Very Veteran Players : Box Score Doesn’t Show Their Most Impressive Stat--Age

The ash at the end of the third baseman’s cigarette threatened to fall as he took his time picking a bat. But it kept hanging on, like the third baseman himself, 62, and the second baseman, 72, and the left fielder, almost 74. And like all the rest of these old men in uniforms who keep living to play softball.

Beautiful day for a game. Sunny and so still at 8:30 Saturday morning that the dirt covering Joe Rodgers Field would not kick up without help.

But the Long Beach Snappers, ready for a game in the city’s Senior League for players 55 and over, would kick it up. They had that certain spryness, which always seems surprising up close when you see the gray hair and mottled skin.

The Snappers had been on a high since May when they came home from Las Vegas as celebrities after winning a world invitational tournament for players over 60. That was the week that Iz Perruccio, 65, the Snappers’ pitcher, walked only one batter in 56 innings and was named the tournament’s most valuable player.

But the Snappers, with an 8-7 record in the tough, 14-team Long Beach league, now were up against the Joe Bravo’s team of Lawndale, perhaps the most formidable seniors team in Southern California.

“We’d give anything to beat them,” said Walt Downen, the Snappers’ manager and catcher.

Bravo’s kept hitting line drives, but the Snappers kept sticking out their gloves and snagging them. Perruccio caught one “in self defense.” Tom Mackey caught a bullet at third and when he returned to the dugout, where heavy breathing broke the stillness, he shrugged off congratulations and said, “I never saw it.”

At shortstop, John Magennis, despite being out late dancing to the music of Harry James the night before, operated flawlessly, and in left field, Joe DeLacruz, long-armed and graceful, ran down every ball hit near him as if defying anyone to accuse him of looking his age.

The game went by rapidly. Three up, three down most innings. Between innings, the umpire said, “Hustle up, gentlemen, let’s go,” and the Snappers hustled back to their bench to light cigarettes--a pack of Pall Malls sat in a shoe--and try without success to increase a 1-0 lead.

“What inning?” someone asked.

“Sixth,” Perruccio said.

“Naw, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” a teammate said.

But it was true. Last of the sixth and Perruccio was working on a shutout.

Perruccio has dark gray wavy hair, which he didn’t hide under a hat. On the mound, which was his center stage, he looked like a leading man.

He walked the first man in the sixth, who quickly scored when a fly ball dropped into right field for a double. Another walk and a hit loaded the bases with one out. Then Perruccio’s virtuoso performance turned into a flop. Bravo’s slugged several line-drive hits in a row and in a few shocking moments had a 7-1 lead.

“Wow, what a catastrophe,” Perruccio said as the stunned Snappers came in for their last bat, more slowly this time, almost like the turtles on their red shirts.

Earlier, Perruccio had said, “We’re out here to have fun and keep active at this age.” But now it didn’t seem like much fun. The Snappers went down quickly in the seventh and it was over.

“I got a bunch of old men,” Downen said with a small smile. Still, he was upset. He spit out an expletive, following it with, “He’s standing out there, afraid to get his feet wet. Then he wonders why I sit him down. Doesn’t even try for the ball.” He was talking about the 64-year-old right fielder Dan Rebai, who, rather than venture into a mud puddle, had let a ball drop in the fatal sixth inning.

Downen moaned about his team’s lack of hitting too. “Dee hasn’t hit a home run in a year,” Downen said of Leroy DeHaven, the 210-pound first baseman.

DeHaven, 66, a native Missourian, admitted that it has been a while. “I’ve hit about seven out of here,” he said, pointing toward the fences, which held advertising signs. “You lose a little year by year. I hit two in one night against the Legends Girls.”

He gets kidded about that as much as he does about his first name. Still, Downen is proud of him. “Dee’s only got one lung,” Downen said. “He lost the other one to cancer. But he never seems to get tired.”

DeHaven, a retired shipyard supervisor, joined the Snappers when they formed about five years ago. “I think it’s the best thing that ever came down the pike for older guys who can still move a little bit,” he said. “I never believed a guy 75 could still play ball.”

Downen and Perruccio were discussing the sixth inning, Downen a little more seriously than Perruccio.

“You never want to give them an outside pitch,” Downen said. “You threw it flat and outside, they creamed it. You’re not thinking.”

“Yes, coach.” said Perruccio, his forehead dotted with sweat. He hadn’t had a real good day, going 0 for 3 at bat. But his batting average remained lofty--”Oh, it should be about .550,” he said.

Perruccio, who grew up in Middletown, Conn., has been a hair stylist in Long Beach since 1947. Semi-retired now, he said he plays softball on Saturday and Sunday and golf on Tuesday.

Some of the players sat in stands and drank coffee, watching the next game. Magennis was talking with a player from another team about Harry James and the dance he had attended at the Hollywood Palladium.

“It was great,” Magennis, who used to play shortstop as a young man in Wellesley, Mass., said in a voice that was pure New England. “Who was that gal singing? She was great.”

Magennis said he hadn’t gotten to his Bellflower home until 1:30 a.m. But he had been out here a few hours later, which didn’t surprise Eddie Masters, a white-haired woman who sat under an umbrella next to her husband, Sid, the 72-year-old second baseman. “You mention playing ball and they’re ready,” said Eddie Masters, the Snappers’ scorekeeper.

“You bet it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to seniors,” said Magennis, one of the younger players at 58. “They’re really dedicated guys. To go (to Las Vegas) and play in 105 heat, you have to be either nuts or love the game.”

Left fielder DeLacruz, 73, did not look to be the oldest of the Snappers. A former semipro baseball player in Texas, his hair remained dark and his legs had retained a hint of the fleetness he once had. “I used to run real fast. . . . real fast,” he said. “I used to have strong arm. I could run, hit and throw. They ask me now, ‘How do you do it, Joe?’ and I say, ‘I just keep moving.’ ”

But the guy who probably does the most moving--from softball game to softball game--was Downen, 67, a longtime Long Beach resident who now lives in Cypress.

“I play on five teams,” said the Snapper manager. “I play with my son and grandsons on Tuesday nights, in a 45-and-over league on Wednesday nights and Saturday morning, Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon.”

He had been, it seemed, a little hard on some of the guys, but he loved them all. “You’ve got to be nasty to them once in a while to wake ‘em up,” he said.

Downen said he has lost 30 pounds since he started playing softball on several teams about three years ago. “I feel great,” he said. “This has been my life and everybody else’s too.”

Softball as life.

“My God, is there anything else?” Downen asked.