Another season...another decade

From the desk of Pigpen Price...

It's almost time for another season...another decade.

I look back on the last decade of my life from time to time. It's what historians do, I guess. I luckily have a wonderful non-paying hobby -- a 10-year stint so far as the historian for the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers, a baseball club which has been around for 51 years and we're still counting.

We meet up at Udall Park every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and play for the love of the game. We are old, battered and if the drug commission would show up they would probably throw us out of baseball.

On second thought, if the drug czar was over 60, he, or she, may throw up their hands, quickly return to their car and grab their baseball glove. Why they would have one tucked away in the trunk of their car would be any one's guess.

As for me, I continue to write about a bunch of characters with endless stories of their past deeds...and their present condition, for that matter. It's what I do and I'm sticking to it. I joined the Tucson Old Timers (TOTS) in 2008 and walked right into a goldmine for a retired hack -- a beat sport reporter from back in the day.

I spend ninety percent of my blog putting some of the old codgers shenanigans in print. For many years, I tried to focus on them and not me. After all, the writer is not supposed to be connected to the story...he, or she, is supposed to remain in the background and just report the fake news -- I mean, these stories are all true...and nothing but the truth.

Well, maybe I'm guilty of turning an old sandlot baseball player, from 60 to 94 for goodness sakes, into a Mickey Mantle or a Babe Ruth. Suddenly in my eyes, the old codger who just dribbled a single in the hole between third and short, in my crazy head, has just drilled a shot, a two hopper off the 300-feet fence at Udall Park.

What is so amazing about these guys, is their backgrounds. That's all true in most cases. I mean prior historians for the club have also posted some amazing stuff...and on further review some have turned out to be a little overboard. Like in the club's first archive book (one of eight and still counting). It was reported that a fellow TOT was a pretty good golfer and actually beat Ben Hogan by one stroke in a tournament on the west side of Tucson. The name matched up but it turns out it wasn't the same fella.

Let's by honest. That's okay. I mean you're talking about a bunch of old-timers, who instead of sitting on the sofa and watching ESPN are actually out amongst the English (from the movie: The Witness) playing America's Favorite Pastime. And not just once, but three days a week, all 12 months of the year. A TOTS' season never ends, the organization just keeps on plugging right into the next year...into the next...and the next.

Look,  you can play the rest of your life for seven dollars a month (that's the club's dues), spend an hour or so at the  after-the-game party, every Friday, under the Ramada at Udall...and say just about anything you want to say and pretty much get away with it. It helps to throw down a couple of brewskis along the way.

It's what we do year in and year out. To be honest, I wouldn't want it any other way.

I'm now 74 and just a few weeks away from the end of another decade...and the end of 12 wonderful seasons with the best group of guys in the world -- the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers.

I ventured to the ball park, in April of 2008 and joined the club. I was 62 and I actually hit my only home run that month. I thought this is going to be easy. It'll be 2020 in a few weeks and I have yet to hit my second.

The TOTS changed my life, or put it in the right direction, anyway. I had a quadruple heart attack on January 2nd, just three months prior to my first at bat with the organization. Thousands and thousands of at bats later and some 1,300 career hits and I'm still kicking...still playing and still writing about the "Men at Udall."

I write in my sleep. I write at two o'clock in the morning. Maybe after dinner...and within hours after a game -- usually a real nail biter that goes down to the seventh inning (we play six innings in the heat of the summer, and seven during the fall, winter and spring).

I can't stop it. It's like a rare disease, protruding right out of my finger tips. I've burned up three laptops, four smart phones and I've had to buy a new desk from time to time.

We have lawyers, financial advisers, accountants, judges, writers and a teddy bear salesman. We have it all...all walks of life. We have men with not just one degree, but three. Our scorekeeper, for goodness sakes, has degrees from the University of New Hampshire, Yale and the University of Arizona. We have professors who are still working. We have a current professor from the U of A, who just transformed himself to Africa and back. I haven't a clue what that was all about.

We have veterans...we have men who have built a medical device, we have members who have spent their lifetime working with the underprivileged and wayward kids, we have doctors, nurses (oops, I'm getting carried away...on second thought, yes we do have nurses), we have police officers...maybe a millionaire or two. The list goes on...and on.

Build us a park and we will come. Until then,  Udall Park will do just nicely. In the old days it was Himmel Park, then Ft. Lowell Park and now Udall.

The dust never settles. We lose a few good men every now and then. After all, we are not 20-year-old whippersnappers -- a saying you have to be old just to know what that means.

Some of the guys are in their 60s and give the 70, 80 and 90-year old players plenty of grief on the diamond. Our oldest is our poster child -- 94-year-old Floyd Lance. We have benches behind home plate with former player's names on them. Some day there will probably be a statue of Sir Floyd Lance himself, looking over us. We have a shed named after the greatest TOTS' caretaker of all, Chico Bigham. Every where we turn in the dugout we see images in our head from players of the past, like our former scorekeeper -- the smilin' Jim Pagels.

WE are the TOTS and I, for one, will play myself into the ground at Udall, just to be around such amazing men. My Lord, I need some sleep.

Long live the TOTS and long live the United States of America.

Amen!