BASEBALL : Looking at ‘Senior’ Circuit

The first pelican encountered here was an at-large bird perched on a piling near Tampa Bay. The area’s newest Pelicans -- the St. Petersburg Pelicans -- were all gathered downtown at Al Lang Stadium. They’re a baseball team, as well as an odd group of birds.

They’re a collection of Roy Hobbses, who have been away from the game for a time -- in some cases, a long, long time. The Florida-based eight-team Senior Professional Baseball Association begins play Wednesday with almost 200 former major-leaguers who are at least 35 years old (catchers must be 32). Managers range from from future Hall-of-Famer Earl Weaver to Bill Lee, the former Red Sox “Spaceman,” who calls the aging players’ new opportunity “a denial of death.”

The Pelicans’ roster is a mixture that rivals Bernard Malamud’s strangest fiction: 40-year-old Lenny Randle, once a Washington Senator and now a fluent speaker of Italian after five seasons in the Italian Baseball Federation; Sammy Stewart, who still speaks perfect Swannanoan probably because he’s been back home in Swannanoa, N.C., for two years after a 10-year career, eight with Baltimore; Ron LeFlore, former Detroit standout also remembered for a book about his prison experience titled “Break Out,” and Dock Ellis, who said his use of drugs cut short his major league career but who has long gone straight and is making his first appearance as a pitching coach and maybe even short relief man.

Dick Bosman almost made the team. Once the Senators’ ace, he is 45 years old and hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since 1976. “If I had known this, I wouldn’t have worn out my arm pitching batting practice for the last 13 years,” said Bosman, who was still wearing No. 25 for the Pelicans. “Just kidding. I’ll be in a utility role.” That will include being color man on the Pelicans’ local radio broadcasts.

The league was conceived by Jim Morley, who owns the Pelicans. At 33, he is not old enough to play in his own league. His only professional experience was a season in Fresno in the Giants organization. He was a “very light hitting outfielder” who went on to become a millionaire real estate developer in Colorado Springs.

“I was sitting on the beach in Australia in January, about 2 1/2 weeks into a month’s vacation, and I was reading about a senior golf tournament that was going on,” said Morley. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a senior baseball league?’ ” For the rest of the vacation, he said, he virtually ignored his girlfriend, Annie, while he mapped his baseball league plans, “35 pages on a legal pad.”

When he got home, which wasn’t fast enough for him, he wrote to 1,250 former players. “I got back 730 positive responses,” said Morley, standing by the batting cage watching his Pelicans work out Monday in the late afternoon sun. “In the first week I had 100. That’s when I knew that I had hit a deal.

“Frank White from the Royals sent me back a card that said, ‘Not this year.’ Goose Gossage said ‘Yes,’ but under comments added, ‘I hope not this year.’ When Dick Williams came aboard as a manager, that really gave us some credibility. Earl gave us more credibility.”

Weaver is managing the Gold Coast Suns (Pompano Beach-Miami), who open Wednesday afternoon at Fort Myers. Williams manages the West Palm Beach Tropics. Bill Lee has the Winter Haven Super Sox, who have several former Red Sox. Gates Brown manages the Orlando Juice, Clete Boyer the Bradenton Explorers and Graig Nettles the St. Lucie Legends. Morley would seem to have picked a choice location for his franchise. “The fact that I founded the league made it real simple,” he said.

Each team has 24 players and will play 72 games. The league has a three-year cable arrangement with Prime Network. Top salaries are about $15,000 a month and each team has a season salary cap of $550,000. Pelicans tickets sell from $3 to $5.50.

Around the league are such once (and future?) wonders as a 48-year-old Luis Tiant, Amos Otis, Tippy Martinez, Bill Madlock, Ferguson Jenkins, Butch Hobson, Al Bumbry, Clint Hurdle, Bobby Bonds, Mickey Rivers, Dave Kingman, Paul Blair and Cesar Cedeno.

“The players think this is about Triple-A level,” Morley said. “They say that they don’t have the speed that the kids in Triple A do, but they have the experience.”

The league will succeed, he added, if it offers competitive games. “This is not an old-timers league. You can’t play 36 old-timers games. If you do, people won’t come out and watch. People are looking for competitive baseball.”

To that end, the Pelicans have assembled a “youthful” team with an average age of 37 years 2 months. Bobby Tolan, the manager, has worked them hard for two weeks, and almost all look trim. In fact, most of the uniform pants that Morley ordered were too big -- especially the extra larges and extra-extra larges. They had to be run through a hot-water washer and dryer several times.

