My over-62 Pirates squad had a spooky time with possible heat exhaustion last night (Friday, 8/27), and I thought the experience worth passing along.
Could be life-saving.
When manager Jim Dalton wrote us today, asking who would be available for Monday's game, one of our players, Jim Ansel, replied:
"Ansel likely out. I got heat exhaustion at Saugerties. Nasty. Google it. I probably should have hit the ER. Take care out there. Jim A."
Jim's decision to leave the game early struck me as a smart one, and I hope, and expect, he'll be OK.
But his note also served as a warning for me and I hope everyone who's trying to play ball in the humid summer.
The thing about heat exhaustion is that it can strike fast, and it's sneaky. It hits you, often hard, before you know it.
And as Jim suggests, recovery is not necessarily a 24-hour, snap-to-upright experience.
Which led me to think that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that everyone on both teams playing in Saugerties's Lorenz Field on Friday night, the 62 Cardinals and Pirates, experienced a touch (or more) of heat exhaustion.
It was a humid night there, and I suspect that more than a few of the Pirates were still recovering from our game two days earlier, on Wednesday, at the A Diamond. I know I was.
That thought takes me on a quick detour to the A diamond's and its dangerous construction.
As fancy and as "modern" as the A diamond is, it's not, to my eye, a healthy place to play ball. Because it's not, and because it's unlikely Schenectady will bring back the grass anytime soon, which would be ideal, it makes sense to protect ourselves when we play there.
Yes, Schenectady poured thousands into the diamond to create a nearly all-weather summertime field, (and, so spend less on workers and maintenance), and yes, it dries fast after a rain and has predictable bounces.
Initially, I thought the whole thing was built on concrete, but a teammate, Bob Noto, who was the AD at Amsterdam HS when his school's turf was put in, said that "the base of the field is sand, crushed stone and then 18 inches or more of rubber pellets. The turf is put on top of that. Then it's filled again with the rubber pellets. Yes, it does get hotter but there is no concrete like was used in the original Astroturf fields."
Still, it's my humble, old-timer's experience that that crushed stone, after a while, feels more like concrete than soft grass. After a few innings, that hard sensation rises into players' feet, leg bones, hips and spines.
The surface covering is also highly carcinogenic (reports of athletes getting cancer from that rubber topping can be found online; "60 Minutes" did a story on it) and it can hold the deadly MRSA bacteria that falls from players sweat for 24 or more hours. It can probably do the same with the Covid virus.
Fortunately, my over-55 Pirates (many of whom also play on the 62s), played only four innings against the Yankees (probably the only time Ive ever praised the mercy rule), but as the shellacking 19-0 (or thereabouts) score suggests, they were long innings on defense, not kind to anybody's lower bones.
The A diamond's geography can add to heat exhaustion. The place is built down, in a bowl, surrounded by tall trees. The effect is capture heat and humidity. There are very few winds to move either along. So players are getting heat from two places, from above and below, and the humidity just hangs there like it's on a clothes line.
Here's a picture of that: After the over-55 Pirates-Yankees game, manager Jim Dalton, pitcher Jim Kidd and I were the last to leave the first base dugout. Just before we left, Jim Kidd, a big guy, took off his uniform top and wrung it out. Sweat, in the form of rushing, gushing water, poured out.
As he did his wringing, Jim said, "Last time I played here, I lost 10 pounds."
That's funny. But it's not healthy.
(Quick side story: when the Kansas City A's put in AstroTurf sometime between the '60's & '80's, the outfielders playing day games eventually refused to wait between innings on the outfield turf. Reason? Too hot. So they'd stand on the infield dirt until it was time for the inning's first pitch. Also, their leather shoes, if kept in one spot on the turf, left a sticky black mark on the phony grass. So much for what can happen when some engineers, businessmen and politicians get together.)
After Wednesday, then, the Pirates probably could have used another day off before playing our over-62 game on Friday against the first-place Cardinals at Lorenz Field in Saugerties, which fortunately uses real grass.
As for me, last night, I didn't seem to feel any effects from the heat while I played third and left. That feeling of being OK is one of heat exhaustion's sneaky conditions, though I did feel a little lightheadedness (some would say thats a constant with me) and, as the innings passed, a lightness in my muscles (others would say that's because you're still trying play at 74, you addled geezer.)
Cards manager Jerry Hawkins, a fellow septuagenarian, was clever and thoughtful here: His team led something like 11-6 going into the last inning (I think that was the final score) and he waived his team's final at-bat, thus shaving 10 to 20 minutes off the two teams' total playing time.
I'd never seen that done before, but it was a smart, healthy move.
Turns out I had an experience similar to Jim Kidd's: When I weighed myself at home after the game, I saw I'd lost six pounds. I left home for the game at 182; I stepped on the scales six hours later at 176. I haven't weighed under 182 since I left college 50 years ago. A bucket of sweaty water did not pour from my jersey, but it was a cool, damp thing.
(One more quick detour: As we age, we all lose muscle mass; two years ago, I played ball at 195. Now, 182. The experience is called "sarcopenia," an ancient Greek word, and it means that men and women lose roughly one percent of their muscle mass a year after the age of 30, and two percent after 60, and three percent after seventy and so on; as of this writing, I've lost about 60 percent of my muscle mass since I turned 30.
(That also explains why, on the back of baseball cards, you can see big league players' numbers dropping around the off-the-cliff number of 30 and why some guys in our league who hit doubles and triples into their late 50s, are, three years later, singles hitters. Or why, now, I see sharp-eyed outfielders playing 30 feet behind infielders when I bat. Damn. That's a stinger.)
Getting back: I don't imagine we can do much about sarcopenia, though health experts say lifting weights helps, or playing at the A diamond. (But if some far-seeing Schenectady politician reads this and starts a "bring back the grassy diamond" campaign, I'd sign up. ) We need fields and it's probably good that the A-diamond is there to fill that need.
(Though, damn, one more issue: why did they build home plate facing west? As the sun goes down, sunlight bounces off the turf in center and right center, which backlights pitchers and their pitches. The result? The ball can come in looking like a black dot. Sunglasses can sometimes help.)
The main thing here is that Jim Ansel's posting about the dangers of heat exhaustion, especially during August, can be really helpful for us all. I'm no doctor, but from what I've read we can try to fight off sneaky heat exhaustion with lots of water, and ice packs.
My teammate Bob Noto also notes that salt pills, once taken for dehydration, are now considered "very dangerous to use and no longer recommended. Drink Gatorade 50/50 mix with water before games and then Gatorade full string then after the game to replenish electrolytes." Electrolytes are crucial elements in fighting heat exhaustion. Powerade also has electrolytes with a different sugar substitute from Gatorade.
Below is an on-line link that talks about heat exhaustion and how to take it on.
This is a long note but I hope it encourages guys to remember heat and humidity can be killers and we have to be on guard against them.
And this: If possible, take some in-game rest.
So, if your manager wants to give you an inning or two on the bench, be grateful.
