Tucson Old Timers (TOTS)
60-and-over baseball
A.C. Edwards is a 79-year-old rookie on the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers and he's still trying to get his feet wet on the field of play. Edwards played in 32 games in 2016, collecting six hits, and so far in 2017, he's hit safely twice in 33 plate appearances.
Edwards, who hails from Odessa, Texas, turns 80 on September 28, 2017 and will join a select group of three active 80-somethings on the TOTS -- Joe Aparacio, Jerry Smarik and Billy Heiny.
As a boy growing up in Odessa, it was "Friday Night Football" that got his attention, along with thousands and thousands of sports fans in the Odessa-Midland area...and in the great state of Texas as well.
"I went to high school in Odessa in the mid-1950s," Edwards said. "Football was big then. It was the thing to do on a Friday night."
Fast forward to the 80s and 90s and football really blossomed in Odessa and all over the state -- and there were times, and still is, the sport, the players, and its fans bordered emotionally on insanity. In fact, a movie was released in 2004 appropriately named Friday Night Lights, which centered around the 1988 football season of the Permian High School team and its coach, Gary Grimes, played in the film by actor Billy Bob Thornton.
As for Edwards, a soft spoken Texan with a big smile, Tucson is his home now and players on the Tucson Old Timers are his new friends.
A.C. was born Alvis Claton Edwards. "That's Alvis with an A and Claton with out the Y," he says.
Edwards doesn't remember a lot about his early years in Midland-Odessa, but he does remember one football player by the name of Wahoo McDaniel, a Choctaw-Chickasaw Native American who achieved fame as a professional American football player and, following his career in the American Football League(he actually played for the Houston Oilers, Miami Dolphins and the Denver Broncos), became a professional wrestler.
Of course, Edwards knew none of that. "I lost track of him after high school."
The TOTS have 45 players listed on their roster and close to 60 members and all the old-timers have crossed paths with somebody who was famous at one time or another.
But not too many members of the TOTS knew Wahoo McDaniel.
Just for the record, Edward "Wahoo" McDaniel passed away in 2002 at the age of 63.
A. C. is also a loyal Wildcat baseball fan and a good man!
ReplyDeleteLoved the Dancer Danny, finished in one day!
Thanks for being a loyal reader. Someday I might expand The Dancer and make a real novel out of it through a publisher...needs a lot more work...I'm getting older and just may concentrate on baseball until I'm in a wheelchair...and then write another book. Time will tell. As for A.C, quite a guy and he told me of the Indian kid in high school, but he had no idea what happened to him. But I found him on the internet. Wahoo is all over it. He was pro football player and wrestling. He had kidney failure and died of complications with diabetes at 63. Quit a story. I haven't had time to tell A.C. about his high shool friend. Maybe tomorrow at the game.
ReplyDelete