Should I pack up and head for Iowa?

Tucson Old Timers (TOTS)

60-and-over baseball

Should I pack my bags and head for Iowa?

This aging baseball player wants to know. After all, I'm 76 years old and have been playing baseball for most of my life. Heck! I'm older than Moonlight Graham, for goodness sake. Well, not really. As usual, bear with me on this.

All my blog readers know how I can fly off the handle at times, but I'm being serious here. I'm ready to emerge from the cornfields in Dyersville, Iowa, in my TOTS uniform. The TOTS, of course, are the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers, an amateur baseball team of which I'm now one of the elder statesmen.

Well, a middle-aged TOT anyway, according to my teammates.  The TOTS have been around since 1968. The youngest player to pass through the turnstiles at one time or another is a 60-year-old. Still is, for that matter. The oldest on the current roster is 96-year-old Floyd Lance, at one time a heck of a first baseman who could handle his position with finesse and grace -- resembling someone from his era like a Lou Gehrig or a Jimmie Foxx or even a Johnny Mize or a Hank Greenberg.

The Field of Dreams game Thursday night was a showcase, an extravaganza...simply a magical night for a baseball fan or at least a movie buff.

Maybe I'll pack just one suitcase and head for Dyersville with my glove in one hand and my baseball bat in the other, much like I did in the 1950s as a little boy when I headed off to the local park for at least a "catch" and maybe a game with the other kids in my Tucson neighborhood.

Of course, I lived in the desert. Back in the day, there was less cement in Tucson, more dirt, and nothing but cacti east of Swan Road. There were neighborhood ball fields back then with enough grass to allow for a lovely Sunday hop, but not a well-manicured emerald green ball field with a cornfield surrounding the outfield and beautiful two-story farmhouses at the end of every block.

No stranger ever came to me and said: 'Is this Iowa."Or asked.  'If this was heaven?' as a tumbleweed blew by, followed by a twister...I mean a dust devil.

A twister may show up in Iowa in the cornfields, but at least Thursday night, that wasn't the case as the Chicago White Sox beat the New York Yankees 9-8 in the first Major League game ever played in Iowa.

The farmhouse used in the movie Field of Dreams is still at the top of the hill. The owner is gone after selling out to a corporation in 2012. One hundred thousand or more baseball fans and non-baseball fans visit the site year around as the corporation sees to it the farmhouse and the surrounding property continue to look just like it did in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, and Burt Lancaster.

Baseball is part of all of us. It has stood the test of time.

Maybe, I'm exaggerating. Life is tough. So much of the world is in turmoil, and yes, to be honest, there are many out there who could care less about America's Favorite Pastime. Thank goodness I'm not one of them.

It's just a game. A game of strategy. A game of failure, just as much as success. Bat four times, get one hit, and someday, you'll find yourself in the majors. Just ask the current major league players who battle every season to stay above the Mendoza Line. A diehard baseball fan knows what that is. I'll save that story for another day.

As for me, I doubt that I'll ever become a resident of Dyersville, Iowa. But, someday soon, just maybe, I'll take a trip there, pull up to the farmhouse, and sit on the porch swing like the characters did in the Field of Dreams. I'll look out over the Iowa landscape and realize I'm not a little boy anymore.

Chances are that may never happen, mainly if the virus stays with us for much longer, but someday, there is a chance, say in the year 2060, I will emerge from the cornfields...with my current teammates on the TOTS looking for a "catch" or maybe a game. 

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