Hey folks: In my enjoyable capacity to bring y'all news of doings in the easy-going but, mark my words, MSBL's competitive Capital Division,
there came an interesting connection for me: between baseball and butterflies.

There was some pleasant excitement in the air last Sunday (July 12) at New Scotland field, when, before the game, about 28 players were
milling around the two dugouts, trying on their new, lightweight, smart, flashy, red and blue Capital Division jerseys with numbers each player had ordered.

We each have a red jersey and a blue one. That allows the Caps' manager Jim Jasiewicz and assistant managers Amber Ring and Anthony Nelson to
mix and jumble the lineups from week to week. The switching gives players the impression they're facing a new team each week. Which they are.

It's also a fine way to get to know all 30 or so players who come to us from upper Vermont to Albany and to spots east, west and south of
the city. The player who fanned you one Sunday could be the one who's sharing hitting tips to you the following weekend.

So when I walked into the Blues dugout, my team this week, I overheard Ryan Visco, a player who looks to be in his mid 20s, say
to another player, "It's funny, but, after all these years of playing ball, I still get butterflies before games."

I thought that was cool. Here's an obviously talented player ( Ryan hit two homers in one inning the week before, the second a grand slam) and
yet he admits to some nervousness before playing.

I liked that because it meant several things, among them that Ryan was eager to play, eager to do well, and uncertain if he would, if he
could meet the game's challenges. Only playing would tell. There's a lure in that. So Ryan was in a slight hurry to get going.
The game couldn't come to him fast enough. That's true, by the way, of 79-year-olds, too.

TIME NOW FOR THE GEEZER HEALTH MOMENT:

The question for all of us (that's we who range from as young as 18 to me, a 79-year-old who sometimes dreams he's 18 yet) is how do we
stay strong and healthy to keep on going in this game we love?

I figure if I pass on what I'm learning still about hanging on, it might be of some use to players much younger, who think a long
amateur career (I've been playing adult ball since 1993 or 32 seasons, missing only the 2020 covid summer) might work for them, too.

So my health discovery? I found that at 79, I'm not cautious enough. I didn't use my noodle well enough.

Last week, I had been working on sprints, because the general idea in baseball is you have to sprint to first base.

So I was running a 90-foot lane that I'd created in front of our Albany house by taking white paint and planting two stripes 90 feet apart.
Then, it's out with my stopwatch and go. My goal was to break six seconds by, at least, my fifth run.

My first four I started at 6.41 and got down to 6.01. One more to go. Get a good, quick, light-footed start I told myself. Lean forward.
Alas, I was too eager, and unknowingly too tight. Two steps from the end of my last sprint, I felt a "Pop!" in my backside.
Pulled a butt muscle.

Could I have avoided it? Not sure. I'm still coming back into my youth, but if I'd remembered what my old high school track coach,
Harold Waite, had told me "Easy stretches, Mike, between each run. Not just one stretch before you start." If I'd remembered that,
then, very likely, no pop. No pain.

WHO'S WHO IN THE CAP DIVISION AND WHAT THEY DOING?

There are lots of players in this league who are doing all kinds of interesting things outside the ball yard. One is Mike Laster. Mike
is the principal of Farnsworth Middle School in Guilderland. And after the game ( our Blues won by about a 9-3 score)
Mike told me about the Butterfly Project at his school. Since 1999, the kids at Farnsworh have been tending to, helping
to grow and launch butterflies, including endangered species, in what's called the FMS Butterfly Station.

Two neat things about that: the project is open most week days from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and if you go (6072 State Farm
Road in Guilderland) students will give you a tour, showing all the ways the kids are keeping butterflies growing and going.

The school's butterfly schedule says that Thursday August 6th is the last day for the tour. The next day, Friday August 7th, is the
celebration: the Great Release. That day, at 9:30 a.m.students will set free the butterflies they'd been cultivating for weeks.

Check the Website, to see more. It looks terrific.. (https://sites.google.com/guilderlandschools.net/fmsbutterflystation/home.)

Then, going home, I wondered: What are the odds? One of the first sentences I hear when I walk in the Blues dugout is Ryan Visco talking
getting butterflies in baseball.

Then, as I start to leave, Mike Laster is telling me about the Butterfly Project at his school, Farnsworth Middle.

Does that mean anything? Talk of butterflies on either side of a game?

Of course, I thought: the uniform number connection.

Jim Jasiewicz, who ordered all our jerseys for us, let us order whatever available numbers we wanted. For years, I'd played wearing number 44. my age when I
returned to baseball after 31 years away from the game. But that number was taken.

So, what number to choose? A moment's thought and then it hit me. Of course: 56.

Ring a bell?

That was Jim Bouton's number. Jim pitched for the Yankees from '62 (the teams of Mantle, Berra, Maris and Ford) until 1968. He was a 20-game
winner for the Yanks, an All-Star and won two World Series games. Because he threw so hard, his hat flew off with each pitch, and he became
a huge draw at Yankee Stadium. The fans loved seeing his hummer and his flying hat, though the odds are opposing batters didn't.

Unfortunately, Jim threw so hard, he also hurt his shoulder.

In 1968, Jim found the Yankees weren't keen on keeping a fastball pitcher with a sore wing. So they released him. Jim, about 30
then, wanted and needed to stay in the game (once you got cut, your paychecks ended and he had a family), so he tried out for
a new major league team being formed in Seattle called the Pilots.

But Jim's shoulder was too sore to throw a good hummer. What could he do?

An idea: He threw the knuckler as a kid, why not try to teach himself the knuckleball as a 30-something and see what
he could do? He did it. He learned the pitch. He made the club.

You can read all about it in the book that he and sportswriter Leonard Schecter wrote, called "Ball Four."
It's both funny and sad and a huge seller. It's also the best selling sports book (not just baseball book) of all time.

In 2013, I managed an over-62 team in our league called the Red Hot Peppers. One of my teammates, Jim Edelman, now the manager of
the '62 Arachnids, lived near Bouton in Western Massachusetts and one day the Peppers' Jim said that Bouton wondered if we'd ever let him
come pitch for the Peppers.

That wasn't a new move for Bouton.. Ever since he retired from the big leagues at 39, he kept himself in good shape by volunteering
to pitch for teams in leagues like ours, from New Jersey to Vermont.

So I called Jim Bouton. We worked it out. We lost, 18-3, against the league's top team, the Yankees. (Jim was 74 then, and that
day his knuckler floated. It didn't knuckle.)

Still, we had a grand time. Jim died six years later, at 80, of a stroke.

So it felt good to be wearing 56 last Sunday.

As I was driving home, I thought, hey, another name for the knuckler?

It's the "Butterfly Pitch."

-Mike






-- Edited by mikehart on Thursday 16th of July 2026 04:48:11 AM

-- Edited by mikehart on Thursday 16th of July 2026 04:56:51 AM