These Guys Make Softball a Game for the Ageless

Harold Kromer is what baseball people call a “wily veteran with the smarts to get the job done,” so he’s still pitching while the wunderkinds have come and gone.

Once in a while a young one will catch his eye, like Harlie Lunke on Tuesday morning on an Anaheim diamond in Marshall Park, and as raw as this one appeared, it was obvious Lunke might have the determination to make it to the next level.

“I’m serious about this,” said Lunke, who has been spending his own money at an amusement park to hit 40-to-60 balls a day in the batting cage. “I throw a ball against a wall to strengthen my arm, run and lift. I want to make it.”

Lunke is 79. His goal is to make the local 80-and-over softball team.

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KROMER IS 86, and looks two years younger than sports editor Bill Dwyre. He pitched nine innings for the Dodgers in a 23-3 victory on an unusually warm Tuesday morning, and he will be 87 next month. “As long as the widow down the block doesn’t find out I’m really 87, I’ll be just fine,” he said.

Babe Ruth dived for a foul ball in the stands just a row or two from where Kromer was sitting in Yankee Stadium. He recently filled out medical paperwork, and when the nurse said he must have made some kind of mistake, he said, “No, that’s correct. I had one surgery in 1999 and the other in 1919.”

He married his wife after the last World War, and next week will mark the 30th anniversary of her death. “You can imagine how young she was when she died,” he said. “I know she would have really enjoyed these softball games.”

It would have also given him the chance to show off for his bride, not only winning the game, but making the play of the day.

In the third inning, the Downey Dizzy Deans’ Ron Cunningham lined a shot directly up the middle only to have Kromer reach out with the quickness you wouldn’t even expect from Andy Ashby. I haven’t seen anything like that since the last time someone tried walking past Dwyre with a tray full of Krispy Kremes.

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NOW I can’t recall the last time I had as much fun watching the Dodgers. In the first, the Deans’ No. 2 hitter hit a ball to right field and beat the throw to first. Eric Karros would be considered Carl Lewis in this league. It took two more singles to the outfield and a sacrifice fly to creak a run home for the Deans, and then 82-year-old hurler Frank Russell took the mound to oppose the Dodgers.

“We call him, ‘Russell McNasty,’ ” said one of his teammates after Russell began yelling at his third baseman for failing to make a tag. Then he had words for his manager, Roger LeClaire, who just laughed.

Between innings I asked Russell if he was the Deans’ version of Kevin Brown, and he blew me off.

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NOW ANYONE who has ever been to a Little League game knows the most-repeated thing you hear after “hey batter-batter,” is “hustle in and hustle out” between innings. There is no hustle in senior slow pitch.

There are exceptions, though. Lunke, the eager kid trying to make the 80-year-old roster, jogged everywhere like he was auditioning for the lead role in “Pete Rose, The Later Years.”

“I played baseball in my 20s, but not since then,” said Lunke, who also goes ballroom dancing two-to-four times a week with a younger partner. “You know, the recreation department has some great dance classes.”

I’ll let Dwyre know, so long as they provide Advil, too.

“Is your boss old enough to play in the 65-and-older league?” Deans’ first baseman Doug Oatman said.

“Does acting like he’s 65 count?”

“They don’t ask for birth certificates when you sign up,” Oatman said.

I’ll let Dwyre know.

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KROMER PROBABLY threw more than 100 pitches in Tuesday’s heat and looked as if he could have thrown another 100, which he will do today when his 65-and-older team plays, and then again Thursday when his 70-and-older team plays.

“I won’t just sit at home,” he said. “I don’t understand people who do.”

He also won’t take a drink of water, and hasn’t since 1949, and while that’s the first time I’ve ever heard something like that, I can’t recall the last 86-year-old pitcher I ever interviewed who has better stuff than Kazuhisa Ishii.

“I grew up in Long Island and the water was great,” he said. “We moved near Brooklyn, and it was terrible, so I stopped drinking the water. Never missed it.”

When the temperature topped 100 at a recent tournament, teammate Ray Thien watched Kromer, “and never once did he take a drink of anything.”

So much for thinking the guy has tapped into the fountain of youth.

“If I get thirsty, I eat a piece of fruit,” he said, and for 30 years I’ve been pushing myself away from the wife’s cooking and getting in trouble when it appears now I was saving my life. “I read an article recently where someone from Dartmouth said drinking eight glasses of water a day is baloney. I could’ve told them that.”

Now the Angels and Dodgers, who play for money, were out of town Tuesday, but no complaints here after watching Kromer & Co. compete with such zest. Some things just never get old.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Jason Elander:

“I’ve sent you nice e-mails and you never use them in the Last Word. What do you want me to do, write something really nasty and call you names? Come on, don’t be a jerk.”

All you had to do was say the magic word.

T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com