been through, I’m not quitting yet!
Yes, seniors, we know this feeling of self-preservation, but someday we all are called back to the dugout for the last time, that funny little guy that has always been there, older than all of us. He’ll simply turn out the ballpark lights.
Sound dreary? But it does have a terrible ring of truth to it. Sadly, for some, this final curtain falls much too soon, but somehow, for others, it is held suspended by a kind of invisible miracle for many long years. Guess this is what makes the guys still playing at 70+ (I graciously admit that there are even some 80+ around) so very unique and so very interesting to the rest of us. They have escaped the ultimate crippling injury, held at bay the pressing circumstances of real life, which constantly threaten to take us away from the field. These past masters have managed to overcome all internal and external enemies to stand triumphant. Can you imagine the total amount of injuries they have played through during their careers? The constant struggle just to get the body in shape and out there? The amazing feat of being able to stay up with the "kids" and play their scheduled games to the finish! They are indeed the ultimate senior victors, claiming the crown of shinning glory of senior softball.
Ken Beynon came into the senior league when he was 50 back in Florida. He continued playing in three different states, until he settled in the Boise league in 2000. He was forced to retire for health reasons last year at age 74, but it may not be over for him yet: "I want to get out there and keep it up on some level," he states. "It’s great exercise and of course it’s the most fun thing in the world." He has joined a group of guys who meet week day mornings to play some low-impact ball, which includes the use of wooden bats. This hardy group begins at 65+ and they like using the less threatening bats for defensive reasons. They say that the ball still jumps off of the bat well enough. Ken says that, "I feel like I can play better in this environment anyway. It’s at my own pace and there’s no real pressure like in the recreational league. We can just have a great time. If there aren’t enough guys to get a game up, we just practice around. It’s one of the best ways to keep in shape I can imagine."
In this type of day league, they naturally have the parody in the games because the skill levels are basically so similar. Dividing up into a couple of teams from this group of interested guys is easy. It’s just a matter of getting enough bodies to come out, a bit of organization and that’s it. It is truly remarkable to watch them. What studs!
I don’t know about the rest of you guys out there under 70, but I seriously don’t know if I will still be able to maintain all that it takes to get out onto the playing field by the time I’m 70. To just stick to it and keep on coming out seems a bit incredible.
Some years back, I umpired in several states for SSUSA and had the opportunity to watch 70+ teams from all over, whacking those line drives, snagging those sharply hit balls and making the throws. They could do it all. They sprinted for the bases and jogged in and out for the full seven innings. What kind of stamina must be required to do such a thing!
Using astronomy as an example of these shining stars, there are two ways stars come into their last stage: The one kind keeps compressing (the ever-present pull of gravity, ageing, is constantly drawing the star’s energy in, with only small amounts of release, until the mass just slowly becomes inert, a cold, stellar clinker). The other type reaches a point in its old age where it is so compressed with its larger mass, that it implodes from the gravitational pressures and this sets off a gigantic explosion, in release of the atomically unbearable strain: super nova. That’s sort of what these 70+ softballers appear to be: Something so brilliant and bursting with an unexpected energy that they fling almost all (is it 90%?) of their mass into the regions of space, sprinkling seeds as it were. Wonder and inspiration is what they bring to the rest of us on-lookers. They make us want to cheer them on, to keep on, but that would be needless as they are compelled by their inner drive to keep on anyway. With sardonic smiles and few words, they just keep on hitting the ball the best they can, running with all they’ve got, catching and throwing like it were a championship game.
Isn’t that what we want to see at the end of the road for us? Can you sometimes picture yourself there, standing forth out of the ashes of the great implosion, totally flinging all that you have received from the game’s pull right back into the general populace? Shining brighter than you ever have (it’s all on the inside) in your long, illustrious career. Not thinking ahead to any other game all focused on this one present game. Hey, it may be the last, the most glorious, finally coming for which you have spent your life practicing. Where you can release that final burst of energy in your will that say it all.
And, after all, isn’t that why you came out here anyway, over 20 some years ago, to display the senior constellation that proves if you keep on trying hard enough, you just may super nova? The best part is that the shared energy they give off around them at the end will spill out to form the stuff that other stars will be made of someday. How do you want to go out?