Summer Special : OVER THE LINE : Terry Fulford Gets Off the Sofa, Takes to the Sand in Pursuit of His Sport

Terry Fulford. Average guy. Huntington Beach electrician. Father of three.

And a man obsessed.

Fulford’s obsession is the same as that of many 10-year-olds. A bat, a ball and the connection between the two.

Fulford, 39, is an over-the-line warrior. For the past 13 years, he has, by his account, been playing the game at least three weekends a month, 10 months of the year.

“Got to stay active,” Fulford said, explaining the attraction. “Don’t want to be a couch potato.”

And, at first glance, Fulford might well be mistaken for a couch potato. His belly protrudes over the top of his shorts. His shoulders slump slightly. He could use a shave.

Fulford knows how he looks. Not exactly an awe-inspiring vision of athletic force. No one is going to mistake him for Jose Canseco when he comes up to bat.

And that’s his secret weapon.

“Young kids come out here and say, ‘This looks easy,’ ” Fulford said. “And then we beat their brains in. There’s more to it than how it looks.”

Fulford might be considered past his prime in other sports. But it’s a long way to over the hill in the game of over-the-line.

“The seasoned veterans are the best,” tournament organizer Russ Johnson said.

Fulford is seasoned. More than a decade ago, a friend, Danny Yount, dragged him to the beach and introduced him to the game.

“It looked like fun,” Fulford said. “But I didn’t know anything about it. And we got beat up every weekend.”

In the early days, his children--7, 5 and 3 when Fulford started playing--would come and play on the beach. And Fulford’s wife, Jolene, would be a faithful supporter from 8 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. every Saturday.

But not anymore.

“At first it was a really fun family thing,” Jolene Fulford said. “But it gets old after a while.”

But over-the-line hasn’t created battle lines in the Fulford household. Jolene doesn’t watch the games, but she still goes to post-tournament parties. And Fulford’s son Shawn, now 16, plays on his own team.

Other things have changed since Fulford’s early days. His first team felt obligated to keep up with the naughty image of the sport and played under an innuendo-filled, unprintable name.

But that came to a quick end. After all, these guys are family men.

“I could just see my kids coming up to me and asking Daddy (to explain the team’s name),” Fulford said.

To avoid such discomfort, the team settled on the rather innocuous tag, “Bad Habits.”

And therein lies another secret weapon of the older over-the-line set. These guys take their sport seriously, to some degree.

It’s more than just an excuse for a dirty joke and a few beers.

“Novices think getting drunk is a big part of it,” Fulford said. “Then they swing at the ball and miss.”

A deceptively simple game. With a deceptively wild image. Played by some deceptively unathletic looking guys.

“Younger guys have a defensive advantage,” Fulford said. “But we hit a lot. The young guys can run fast to get the ball, but sometimes that’s all they’ve got.”

By contrast, when Bad Habits is on defense, there isn’t a heck of a lot of running. The players reach for a few tough balls and catch the ones that come right down the middle.

But they don’t even try for many of the ones that require a sprint or a dive in the sand.

“We’re getting better defensively,” Fulford said. “We’re reading other teams’ hitting a little bit more. But we rely on scoring runs.”

Stepping up to the plate, Fulford towers over Yount, who is pitching from his sitting position. They’ve played together for so long, Fulford knows exactly where the pitch will go.

Yount tosses up the ball, Fulford golf swings it and knocks a three-run home-run.

No sprint around the bases for this power hitter. He has a luxury Canseco never gets. After his dinger, he plops into a beach chair, cranks up the radio and listens to the Beatles featured on a ‘60s flashback weekend.

Despite Fulford’s home run and the team’s subsequent hits, they watch more balls fly over their own heads than they hit over their opponents’.

They lose. They do that sometimes. But they also win a few.

At San Diego last year, in the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club tournament, Bad Habits placed 12th out of 250 teams in the Century Division, a division in which a team’s combined age must reach 100 or more.

“Terry gets upset sometimes when he makes mistakes, and he gets pumped up before a big tournament,” Jolene said. “He’s really competitive.”

Fulford also plays golf, which helps his over-the-line swing. And every Monday night he plays slo-pitch softball, which doesn’t.

“The softball guys always yell at me that I’m swinging like I’m still on the beach,” he said. “I have to adjust.”

He prefers over-the-line to the other sports.

“I like the individuality of it,” he said.

And, unlike other amateur athletes who are eager for their sport to go big time with sponsorship and big prize money, Fulford isn’t hoping for that ESPN over-the-line contract to come along.

“Normally there’s no prize money (at tournaments), and I prefer it that way,” he said. “Everyone starts bickering and takes it way too serious.”

Fulford likes over-the-line the way it is: casual. Pay a $10 fee. Have a beer. Get a T-shirt.

He has a lot of T-shirts. And, more importantly, he’s having fun.

“He’ll play as long as his body will put up with it,” Jolene said. “It’s where he gets his frustration out. It’s better that he’s out there than just sitting around doing nothing.”

Fulford agrees.

“If I wasn’t out here,” he said, glancing around the beach, “I’d probably be sitting at home on the couch, watching golf on TV.”