There’s Still a Little Spring in Their Step : Baseball: Seniors are playing a 72-game winter schedule in the autumn of their careers.

The boys of summer are turning into the senior citizens of winter.

Age, old folks are fond of saying, is a state of mind. Legally, however, senior citizenship depends on what you’re doing. For Social Security, it’s 65. For the Senior Olympics, it’s 55. In golf, if you’re an amateur it’s 55, but if you’re a professional, it’s only 50.

The Senior Professional Baseball Assn., an organization grasping to catch the coattails of the financially booming Senior PGA Tour, has set its minimum age for membership at 35. Except for catchers. They’re deemed old men at 32.

Eight teams of mostly former major league baseball players are playing a 72-game schedule in South Florida that started Nov. 1 and will continue through January. All the cities are home to major league teams during spring training.

There are no Hall of Famers on display, but the rosters include such marquee names as Cy Young winners Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue, Mike Cuellar and Ferguson Jenkins; batting champion Bill Madlock, home run king Dave Kingman and recent World Series standouts Luis Tiant, Graig Nettles, Bernie Carbo, Paul Blair, Hal McRae and George Foster.

Managers include Dick Williams and Earl Weaver, a pair of volatile, umpire-baiting World Series winners. Williams, 61, took three teams to the Series, winning with Oakland in 1972 and 1973. Weaver, 59, led Baltimore to four American League championships and a Series victory in 1970.

The commissioner is Curt Flood, a longtime St. Louis Cardinal outfielder who will be remembered more for being the player who forced major league baseball to accept free agency than for his lifetime .293 batting average.

The success of the venture, however, may depend not on how much talent is on display, but on the flight of the snowbirds.

Snowbirds, in Florida, are those hordes of Northerners who flock this way each winter to soak up tropical sunshine while the neighbors they left behind are bundled up against bitter cold.

They will find familiar names in the SPBA box scores, names they once saw in Detroit, Boston, New York or Pittsburgh box scores.

The teams are the St. Petersburg Pelicans, Orlando Juice, Bradenton Explorers and Winter Haven Super Sox in the northern division, and West Palm Beach Tropics, Gold Coast Suns, Ft. Myers Sun Sox and St. Lucie Legends in the southern division. The top two teams in each division will play off for the championship after the 72-game schedule.

A recent survey by the Institute for Public Opinion Research at Florida International University disclosed that New Yorkers account for 18.5% of all the citizens of South Florida--a figure larger than that of either native Floridians or Cubans.

“There’s no denying it, we’re looking for the tourists and the retired folks from major league country to support us,” said Peter Lasser, SPBA executive vice president, from his New York office. “We figure we need to average between 1,800 and 2,000 a game to make it our first year.”

They’re not getting it.

West Palm Beach, Williams’ team, had the largest single attendance, 3,304 on opening night, but dropped to 638 for the next game. Most disappointing have been Miami, where Weaver’s Gold Coast Suns play with a largely Latin lineup; Bradenton, which has the only park in the league without lights; and Orlando, where Walt Disney World and the Epcot Center offer heavy competition.

“It’s tough to draw here until the snowbirds start arriving,” said Ralph Lindstrom, a not-very-busy usher at Bradenton. “Folks hereabouts work on weekdays, and on weekends most everyone watches college and pro football on the tube. Florida is big when it comes to football.

“The snowbirds usually start arriving right after Thanksgiving. Things should start to pick up then. At least I hope so.”

Gold Coast, with Cuban favorite Tiant pitching, attracted 1,023 for its home opener. Orlando, with Madlock in the lineup, averaged only 544 through its first six home games and last Monday night against Gold Coast had only 290.

“What has impressed me the most is the seriousness of the players,” Williams said. “Some of them, like Tim Stoddard, who was pitching for Cleveland before he was cut at the All-Star break a couple of months ago, are looking for another shot at the majors. You’d be surprised how many scouts are looking at us, the way they look at the Latin leagues this time of the year.

“And the guys who know their major league careers are over are looking at it as a second chance to play a few more years. The quality is surprisingly good. I’d say it’s somewhere between triple A and the major leagues.

“There is so much experience on the field that it offsets the speed and youth you see in triple A.”

Speed is what’s missing most--speed on the fastball, speed on the basepaths and speed in running down balls in the field.

“Stoddard can still bring it around 90 (m.p.h.) on occasion, and Ike (Juan Eichelberger) is around 87, 88 all the time,” Williams said of his two star pitchers. “And I’ve got six guys I’ll turn loose on the bases, too. Mickey Rivers is my leadoff man and he still drives the guys crazy on the other side.”

All of which may be why Williams’ Tropics have one of the best records in the fledgling league. They started off by winning seven in a row and are 12-4.

