Behind the wheel: A drive to remember

The first week of September, I'll journey to Colorado to see my family. I will take the back roads out of Tucson and maneuver my way through all the towns that I have used as a backdrop in all my fiction books.

From the Old Pueblo to visits across the southern border into Magdalena...to Bisbee, to Douglas, to Phoenix -- all backdrops used in my book, The Loner, to the small towns like Cordes Junction, Mayer, Prescott, and Camp Verde -- all used in my book, Bucket Smith, followed by a journey north to Showlow and Pinetop and Flagstaff -- the area used as a backdrop in my book: The Dancer, and finally to the Four Corners area, of Cortez, Colorado, to Moab, Utah, to Grand Junction, Colorado and all the small towns along the Western Slope -- all of which were mentioned in my original middle-reader book, Billy's Victory.

I lived all of it inside my little brain -- all those fiction stories I have brought to life with so many characters I have met along the way and turned them into little movie stars. It's been quite the journey, in words, to the above cities and the countryside of all the little towns I have visited.

By Christmas, if all goes well, my new book, From Out of the Shadows, will hit the shelves, documenting ''my life" in words. If you read what's in print in front of you, and if you search a little between the lines, you should find my soul in there somewhere.

Now, I'm an octogenarian. Maybe I'm staring down my final decade, or two (that might be stretching it a bit). I look back now and see my past in living color, and I think of the heroes and the characters I've created. Is there still time to create more?

Tucson Old Timers: July/2026 stats

Keeping up with the numbers. Below is the TOTS stats for July/2026. As you can see we keep track of everything, except errors!

The 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers play baseball all 12 months of the year. The TOTS organization has been around for 59 seasons, dating all the way back to 1968. The archive books disappeared a few years ago but historian Dan Price has some modern day stats he can get to dating as far back as the year 2007. That’s almost 20 years, close to when Price, yours truly, started with the amateur baseball club.

 

About Bookemdanosports: Update 8/1/2026

 Bookemdanosports is still around, but for current events and more up-to-date stories, search my Facebook pages under the name Dan Price, my senior baseball 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers Facebook page, and my new Instagram account.

All of the above are off and rolling. Of course, my baseball page has been around since 2009, while my Instagram site started earlier in the year and is nearing 200 posts.

My blog still has five of my books on it for free. Just search on Bookemdanosports for the beginning of The Loner, The Return of Bucket Smith, The Dancer, and Billy's Victory. My fifth offering, Where Eagles Fly, is a short story. Just search my blogroll on the right side of my profile page for the chapters of all my books.

Thanks for following this octogenerian. I hope you continue to do so.

Excerpt from The Loner

 

Excerpt from The Loner 

The Jacksonville East Lawn Cemetery is located four miles north of town. Maggie’s grandparents are buried there. In the near future, Charles and Catherine Haggerty will join Maggie. My parents are there, too. One hundred steps to the northern corner of the cemetery. My grandparents, on the other hand, never ventured far from Benton. Their final resting place is only three miles from the old dealership.

With a slight breeze at my back and the early morning sun reflecting off my face, I looked south across the valley. Back in the early 1950s, you could locate the old farmhouse in a fraction of a second.

Not anymore. New homes now filled the valley, all the way to the forest line. I stood next to Maggie’s gravesite and looked south, following the tree line to the old railroad track — the stretch of track I hopped and skipped my way to town on as a young boy.

Some say you can never go back. I think that might be true, although I do not have a clue who made such a claim.

I remember the hunting and the fishing. The yellow bus I took to school. The old high school basketball gym and those awful, prehistoric, oversized leather balls we used to play with. I remember cruising up and down Main Street, pulling into the drive-up hamburger joint, and ordering just about everything on the menu at one time or another.

Life was so simple then, long before I boarded that runaway train and never returned.

Note: All my books are free to read on my blog. Search for The Loner, The Legend of Bucket Smith, The Dancer, and Billy's Victory in the February/2026 issues, while the chapters of Where Eagles Fly can be found in the June/2025 posts.

Happy reading!

Photo: by

 Priceless Captures Photography by Amelia

Tucson Old Timers at mid-point of 59th season

 

The 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers (TOTS) are at the mid-point of their 59th season. The amateur baseball organization has been around since 1968, and here in 2026, they are still swinging away as 35 players between the ages of 61 and 88 saw action during the hot month of June.

