Senior League Tries to Do Some Stretching : Baseball: Franchises in San Bernardino and Sun City, Ariz., are added in second season.

In the Senior Professional Baseball Assn.’s first year of operation, four of its eight franchises folded, one of its owners disappeared, two commissioners came and went and the league, either largely ignored or the target of derision, absorbed losses larger than expected.

In this season, its second, the league for players 34 and over--catchers can be as young as 32--has come west, adding the San Bernardino Pride and Sun City (Ariz.) Rays.

“San Bernardino is a great market with great potential,” SPBA President Rick Remmert said. “Adding San Bernardino and Sun City takes us from a regional entity to a truly national entity.”

San Bernardino has become one of minor league baseball’s biggest success stories. In four years of operation, the Class-A California League’s Spirit has had the four best single-season attendance figures in the league’s 49-year history. Last summer, the Spirit drew more than 190,000 in 71 dates.

General Manager Bill Shanahan, who had served as the Spirit’s general manager until earlier this year, is optimistic about achieving similar success with the Pride.

“We’re shooting to average 1,500,” he said. “We’ve sold over 250 season tickets and expect to hit around 300.”

Through seven home dates, the Pride’s average attendance was 1,009 , with a high of 2,627 for opening night Nov. 30.

The league was conceived by Jim Morley while vacationing on an Australian beach in January, 1989.

“I was reading about a senior golf tournament in Brisbane and thought, ‘If there’s senior golf, there should be senior baseball,’ ” said Morley, the St. Petersburg Pelicans owner. “I was in better shape at 33 than when I was 23, so why not?”

In nine months Morley was able to organize a league with eight teams, all in Florida. Those involved with the league, though, cited the lack of preparation time to deal with both on- and off-field problems.

“Because of the short amount of time, we didn’t check out a few of the owners and people who worked for us as well as we should have,” Morley said.

“Last year at this time, there were about a dozen players out with hamstring and leg injuries,” said Bobby Tolan, St. Petersburg’s playing manager. “It takes a while to get into shape, and we just didn’t have the time. There were a lot of blowouts because the pitchers weren’t ready early in the season. The arm strength wasn’t there.”

The league had only eight weeks to market itself. The average attendance had been projected at 1,800-2,000. The actual average was 980, and “the typical loss was in the mid-six figures,” Remmert said.

To cut future losses, the schedule has been pared from 72 to 56 games. The top player salary was dropped from $15,000 to $10,000 with the average salary at $5,000. The season began three weeks later this year to better take advantage of the “snowbirds,” Northerners who winter in Florida and Arizona.

The league has had two commissioners, former major leaguer Curt Flood and Miami sports entrepreneur Rick Horrow, and two presidents, Morley and Remmert, in its brief history. There is no commissioner now, but one is being sought.

“In terms of leadership, I’d give us an F,” Morley said. “Overall, we deserve a B-minus or C.”

Ownership problems continued this year when the backers of the West Palm Beach Tropics pulled out in October. Rather than drop to five teams, the league decided to operate the franchise but have it play all 56 games on the road.

The move west has given the SPBA added exposure and increased its pool of available players.

“There were a lot of guys last year who didn’t want to leave the West Coast to go to the East Coast for three months,” Morley said. “There were 100 former major leaguers who contacted San Bernardino asking to play.”

The league is in the second year of a television contract with cable’s Prime Network. Prime Ticket will carry two games each week in Southern California. The league has a discount package with Continental Airlines, helping reduce travel costs.

“I’d give us an A for a caliber of play,” Morley said. “Some days, if you took the best players in our league, we’d give the Dodgers a better game than the Atlanta Braves.”

Tolan said the players have learned lessons from last season.

“We’re definitely in better shape,” Tolan said. “Guys started getting ready in June and July. Some of the pitchers found college and high school teams they could throw with and there aren’t as many blowouts now.”

San Bernardino opened the season losing four of seven games on a Florida trip, and has dropped five of seven on its first home stand, which continues tonight with a game against the Ft. Myers Sun Sox at 6:30.

The best-known name on the Pride’s roster is 41-year-old Vida Blue, the 1971 American League MVP and Cy Young Award winner. Other notables include Mike Norris, a 22-game winner for the 1980 Oakland Athletics before shoulder and drug problems derailed his career; Derrel Thomas, who played for the Dodgers, Angels and San Diego Padres and four other teams during a 15-year major league career; and Rudy Law, the Dodgers’ starting center fielder in 1980. Rich Dauer, a former Baltimore Oriole infielder, is the playing manager.

The Pride also has its version of Bo Jackson in Anthony Davis, the former USC football star who also played baseball.

The league also has also former relief ace Rollie Fingers and 284-game winner Ferguson Jenkins, both with Sun City.