September 1997
by Barry Stagg
MY BASEBALL RESURRECTION
It took eleven years and another province for your ink-drenched scribe to restart his baseball career. It was eleven years ago this past June that I had swung at my last baseball in anger down on the picket fence field on Father Joy's Road in Port au Port. Some young Turks, possibly the Abbott brothers, Duane and Robbie were no doubt blowing fast balls by me and running down my feeble flares when the call of retirement overtook me.
That was all very well until early in 1997 when in the damp haze of a Toronto spring I discovered two new baseball leagues dedicated to players of my age and athletic virtue. The Toronto Men's Senior Baseball League specializes in the over thirty crowd as does its counterpart and rival the Scarborough Senior Baseball League. It took a couple of telephone calls to the masters of these particular leagues and with the appropriate exchange of funds I was once again a player on a team with practices and games and after hours rendezvous' to be worked into my schedule. Just like old times when I found myself racing from Stephenville to Lourdes for that 6:15 game with the car still chugging merrily down the Slant in Picadilly at 6:00 pm. Frenzy and fun and chaos are all part of the game.
It took a while but I found out that there were only two fools who had actually signed up for both baseball leagues. One being your loyal Newfoundlander and the other inevitably being from Glace Bay, Cape Breton Island. I am sure that a joke or two from our mainland brethren must lurk in there somewhere.
It took some doing getting back into the swing of things, getting the feel of ball on leather and bat on ball and running the bases, sitting on the bench and realizing just how limited your abilities are after all these years. It was fun.
This is August and both leagues are in full swing. I am playing on a team that has won two games in one league, thanks to my contributions while the other team in the other league is in first place, thanks once again to my contributions.
It was so good to meet more performing baseball junkies rather than the armchair kindV who take their baseball experience from the box seats at Blue Jay games. We were actually playing the game again. There is something about the thrill of playing against real competition with fast balls and curve balls and assorted junk coming at you from pitching arms that are just a little worn but still giving the business out there on the mound.
Early in the season I was on a baseball field in Scarborough and I smelled the freshly cut grass just after the rain had stopped and I realized that this was the essence of my baseball career. This was the perfume that I had breathed for years and which I had missed and which was now the ambrosia of my middle age.
Here are the touchpoints of Stagg baseball in the middle age nineties: Aches and pains, sore arms, sore legs, strike outs, errors, stroking a double the opposite way, running down a line drive in center field, picking up the little things and exulting in the knowledge that you had not forgotten them and that you once again were on the field playing ball.
So in the summer of 1997 here's to Lorne and Brad, the managers and to Rocky, Ryan, Francis,Steve, Tom, Mike, Eddie, Bill, Paul and the rest of the guys still chugging along on the dusty diamonds in the middle of the summer. Boys, you have a bond forged forever with the players of Berry Head, Port au Port where fellows named Hynes, Snow, Stagg, Gillis, Cole, O'Neil, Boland, House, Jesso and Duffy were and still are their own boys of summer. Use those muscles while they still work.
Until next month: Be proud, be prosperous.