“This is an another opportunity for me,” said Tolan, a former National League outfielder who managed the last two years in the Orioles chain at Erie, Pa., in the New York-Penn League and aspires to big league managing. “Although it’s not the major leagues, they are to me still major league ballplayers. Even though they’re in the past tense.”

A friend of Tolan’s, Dock Ellis has spent several years dedicated to efforts in keeping young people off drugs. As far as coaching, he said he’s learning as he goes and has benefited from help by Tolan and fellow coach Ozzie Virgil Sr. Ellis said he would like to be a big league coach.

“But what happens to me is, something comes up that I never really like to talk about, and that’s my past, because of the type person that I was. ... But notice that I use the term that I ‘was.’ ”

He was 34 when he “lost the desire” for the game. He’s 44 now, and for the last three years said he has had plenty of desire to be reconnected with baseball. The closest he’s been was two years as a drug counselor for the Yankees.

“One more pitch -- that’s it, that’s it,” Ellis shouted to a left-hander named Mike Williams, finishing his turn as batting practice pitcher. Each team is allowed three players with no major league experience; Williams never advanced above Triple A.

But some who did are here because they want to get back to the big leagues. One is left-handed reliever Al Holland, whose major league earned run average is 2.98 but who has been home in Voorhees, N.J., the last two seasons. He’s “thrown BP” with his son’s Babe Ruth team. Last spring he tried out with the Orioles, but was cut.

“My goal is to come down, pitch well, exceptionally well, and maybe I’ll get a chance to be invited to a major league camp again,” Holland said. “I’m throwing the ball nice and easy and free. I tried to come in in better shape than I did in any other spring training in my career. As you get older, you get a little wiser.

“The tag on me was that I was always overweight. A lot of times I wasn’t, but that’s the tag. I came into camp what I weighed when I was pitching very well in ’83 and ‘84, which was 210.”

Holland said that when he and other players were younger “we took things for granted.” Now he’s working toward one last chance in the majors with the hope that “left-handed pitching is hard to come by. You never have enough left-handed pitching.”

Stewart, the former Oriole who moved on to Boston and Cleveland, sat on a stool in the Pelicans clubhouse. “The last time I pitched, in ‘87,” he said, “I don’t think I was finished. I got hurt that year in a collision. But I still had the arm. I think I’m going to show people. I was in my best shape in ‘88, trying to get ready for a team, but they didn’t call.

“It’s just good to be in the locker room again with these guys. I have an opportunity now to play with some great ones like (Jon) Matlack and (Milt) Wilcox. I’ve missed it. Being in the locker room. Being under the lights and playing. . . .

“In two World Series I was never scored on, and I was kind of disappointed that (then Boston manager) John McNamara didn’t find time to use me in the ’86 World Series. But,” he sighed, “that’s water over the dam.”

Stewart was perspiring. He said Tolan has kept him running. “The workouts have been hard. He runs a tight ship here and I think it’s made us respect this league. It’s not going to be a slow-pitch softball league.

“When I left the big leagues in ‘87, I had a great split-finger and I was a little worried that it might have left me. But it didn’t. It’s still here and it’s going to be a good pitch for me. Because I think most of these guys are going to be looking for the fastball. You’re going to really have to spot your fastball because I see some of the older guys just jumping all over the fastball.”

As for Weaver, his longtime manager, Stewart said, “I’m looking forward to seeing the little fellow. Earl used to tickle me. He’d come out to the mound -- he didn’t like you to walk people -- and he’d say, ‘I’m 53 years old and I can throw the ball over a 17 1/2-inch plate. Get out of here. You stink today.’ ”

As darkness fell and the Al Lang lights took hold, the Pelicans finished their workout. Randle was among those circling the bases -- several times. He hit .302 with Texas in 1974 and .304 with the Mets in ’77. But before that he was a Senator. In 1971, his one season in Washington and Washington’s last in the American League, he batted .219 as a rookie second baseman.

Back this year from Italy, he had spoken about the new seniors league with its commissioner, Curt Flood, who told him, “Don’t think it’s a joke. Call.” Randle said, “Put me down. I’ll be there. I’d like to play in every league.”

One thing he remembered about his days as a Senator was Richard Nixon’s interest in the game and the team. As he signed an autograph for an elderly couple he’d known for years, Randle said of his Washington days, “I’ve outlasted a lot of politicians.”