They’re Just Aching to Play : Stalwart Veterans Won’t Let Ailments Keep Them Out of Manhattan Beach League

Like all athletes, they just do it.

They just do it a little slower.

But you can’t expect lightning speed in Manhattan Beach’s first senior slow-pitch softball league, where participants boast about their ailments as if they were championship trophies.

“I just had an angioplasty done six weeks ago, and now I feel great,” said 76-year-old Sam Lubarsky of Culver City, after running down a pop fly in right field. “I also had prostate surgery recently.”

That’s minor league compared to Dutch Horn, the first baseman for Ben Franks, one of four teams in the new senior league. Horn, 63, underwent quadruple bypass surgery in late January.

“I get tired easier than I used to,” said Horn, a former minor-leaguer in Oklahoma and now a Santa Fe Springs resident. “But I’ve still been hitting around .600.”

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Whether they’re heart attacks or tendinitis, injuries don’t seem to matter to these older boys of summer, who gladly put their bodies on the line every Thursday morning in Manhattan Beach just to play ball.

“There’s not a guy out here who doesn’t have an injury or a physical limitation of some kind,” said league founder Dick Neitz of Manhattan Beach, himself a victim of bad knees.

“My shortstop has got a colostomy bag, my pitcher is 72 years old,” said the 64-year-old retired engineer, suddenly halting his litany. “You’ve never seen senior ball before, have you?”

It would be a mistake to think the senior leaguers don’t play well. They do.

“The league’s a gas,” said Charlie Saikley of the Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation Department. “They remind me of a bunch of little kids out there. They argue and fight. But I have to say they play good ball.”

Some of the men, like Joe Zander, 70, a retired aerospace worker, used to make a living playing baseball. While the El Segundo resident may have lost a step or two scooping up balls in left field, you can still see the accurate throwing arm and smooth swing that put Zander on a St. Louis Cardinals farm team in the 1940s.

“We have fleeting moments of brilliance,” joked Lawndale’s Bob Perry, 63, respected as a power hitter for the Kettles, another team in the senior league.

The league, started this spring, is in the midst of its first 12-game season. Every Thursday, its four teams pair off for two games at Manhattan Beach’s Dorsey Field, one at 9 a.m. and the other at 10:30 a.m.

To accommodate elderly players, some rules have been changed. Overrunning a base, for instance, is allowed, and teams can also use substitute runners without pulling anyone out of the game. Teams in the league can have four players age 55 to 60, but the rest of the batting order has to be over 60.

The league is hoping to expand to six teams by July, when the beach city’s second season is scheduled to begin. Filling two more team rosters shouldn’t be a problem, say the players, who are already spreading the word.

The seniors’ play seems all the more impressive in light of their medical conditions. Consider Kettles second baseman Joe Geis, 61. Four years ago, Geis, who owns a plumbing company, collapsed on a Long Beach field in another senior league. A teammate initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation and kept the El Segundo resident alive until paramedics arrived.

Some players, like Joe Bravo, 72, have avoided the routine injuries the game visits on ballplayers of any age. The secret, the retired auto repairman from Lawndale explains between drags on his cigarette, is stretching.

“I always warm up before I play,” said Bravo, considered something of a softball legend in Southern California for his managing and pitching prowess. “A lot of guys don’t do it, they just start playing and pretty soon they’ve pulled a hamstring or a groin muscle.”

The Thursday morning games attract few spectators. But fan adoration isn’t what keeps the seniors coming to the ballpark. A major reason is friendship. Almost to the man, the players said what they enjoyed the most about the league was the camaraderie.

“If you didn’t have these games, naturally you’d find something else,” said Monte Waters, 67, a retired Torrance teacher. “But when we get a rain-out or something, it occurs to you that, my God, what would we do without it? The guys out here are the greatest.”

Waters speaks appreciatively of his ball field friends who recently pitched in to help his son, a Peace Corps volunteer in Hungary. Waters’ teammates donated gloves, bats, caps and balls to his son, who is introducing the American pastime to the Eastern Europeans.

Players also have more personal reasons for suiting up every Thursday.

“In high school, I made the track team, the football team and the baseball team, but then they wouldn’t let me play because of a heart murmur,” Lubarsky said. “I used to watch the other guys play. It used to tear my heart out. Now I’m getting my chance to play.”

Says Geis: “We all just want to be kids for a while.”