My fellow baseball playing and reading fans, I have a nifty baseball experience to tell you about,

On Sunday, May 17, twenty-six baseball players, some from the Capital District Senior Baseball League,
others not, people just showing up, ranging in age from, oh, Id guess, 30 to 79 (no guessing there, Mike Barton;
Mike hails from February, 1947 ) gathered at the new New Scotland baseball park trying
to do what nobody can do: turn back the clock.

Or play ball being older. Pretty much the same thing.

Guess what? We did it. More or less. (Elijah West. Jim Jasiewicz) Starting around four oclock on a sunny and
an extraordinarily pretty spring day, with bright sunlight and green everywhere at New Scotland,
we did our best to run, throw, pitch and hit (Anthony Nelson and Rich Harris) winter out of our bones,
and to reclaim old times.

That's the times when we were eight or nine and, during summer days when we dozen or so
kids (this part of the story takes place in Elmira, N.Y., but it really happened everywhere) and one old, heavy,
draggy, lovable dog (named Stegmaier) showed at a modestly sloping field which ended in Hoffman
Creek, and there chose up sides and played for hours. Often, till dark.

Pieces of cardboard served as the bases. Stegmaier, a wide-bellied, white-skinned, old coon hound
and everybody's friend, slept by first. Shouts, accusations and jokes (Luis Martinez and David Mosely)
served as umpires.

So, May 17, at New Scotland, a little after 4 p.m., twenty six guys, half in red (the Capital Reds)
half in blue (the Albany Blues) lined up on either side of home plate for the season's first game
(Ristau Ristau, Thomas Gorman and Rich Harris,) of what's called the Capital Division of CDMSBL.

Here, too, the past and present pitched to each other. (Steve Holmes and Noel Fabian.)

About 12 or 14 years ago, on a wintery February night, league commissioner John Reel and a group
of over 55 managers, (I was one) heard one of the players and eventual manager, Don Ball,
suggest that maybe we should set up a weekend league, let anybody, men or women,
young or old, play choose-up games, just like when many of us were kids, and call it the
Capital Division. This way, too, if you didnt get your fill of baseball during the week,
(Greg Kennedy and Carlo Bileci), or if people who'd not played in years, heard about us
and just wanted to try baseball again, there was a game for them. So we did it.

For all those years now, various fellows stepped up to do the organizing. For the first
several years, John Reel did it. Others followed him. (Sorry, don't recall them all.)

For three years we had a grandmother, Cindy - regret that I forget her last name; a fine
person playing right field, who said she didn't care if she were the only woman there
(she was), she had always wanted to play the game and now that she had the chance,
she'd take it. She wore a floppy Mets jersey. She gave her all, (Matt Jung and Conner Hansen)
and more than once a nice hit left her bat. She was a real a good spirit. Everyone liked her.

For the past two seasons, Amber Ring has played with us, also the only woman there, a
catcher and pitcher no less, a fine hitter too, and like Cindy, Amber is good for the spirit.

The current organizer is Jim Jasiewicz, who is also the manager of CDMSBL's over-62 Reds.
Before the game, (Mike Laney and Tony Mogavero), Jim called us all to home plate, and
offered some rules and observations, among them, that we should be nice to each other and it's $10 each
for the umpire, who arrived just about the moment he said that. The ump stayed for the
whole game and made such good calls that nobody disputed him. (Everett Currier and Nick Weiler).

Then Jim said: OK. Go play as if it were your last game! Actually, he didnt say that. But
I think it sounds good. (Rob Currier and Mike Hart).

Now, I didn't keep a scorebook, and can't recall who did what, and for all I know everybody
(except me) banged a double off the centerfield wall (Mike Laney and Dave Plew). I do know
that the final score was in the double digits for each team, something like 17-11, and
the blues, my team, won. (Brad Maione and Derrick Maul). I know, too, that Jim Dalton,
the manager of the over-62 Pirates, played with a very sore shoulder and, despite
that, he got, if memory works, an infield hit. He also dispensed advice and funny one-liners to
both teams from the first-base coaching box, a fitting one was, I believe, was, "Hey, keep
laughing."

About 13 days ago, Jim Jasiewicz and I talked about writing up the Cap games, Jim
suggested that it would be a good thing to tell game stories, yes, but a better thing
to write celebrations of as many players as space allows. I agreed.

But since I didn't have a scorebook on the 17th, and I don't really remember who did
what, I did the next the next best thing I could think of: get the names here in this writing of
guys and gal who propelled that first game, because, well, it was the season's first.

So every player did a great job. For this game, everybody went 3-for-3 or close to it,
which, if you think about it, is how you feel when you come back to the game even if you go 0-for-3.

And every pitcher didn't give up a hit.

I will tell one story, or part of it, from the game. I know it because it's mine. For the first
time in my adult baseball years (thats since '93 in Texas, when I was 44, and since '98 here, or
about 600 games worth), each time I came to the plate at New Scotland the bases were
jammed. That's never happened to me before. Three at bats, three jammed bases.

That's the thing about baseball: you see things you never saw before.

So, my three at-bats meant that I had nine potential ribbies out there, waiting for me.
(Yes, mathematically, it should be 12,but my birthday is four months behind Mike Barton's,
or 79 in three weeks, and no way nothing I hit will clear a fence, unless its a backstop.
So, realistically, the most I could hope for is three at-bats, nine ribbies.

At seasons end, Ill tell you what happened -- if I remember.

I do seem to remember that every guy or gal's name that you see above probably socked a double.

-Mike Hart

p.s.There's a new, remarkably tall and nifty backstop at New Scotland. When you next take in a game there, also take a
moment to stand up, look up and admire the stop. It's the size of a national park monument and it may end dents in
parked cars forever. Hat's off to whoever ordered it.




-- Edited by mikehart on Sunday 31st of May 2026 01:13:12 AM