Senior Baseball League to Put Retiring Sorts Back to Work

Monday, on baseball diamonds across Florida, elbows will groan, knees will creak and hairlines will recede.

It won’t be a gathering of arthritis sufferers or a convention for folks who aren’t getting around as well as they used to. At least, it’s not designed to be.

Rather, it will be Day 1 for the Senior Professional Baseball Assn., a new sports league that promises to put about 200 retired major-leaguers back into headlines and support hose.

Training camps open Sunday for the senior league’s eight teams, including traditional favorites such as the St. Petersburg Pelicans and Orlando Juice. Then, on Nov. 1, the SPBA will launch its inaugural season which, barring an outbreak of varicose veins, will span three months and 72 games. The Most Valuable Player Award goes to the man who goes longest without an angina attack. Just kidding.

Who is eligible? According to league rules, play is restricted to those 35 years and older, except for catchers, who qualify at age 32. In an effort to keep teams stocked with familiar and appealing names, another rule stipulates that each team’s roster contain no more than three players without major-league playing experience.

At first glance, the new league seems to have succeeded in wooing prominent former players and former managers into training camps. Dick Williams, the much-traveled major-league skipper, has been signed by the West Palm Beach Tropics, and the Gold Coast Suns have landed the ultimate prize -- Earl Weaver, who seems to sour on retirement approximately every three years.

Players? The Winter Haven Super Sox, who are based at the Boston Red Sox training camp and have drawn heavily from Red Sox alumni, have invited to their camp former big-league pitchers Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Bibby, Darrell Brandon, Tom Burgmeier and Mike Cuellar. All are 45 or older, and Cuellar admits to 52.

Other teams, notably St. Petersburg, are emphasizing youth, so to speak. The Pelicans were the first team to announce the signing of a player still technically under contract to a big-league team -- former Cy Young Award winner Guillermo Hernandez -- and also have extended invitations to former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Randy Lerch, 35, and one-time Orioles reliever Sammy Stewart, who turns 35 on Oct. 28.

But in corraling players who once wore big-league uniforms, the senior league is waging only half its battle for credibility and respect. Now, the SPBA must demonstrate that its games will be competitively and crisply played, that its brand of seniors-only baseball will be more than old-timers day times 72.

Jim Morley, 33, is a believer. Less than a year ago, the Colorado Springs, Colo., real-estate developer conceived the idea for the league while lying on a beach in Australia. When he returned, he says he sent letters with stamped reply cards to 1,200 former major-leaguers asking if they would be interested in playing in a seniors league. From that initial mailing, about 730 players responded positively. Of that number, roughly 200 will be in uniform opening day.

Ask Morley whether the league will be competitive and he cites the small percentage of interested players who actually will make teams.

“There were some skeptics early on, like in anything,” said Morley, who, in addition to founding the league, doubles as the owner of the St. Petersburg team. “They said the players would be too old, that it couldn’t be good baseball. But I think you will find that the players are not that old. I don’t see many over 45 making it in this league. The talent is too great.”

Former major-league outfielder Bobby Tolan, who will manage St. Petersburg, agrees that the senior league will be “very competitive.”

“Obviously, we can’t run as fast as we used to, but some of the players are in pretty good shape,” said Tolan, who, at 43, has not ruled out playing in the league himself. “Ron LeFlore (a Pelicans outfielder and a former Detroit Tiger) could run a 4.0 to first base. He can’t do that anymore, but he can do 4.2 or 4.3.”

The league apparently will serve a variety of purposes for its players, managers, coaches, etc. For players younger than 40 and recently out of baseball, the senior league could be a place to work hard and maybe work back into a major-league job. Into that category, place players such as Stewart, Hernandez and former Orioles Tito Landrum, 35, and Tim Stoddard, 36, each of whom is scheduled to go to camp with the West Palm Beach team.

Tolan hopes the league will catapult him into his dream job -- managing at the major-league level. “I’ve been interviewed twice for managing jobs -- with the (Houston) Astros and the (California) Angels,” said Tolan, who was dismissed this month by the Baltimore Orioles after managing in their minor-league system for the past two years. “Each time I was told I was turned down because I had no major-league experience as a manager. If I get another opportunity to interview, I can say I have managed big-leaguers.”

For others, whose work in civilian life pays little or who have no steady job, the senior league is at least a paycheck.

But the chance to smack a line drive or boot a groundball does not charm every former ballplayer. For instance, Brooks Robinson, 52, and a regular on the old-timers game circuit said, “I can’t think of one thing that appeals to me” about playing in a senior league.

And Jim Palmer, 42, who could be reunited with Weaver, his long-time manager and occasional sparring partner, apparently has little interest, although he has joked often about the possibility of a comeback.

Robinson, assessing the current state of his game, said, “I can’t do anything.” But the Hall of Famer and 16-time Gold Glove Award winner added that he would not be interested in playing again even if time had not greatly diminished his skills.

Robinson even wonders if the league will bring more joy to the born-again players or to the medical community.

“I believe there are a bunch of orthopedic surgeons behind this league, if you want to know the truth,” Robinson said.

The reluctance of players such as Robinson and Palmer to sign up points out a problem that the senior league has not yet solved. In its first year, with few exceptions, the most marketable and desirable retired stars have stayed away. Barring a late roster addition, you won’t find Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson or Joe Morgan riding a bus between Fort Myers and Port St. Lucie.

Although he has contacted all the former stars, Morley maintains that his leagues “can do it without” their participation.

And he remains hopeful that as the senior league gains exposure and respect, some bigger names will be won over. Morley uses the seniors golf tour, which has grown exponentially in recent years, as a model for what his baseball league might become.

“The first year of senior golf, a lot of guys stayed out waiting to see if it was socially acceptable. We are seeing the same thing,” he said. “We’re not the major leagues. We don’t pretend to be. A guy who is in the Hall of Fame, if he can come to grips with that, says to himself, ‘I want to play ball and have some fun,’ this is a pretty good deal.”