A shocking discovery at the doctor's office

Tucson Old Timers (TOTS)

60-and-over baseball

from the desk of Pigpen Price...



After suffering since last November with a neck injury and unable to make a throw from third to first, I began to assume the worst. No more baseball for a while. Heck with that...play on.

I decide in late March to finally see somebody. By this time, there's a lot of crackling going on and I'm to the point where I have trouble checking for traffic when I come to a light. The X-rays show just what you would expect: a few dark images of an old man with a neck that has all the makings of a crossword puzzle. The primary care doctor advises weeks of therapy.

By this time, I've switched from third base to a completely new position -- FIRST BASE!. This, of course, is where Goldy plays, my favorite player on the Arizona Diamondbacks. Oops! Let's fast forward a bit. Paul Goldschmidt is now in St. Louis with the Cardinals. That alone makes my neck hurt.

It turns out my physical therapist is just a year younger than me -- a 72-year-old die-hard tennis player. He says he will die on a tennis court. Great. I've come to the right place. So, I tell him that I want to be remembered as the oldest baseball player that ever lived.

What I didn't go into was the fact that one of my teammates -- Floyd Lance -- is an active player on the Tucson Old Timers' roster at the age of 93, soon to be 94 in September. I didn't tell the therapist that I needed to rethink that very important goal that I have kept for most of my life.

By mid-April, my neck is still crackling. Time to forget the therapy and sign up for the MRI. The result: more images of an old man with a bad neck. It's off to see the wizard -- a neurosurgeon for a second opinion. By the way, my regular doctor had called and advised, "there's a lot going on in there. It's a mess."

Today, I got the final answer. I'm an old man with an old neck.

The neurosurgeon explained it all. He went over the MRI piece by piece. No surgery needed. That was a shocker. Instead, I'm awaiting an apparatus which I attach to the bedroom door, fill a flask full of water, attach a pulley or two to my neck and begin -- 15 minutes, twice a day for the rest of my life. Well, maybe I'm getting carried away a bit. Still, that's the bottom line: loosen up the arthritis, the bone spurs, the beer cans...whatever is in there!

In other words, let's play ball!