When pitcher Pete Broberg, who bounced around the majors for eight years with five non-contenders, looked at a lineup behind him that included Kingman, Rivers, Toby Harrah, Tito Landrum, Rodney Scott, Lee Lacy and Jerry White, he said, “This lineup is better than any major league club that I’ve ever been on.” Broberg is 3-0.

Many of the games have been well played, but the other afternoon here at McKechnie Field, spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, they had one to forget. There were 35 runs, 44 hits, seven home runs, five errors and as many more misplayed balls.

Harder hit than the seven pitchers was an old moss-laden oak tree behind the left-field fence, where neighborhood youngsters waited for home run balls to bounce off the branches.

West Palm Beach won it, 22-13. Only 448 were at the game.

The hitters seem to have adapted better than the pitchers.

Ft. Myers has a team batting average of .325 and five of the eight teams are hitting better than .300.

Amos Otis, 42, whose season-high home run output was 26 in a 17-year career that ended in 1984, hit nine in his first 10 games for Ft. Myers. During the regular season, Otis is a batting instructor for the San Diego Padres. Pat Dobson, the Ft. Myers manager, is a Padre pitching coach.

Winter Haven started the season with another pitcher, Bill Lee, the Spaceman, as manager. Lee stocked his roster with former Red Sox players, hoping that the Super Sox would attract fans who watch the Red Sox in the spring. Among them was Cuellar, 52, the league’s oldest player.

When Lee was asked what his instructions would be to his team, he replied: “When you slide, get up.”

Before the league was two weeks along, the Super Sox were trailing late in a game and had the bases loaded with the winning run on and two out when Lee inserted himself as a pinch-hitter. When he took a called third strike, the fans let him have it and team President Maxwell Mitchell responded by calling in Ed Nottle, manager of the triple-A Pawtucket team, to handle game strategy.

Lee and Nottle are listed as co-managers.

The worst thing about the league, Williams and Weaver insist, is the umpiring.

“It’s terrible, and that’s the nicest thing I can say about the way the games are being called,” Williams said. “They’re all amateurs from local college and high school games, and they show it.”

Weaver added: “The league went for the cheapest umpiring association. Most of them are high school rejects.”

Not surprisingly, Weaver was tossed out of the fifth game of the season and Williams went out two games later. Both have been ejected twice and the season is only three weeks along.

“From what I’ve seen, I may get thrown out of every game the rest of the season,” Weaver said.

One pitcher, with World Series credentials, added his anonymous comment:

“The umpiring is so inconsistent that you never know how a pitch is going to be called. The strike zone seems to shrink or expand without any reason. It makes it tough on the pitchers, and I know it must be tough on the hitters, too. Don’t tell them (umpires) I said that, though, because I don’t want them to shrink it on me out of spite.”

Rick Horrow, president of the league, said the umpires are the best available, all members of the Gulf Coast Umpires Assn.

Although the league was created for former major leaguers, there are a few Walter Mittys.

Joe Mincberg, 41, a criminal law attorney from West Palm Beach, never played professional baseball at any level.

A first baseman at the University of Connecticut 20 years ago, Mincberg opted for law school instead of pro baseball. Years later he joined the South Florida Amateur Baseball League and became a star in a league dominated by college players.

When he heard about the Senior League, he sent a fax to Donald Sider, owner of the West Palm Beach franchise. Sider recommended he attend a Tropic tryout camp, where he caught the eye of manager Williams.

“I hit a couple out (of the ball park) and I’m told Dick liked what he saw,” Mincberg said. “Then I had a game-winning hit in an exhibition game at Port St. Lucie when Graig Nettles dove for the ball and didn’t get it. Can you imagine what a thrill it was for a fellow like myself to hit one past Nettles after seeing him catch everything in sight in the World Series a few years ago?”

It was Nettles’ spectacular play at third base that helped the New York Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games in the 1978 World Series.

“I haven’t been in a league game yet but I’m having a ball,” Mincberg said. “Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to play pro baseball, and now here I am, suited up alongside fellows like Toby Harrah, Rollie Fingers, Dave Kingman, Al Hrabosky and Mickey Rivers. It’s like a dream.”

Mincberg takes care of his law business by phone when the Tropics are on the road and works in his office from 8 to 2 when the team is home before heading for the ballpark.

Wes Clements was a career minor league catcher who, at 33, thought playing in the Senior League might attract him some attention.

“Who knows, some major league scout might be looking for a backup catcher and give me a chance,” he said. “If not, this is still a thrill. It’s my big leagues.”

Alas, the dream didn’t last long.

Clements was hitting .115 with one home run when the Tropics cut him.

