Happy Holidays to all my TOTS' teammates

TOTS Senior  Baseball Network

60-and-over baseball

Bookemdanosports is well over 2,000 posts. It's been quite a run and I hope to continue my postings for years to come.

I do want to take a moment and wish all my readers Merry Christmas and a happy holiday. There's a lot going on in the world of sports, especially for us local fans who are focused on Arizona football and basketball at the moment but I just want to say what a pleasure it's been to complete another season, another year, with my teammates on the Tucson Old Timers baseball club.

We are just weeks away from the start to the 48th season for the TOTS' organization, which fielded its first team back in 1968. We continue to march on with a roster of close to 60 players -- all of whom are 60 and over and still enjoy playing America's Pastime -- the game of baseball.

We lost one of our all-time greats this fall with the loss of Ed Rife, one of the most talented shortstops ever to don a Tucson Old Timers (TOTS) uniform. Our hearts go out to the Rife Family. Ed will always be with us as we take the field every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Udall Park.

It's been quite a year for the TOTS, who sent an all-TOTS 65-and-over team to the Men's Senior Baseball League (MSBL) World Series in Phoenix in October. It was an experience the players will never forget. With any luck, we'll all be back to compete in the senior World Series in 2015.

We also sent seven members of the club to compete in the 70-and-over division of the MSBL World Series, the team was called the Arizona Scorpions and was coached by Jerry Hamelin, who dedicated our participation in the prestigious senior World Series to our friend and teammate, Ed Rife.

We have had our share of injures and illnesses this year from hamstrings to knee operations to you name it, but somehow, someway the players bounce back and return to action.

The TOTS will be back in 2015, older, better and stronger. Once, again Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from Danny "Pigpen" Price -- author of Bookemdanosports.