Paul Oliver was trotting out to his position when a stranger approached the softball field.
"Hi! I'm Jack Shultz," the man said, extending his hand and explaining he represented a team in Baltimore. "I'm here to scout you."
The second baseman was taken aback. Scout him? Oliver hadn't been scouted in more than half a century. That year was 1943. Then, he was 17 years old and playing American Legion baseball in his hometown of St. Louis, following the likes of Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola.
Now, he was 74 and playing senior softball in Florida with a group of geezers.
Not that some of the plays they turn and their passion for the game has diminished. Though surrounded by septuagenarians cobbled together with metal and plastic, Oliver still feels the old verve, much like what juiced him as a teenager during a big-league tryout with the Cardinals.
"It keeps you from living in a cocoon and doing nothing," says Oliver, 76. "I dream about playing softball. I dreamt I hit a home run, over a 300-foot fence, with the bases loaded - left-handed. And I'm right-handed. Isn't that nuts? I can't wait to get out there and play, or even practice."
For many who play it, senior softball is a bridge to the past, a way to hold onto their athleticism. As baby boomers gray, the ranks of the game continue to swell: 2.3 million participants age 50 and up, according to a 2000 survey.
They play seasonally (year-round in warmer climes), from pickup games to structured leagues that crown national champions. There are dozens of organizations and seven age categories to level the playing field, so the 50-year-olds aren't competing against players old enough to be their fathers.
As of now, the oldest bracket is 80-and-up, though there's banter of someday creating another division at 85.
"You see all these players wearing glasses, knee braces and hearing aids. They take glucose; they're on heart medications. Some are playing with a lot of spare parts," says Terry Hennessy, chief executive of Senior Softball-USA, a Sacramento, Calif.-based organization with 30,000 active players.
The oldest is 103. Increasingly, these old-timers are competing into their 70s and beyond, says Hennessy: "I've seen guys in their 80s with good lateral movement, though you might think that, at that age, they would be lucky to move, period."
At 80, pitcher Bill Smith should be racking up z's, not K's. Four years ago, he had both knees replaced. A year later came heart bypass surgery. But Smith continues to throw for Tremont Hotel, one of three Baltimore-area teams to win at least one national senior championship this fall.
Tremont's 75-and-up team won the Senior Softball World Championship in Phoenix in October; last month, it finished first in the Las Vegas World Masters Championship. Another club, Danny's/Joe Corbi's of Pasadena, took two titles in the 60 Division, winning the SSWC as well as the Softball Players Association Championship in Plano, Texas.
A third area club, Don White's Car Center Roadrunners of Baltimore, won the 70 Division in the Phoenix tournament.
"We've shown that Maryland [seniors] can play, big-time," says Smith, a Washington-area developer whose family owns the Tremont Plaza. Last week, he and several teammates gathered in the hotel bar to show off their newly arrived hardware and to dispel the notion that age has doused the fire in their bellies.
During a recent checkup, says Smith, the doctor discovered an abrasion on his right thigh. "Got that sliding into second base," Smith explained.
That, despite rules to keep the injuries down. To minimize collisions, fields are laid out with two first bases and two home plates. And though hitters must leg it out to first, teams can substitute courtesy runners after that. One of Tremont's fleetest afoot is Shultz, 76, of Annandale, Va.
"He can run like a deer," says Smith.
Shultz is one of several Tremont players who competed this fall after having stents placed in their coronary arteries. Three have fought off cancer; at least two are diabetics. And arthritis has claimed the lot.
"A lot of us are wrapped in elastic, but you play through pain," says Al Lavender, Tremont shortstop. There's a knot on his forehead from Las Vegas, where a bad-hop grounder nailed the 77-year-old.
"The shiners made me look like a raccoon," the Potomac resident says. "My wife said, 'When are you going to quit?' I said, 'I don't know.'
"I figure my arm isn't as strong as it used to be, but the guys running the bases aren't as fast, either. It all balances out."
Widowers make up more than half the group and revel in the camaraderie. "There's a lot more to it than the games," says Oliver, whose wife died in 1994. "The relationships are incredible. You go out with the guys afterward and talk about old times and new times.
"I'm going to play 'til I'm 90."
More than half of Tremont's lineup hails from out of state. Oliver, who hit .870 in the Phoenix tournament, maintains homes in New Jersey and Florida. Another Floridian is Lou Palmisiano, 78, aka "toothpick Louie," who spent nine years in the Cleveland Indians farm system. The retired postman still makes over-the-shoulder catches in the outfield despite eyesight so bad he wears both contacts and glasses.
The older the players get, the greater the leeway in recruiting them. In the 75 division, Tremont is allowed to sign anyone east of the Mississippi. It found Mike Garone, a former New York cop, retired in Florida and playing for a team in the 50-year-old class.
(The irony in senior softball is that competitors are allowed to play down in age, but not up, unlike in Little League, where the mature players are the ringers.)
There is some wiggle room on seniors' ages. Garone, an MVP in the Phoenix tournament, was 74 at the time, but qualifies with a birthday before year's end.
Decades ago, Garone had a brief fling in the Washington Senators organization. "Now, playing softball, I have flashbacks of those days," he says. "I feel it defensively, in the outfield, tracking the ball on a line, knowing you've got a shot at it from the moment it's hit, running 25 feet and sticking your hand out and catching it one-handed."
He describes it as "a flashback of being that young ... and then realizing you're 74 years old and can still do that."