That Fungo Looks Very Familiar

Jimmie Reese has been hitting fungoes for most of this century, but for the first swing this spring, Jimmie tried a new grip.

“My fingers were crossed,” he said.

Fungoes are Jimmie’s life, but Jimmie’s life had been fungo-less since last May, when a coronary artery began acting its age and sent Jimmie to the hospital and then to the sideline, keeping him out of uniform for the first summer since--and, yes, you can look this up--1916.

As one might imagine, it was nervous time for Jimmie. He stood on the moist green grass in Mesa, Ariz., where he had watched countless veterans attempt countless comebacks, and at age 86, Jimmie launched one of his own.

Up went the baseball, the first baseball of the day, a sitting duck for Jimmie’s trusted fungo, otherwise known as Very Old Faithful.

Swing . . .

And a miss.

“I can’t remember the last time that happened,” Jimmie said. “I’m thinking, ‘Hey, what’s going on? Don’t tell me that’s an indication of things to come.’

“But once I got started, things got straightened out.”

A month has since passed, and Jimmie has blended again into the scenery, which is the way he likes it. The center of attention is no place for him, a characteristic apparently rooted in his days as Babe Ruth’s roommate. That was one of the reasons Jimmie stayed away from Anaheim Stadium after undergoing repair for a blocked artery. He didn’t want anybody fussing over him.

Jimmie’s requests are few.

A few fungoes to hit.

A few pitches to chart.

A few hours to jab and joke with Jim Abbott, Mark Langston and Kirk McCaskill--”my bobos,” Jimmie calls them.

“I can’t think of anything better,” he said. “Can you?”

Jimmie’s bobos are teasing Jimmie again, a good sign. Abbott is talking to writers Saturday following his turn on the mound against the Seattle Mariners, and someone asks him for a pitch count.

“Fifty, I think,” Abbott says. “Of course, Jimmie was counting, so it could be 150.”

Jimmie is out of earshot, but the comment is relayed to him. “That little donkey,” Jimmie says, loving every second.

A few days earlier, Jimmie was hitting fungoes and the ribbing was rolling. You-hit-like-an-old-man was the theme.

“If you don’t hit ‘em any harder,” Abbott called out, “we’re going to have to get Reily McCaskill to replace you.”

Reily McCaskill is Kirk’s 10-month-old son.

“OK, OK,” Jimmie grumbled as he snatched up another ball. And, under his breath: “I’ll take care of your ‘Reily McCaskill.’ ”

Jimmie missed life with the Angels last summer--”As much as I could miss anything else”--but in reality, the Angels might have missed him more.

“I think that was a big part of last year,” Abbott said. “When you’re having the kind of year we were and you look over on the bench and Jimmie’s not there, it made for a lot of long nights. We were concerned about him. We were a little bit scared.

“Jimmie takes the drudgery out of the game. You always look in the dugout and see someone sitting next to him, joking with him, fooling with him, lighting his shoelaces on fire. Jimmie’s fun to have around. He keeps things in perspective.”

You spend 74 years in professional baseball, you find perspective. Jimmie’s ties go back before the Black Sox Scandal, to 1917, when he suited up as a batboy for the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. He broke in as a player with the Oakland Oaks in 1924.

“Last year was an unexpected year,” he said, “but I suppose it happens to everyone eventually. I’ve stayed around a lot longer than the average fella . . . I think I’m the oldest man in baseball.

“Active, that is.”

Jimmie has been told he has a “lifetime contract” with the Angels, but after last year, he figures a clarification is in order.

“Does a ‘lifetime contract’ actually mean the rest of my lifetime?” Jimmie wants to know. “Well, when I die, I want to go with my boots on. That’s the best way I know.”

The worst way?

Jimmie says he knows that, too.

“I died with this team last year,” he said with a grimace. “I was following them by watching TV and listening to the radio, but when they got way behind, I got tired of it and shut the thing off.

“But I didn’t like that much, either, so after awhile I snuck up and switched it on again. It was a struggle.”

Now, Jimmie is back and, Jimmie believes, so are the Angels.

“I like ‘em,” he says by way of assessment. “I think we’re a contender. This is the best team we’ve had here in some time.”

Jimmie points at Dave Parker.

“That big lug there, getting him didn’t hurt us, either,” Jimmie says. “You’re going to have a pretty hard time now, going through our whole lineup without getting hurt. One guy’s as tough as the next. Anybody on this club can win you a ballgame.

“I remember years ago seeing teams and thinking, ‘Gee, do we have to go through this again?’ But I’m excited about this one.”

So much so that Jimmie almost didn’t tell the doctor that he was stopping by for inspection.

“I was afraid the doctor would tell me, ‘No, you’ve got to stay out a little longer,’ ” he said. “But I eventually saw him. He said, ‘You’re fine--but don’t go out there and hit until you collapse. If you get tired, stop.

“Stop? I didn’t know what that word meant.”

He does now. Having learned the definition last year, Jimmie is enjoying the antonym that much more this spring.