How to keep an old baseball player on the field

Tucson Old Timers (TOTS)

60-and-over baseball

Follow along with me as I allow a nano-robot to cruise through my body -- searching for answers as to why, at the age of 102,  I can't ever play baseball again.

OK. So, I'm getting too far into the future. Let's return to real-time—2019—, and I have just returned from a 25-minute journey into a "black hole"—better known as an MRI, the well-known three letters standing for magnetic resonance imaging.

Thirty million people take the short journey every year -- all searching for answers to a medical problem or, in my case, looking for results as to why this 73-year-old third baseman can't throw a baseball across the diamond.

The nano-robot is coming, and when that time comes, chances are my teammates on the Tucson Old Timers will already have me hidden out in right field with an asterisk by my name on the lineup card, signifying this player needs a bathroom break every now and then.

As for now, I'm dealing with a neck injury and the next step comes Monday when I see a neurosurgeon to go over the "findings" of my journey through the black hole.

I already have a copy of the MRI. Is that really me? It looks like somebody is playing checkers in my body and has no idea how to play the game. The scary images are dark, but to be honest with you, the inner body is mind-boggling. The whole thing is way above my pay grade. Wait a minute! I do not have a pay grade. I've been on Social Security for almost 12 years.

To be honest with you, the report on my neck injury isn't pretty. I could be facing...well, life away from the baseball field. In jeopardy: my 12-year run at the MSBL World Series, a prestigious event that comes around every October for more than 3,000 amateur baseball players from all over the country who are as crazy about baseball as I am.

Closer to home, I already miss being with the "guys" on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Udall Park. On those days, every week, year in and year out, the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers play the game of baseball.

It's simply the best gig in town for an old-timer who loves to play America's favorite pastime.

My closest friends and family members say it is time to hang up my baseball shoes for good. After all, my injury list is as long as a weekly grocery list -- hand surgery, foot surgery, eye surgery, and a heart attack -- not to mention the menacing hamstring tears, bone spur problems, you name it...I have experienced it.

But to be honest with you, so have many members and teammates on the Tucson Old Timers.

The battle continues...

from the desk of Pigpen Price