Even the former big leaguers look on the Senior League as a fantasy come true.

Harrah, 41, who in 17 years in the majors was named American League All-Star shortstop with Texas in 1974 and had a .304 batting average with Cleveland in 1982, is one of the most productive players.

In the first 16 games he was hitting .417 and in one game went four for six, scoring six runs.

“Money is part of it, but mostly it’s having fun, having a second opportunity to do what I enjoy most, and that’s playing baseball,” Harrah said. “I haven’t played since ‘86, but when I heard about this league, I decided I had to come down and give it a shot.”

Harrah, who managed two years at Oklahoma City in triple A and coached last season with Texas in his three years out as a player, will be back on the coaching lines with the Rangers almost as soon as the Senior League season ends.

Lacy, unlike Harrah, was out of baseball since his last major league appearance with Baltimore two years ago.

“I’d been playing baseball since I was 7 and I really missed it,” Lacy, 41, said. “I played 16 years in the majors (including seven with the Dodgers) and it’s in my blood. Ilove the game.

Lacy, runner-up to Tony Gwynn in the National League batting race only five years ago, left Lacy Communications, a telephone answering service in Calabasas Park, Calif., for his wife to run while he revives his childhood dream.

The oldest person in uniform is Irvine Truman, 72, a former vaudevillian who ran a strip joint in West Palm Beach for 40 years before retiring. He is bat boy for the Tropics. He loves to sign autographs, penning after his name on each: “World’s Oldest Batperson.”

One of the reasons for lack of spectators may be that Florida is saturated with baseball.

There are the spring training games where the current major leaguers are showcased in Grapefruit League games from late February through March, the 14-team Class A Florida State League from April to September, the advanced spring training league games from March to May and the Instructional League from mid-September to November where future major league players can been seen free.

A sampling of fans, mostly retirees living in South Florida, revealed a variety of reasons for watching the seniors play baseball.

“It’s a wonderful way to spend an afternoon,” said Lonnie Walsh, 81, who came here nearly 20 years ago from Buffalo, N.Y. “I saw most of these boys on TV and now I get a chance to see them up close in person.”

Sarah Cotton, age unavailable but with a weather-wrinkled smile, said: “When I was a little girl, all the baseball games were in the daytime. I don’t like night baseball so I come here and sit in the sun and pretend I’m a little girl again, watching my dad and my brothers play.”

Jesse Armstrong, 69, a lifetime Sarasota resident, may have had the best reason: “It was too hot to play golf today so I decided to come over here and sit in the shade and have a few beers with my buddies. It’s supposed to be cooler tomorrow and if it is we’ll be back on the tee.”

One of the most remarkable things about the league is the rapidity with which it became a reality.

Last January, Jim Morley, 33, a real estate developer from Colorado Springs, was lying on a beach in Australia when the idea for senior baseball popped into his head. Morley played in the San Francisco Giants’ minor league system for a few years.

When he returned to the United States, Morley sent letters to 1,200 former major league players, asking if they were interested in playing in such a league.

“When I got more than 700 affirmative replies, I knew it wouldn’t be difficult to find 200 to fill the rosters for eight teams,” said Morley, who owns the St. Petersburg franchise.

At a press conference in New York in May, formation of the new league was announced.

The league held its first draft on Aug. 8 in Orlando to choose the primary 15 players for each team. After that, they had two-day tryout camps for minor leaguers, major leaguers not selected and semipro hopefuls, to fill the 24-player rosters.

“Some of those guys who showed up for a look were real characters,” Williams said. “We had one guy couldn’t have been more than 5-foot-4 and weighed at least 200 pounds. Said he wanted to play first base.”

He wasn’t much more out of shape, though, than pitcher J.R. Richard, who was one of the Orlando Juice’s first picks. When Richard showed up weighing more than 300 pounds, he was one of the first cut by Manager Gates Brown.

Before the season opened, each team had two weeks of fall training camp, including exhibition games.

“When I saw my team for the first time, I was impressed by the good shape they were in,” Williams said. “That’s important at every level, but maybe more so for fellows a little older.

“The nicest thing about managing at this level is that there aren’t a lot of hassles you get from the prima donnas in the major leagues. The guys here are looser, they know what they have to do. The biggest worry I have is making sure the beer is iced for the ride home.”

The seniors travel by bus across Florida. It’s a ride of more than four hours from Miami to Orlando or St. Petersburg.

There is no need for agents because no player can receive more than $15,000 a month nor less than $2,000 and each team must operate under a $550,000 salary cap. Each club owner paid a franchise fee of $850,000, with a guarantee of three years’ operation.

But the snowbirds better hurry and get here, and they better be baseball fans, if the league is going to see its third season.