The club owned a combined .428 batting average in June, collecting 230 hits in 538 official at-bats. Randy Livingston led the club in hits with 20, Doug Harding in runs-scored with 13, and Jon Beady continued his assault on TOTS pitching with a .783 batting average, going 18 for 23, and was the club-leader in RBI with 12.

Five newcomers also entered with a bang in June. Scott Bultman went 10 for 20, Paul Montes went 5 for 13, Don Halla went 4 for 14, Dave DeChamps received his TOTS hat and went 6 for 11, while Michael Price, the newest and youngest member of the club, went 5 for 8. The five rookies combined for 16 RBI.

Three pitchers, Glen Vann, Mike Dawson, and Joe Opocensky, posted 2-1 records for the month. Dawson logged the most innings with 28. Opocensky was the strikeout king with eight.

Father's Day and baseball

 "Hey, Dad, You Wanna have a catch?"

Another Father's Day is just a few days away. During three of my favorite baseball films, The Field of Dreams, The Natural, and For the Love of the Game, there is one constant, one moment when the hero of the film has a 'catch' with his son.

I'm in the midst of my ninth decade on this earth. I've put a baseball in the hands of both of my sons, my three grandsons, and two of my great-grandsons.

From the desk of Great-Grandpa Dan

Photos: Top photos 1) My two sons at the Field of Dreams Tournament in Iowa in September/2025; 2) Dan and son, Michael, playing in 2012 with the Orioles of the Tucson MSBL; 3) My youngest son, Dan, and his son, Chase, getting ready for school.

More photos: 1) Dan Sr. (80) and Michael (61), on the day of the first game for Michael as a member of the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers. Photos 2 and 3) My great-grandson Braven at a Rockies game and with his first glove; 4) My grandson, Daniel, with his son (and my oldest great-grandson), Fallon, playing ball at a park in Colorado; 5) My oldest son, Michael, with his son Jadon, now 26, at Chase Field; 6) The oldest baseball player that ever lived with grandsons, Chase and Daniel...and a very special photo of my to sons, Michael and Danny, Annie and me...and the last photo (7) of my sliding grandson Jadon Price, who went from club ball, to high school ball as a centerfielder for Tucson Ironwood Ridge High School eight years ago.

Under the Ramada, 2026

The Boys of Summer, winter, and fall are still swinging the bat at Udall Park.

A bunch of Tucson Old Timers gather under the Ramada or grab a chair and sit behind home plate at Udall Park after their Friday morning games.

They meet after a 60-and-over baseball game. They pop a beer can or two, talk about the close plays, the booming hits, the dropped fly balls, the errant throws...well, you name it -- everything (I mean everything) is open for discussion.

The two dozen or so old-time ball players -- some with dust still clinging to their uniforms, some with bloody knees and skinned-up elbows -- range in age from 61 to 87. Baseball, America's favorite pastime, is generally the first subject discussed as the old timers try their best to recall stories of yesteryear -- back in the day, back when the LA Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants were the New York Giants, back in the day when players like Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, and Henry Aaron led their teams to victory.

The players discuss what it was like going to a game at Ebbets Field, Fenway Park, Camden Yards, or Wrigley Field.

Some of the old timers tell of the day when they were just a youngster, with a bag of popcorn in one hand and a soda in the other, as Ted Williams stepped to the plate in Boston or Ernie Banks knelt down on one knee in the on-deck circle in Chicago, or when Pete Rose went 5 for 5 in Cincinnati, or when Hoyt Wilhelm unleashed a knuckleball in Baltimore.

The conversation moves on to "life in general" -- to such things as my first car, my first truck, my first job, the worst job I ever had, the best job I ever had...or there was a time I froze to death in Pittsburgh, Buffalo...or how I survived a cold and windy day at the ballpark in San Francisco...in Milwaukee, Cleveland or Chicago.

The old-timers will outdo one another with stories like I walked five miles to school -- in a driving rainstorm, or snowstorm, or drove to my first job with ice covering the front windshield. They will recall their first week at boot camp...when they got out of the service...their first day of college...the day they met the gal they would marry...or the day they walked down the alter with the confetti swirling above them as they hopped into a convertible and sped off with nothing more than a handful of dreams and a goal or two, written on a piece of paper and tucked away in their pocket.

The Tucson Old Timers are now 50, 60, 70, and, in some cases, 80 years old. They recall when they were young ballplayers, quick with the bat and quick to the ball. Now, in 2026, they grab a beer and toast one another.

"Nice hit today! Good throw! Way to run!"

They had survived the game. They had survived a lifetime.

And they aren't done yet.