In the year 2025...

Tucson Old Timers (TOTS)

60-and-over baseball

One more fantasy story

In the year 2025, on the final day of the regular season, LA Angels star Albert Pujols stepped into the batter's box to face Oakland's Yusei Kikuchi. Pujols, 45,  needing one more home run to become the top career home run leader of all time, surpassing Barry Bonds (762).

Pujols, who came back after the lost season of 2020, to hit 35 home runs in 2021,  has averaged 19  home runs during his past four seasons and now has one last swing left in his 25th and final season...and his final at bat in the major leagues.

The pitch was on its way. Pujols swung and the ball sailed over the left field fence at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.

Closer to home, the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers had survived the coronavirus in 2020, and the heat wave during the summer of 2023 when the temperatures surpassed 120 degrees, not once but seven times during the month of August.

The boys of summer...winter...fall and spring, are still going strong at Udall Park. The TOTS' current roster includes 65 active members and a new flock of 60-year-olds are on hand to give the 70-somethings a run for their money. TOTS' standouts like Reed Palmer, Mike Dawson, Ken Nebesny  and John Mathews are enjoying their final months in their 60s and are quickly approaching the age of 70, while the older players of yesteryear like Doc Thompson, Pigpen Price, Bob Daliege, Bill Mishler and David Byars have either reached the 80s, or are pretty darn close.

Still, the TOTS live on.

In the year 2025...people will survive.

Note: Of course, Pujols ends up across town in real life and joins the LA Dodgers. I guess I'm just a so-so fortune teller.