Tuesday, October 17, 2000

Old bones & balls make for lively show

By Bill Whitaker

After popping the ball, Rex Klepper dropped the bat and raced for first with all the athletic stride, determination and focus in his being.

But it wasn’t enough. He was out at first.

Back at the dugout, one of his fellow players cheerfully complimented the returning ballplayer’s effort. Klepper smiled.

“Whatever else,” he said quietly, “it’s still 90 feet.”

And whatever else, Rex Klepper is still 76 years old.

If the action was slower than usual at Crutcher Scott Field the other night, the players still bristled with enthusiasm. But it was the kind of enthusiasm that has less to do with competitiveness and more to do with a simple love of baseball and the camaraderie it inspires.

“We’re just out here to have a good time,” Klepper, a local farmer, said of the annual Abilene Christian University alumni ballgame, fast becoming a homecoming tradition. “And, yeah, everybody out here tries to keep up with everybody else, but we’re all a little out of shape.”

That said, the oldtime ACU ballplayers’ display of effort and sense of perspective were enough to inspire ACU head baseball coach Britt Bonneau and the current crop of ballplayers.

“These guys get out here and play hard,” Bonneau told me midway through Saturday night’s game. “But my players enjoy coming out to watch because they get to talk with those who have gone before. They get to exchange experiences.”

The game between 30 or so former ACU ballplayers only goes six innings, but sometimes that’s five innings too many.

“Some of them are good for only one inning,” quipped former Abilene Mayor Gary McCaleb, who played baseball for ACU in the early 1960s and was back to play the other evening. “Some of our pitchers are good for only one throw. And nobody would want to hit a double because they can’t run that far.

“And if you look out there, you’ll see no one tries to steal.”

In the several years the ACU alumni baseball game has been held, no serious injuries have been reported. But when a graying ballplayer dives for second, the way McCaleb did the other night, it might look more like he simply fell over.

One of the feistiest, most eager ballplayers was 65-year-old cross-country trucker Jesse Tomasek of Sulphur Springs. He says his teammates are pretty honest about their concessions to age.

“Nobody’s really done anything embarrassing, but sometimes they’ll sure say embarrassing things,” he admitted. “For instance, you’ll hear one say to another, ‘Oh, please, don’t throw the ball over that way — I can’t lean that far anymore.’”

And if they aren’t confessing embarrassing things about themselves, they’re poking fun at others, such as when somebody yelled out to 49-year-old pitcher Butch Schultz of Amarillo to watch out for the vultures circling overhead.

No wonder the 50 or so fans in the stands heard so much groaning and moaning about infernal aches and pains.

“They say the legs are the first to go, but it isn’t,” 65-year-old ballplayer Don Rhoden lectured his pal, 66-year-old Jim Armstrong. “It’s your eyes. When that ball’s in play, all I see is a blur.

“But,” he added, “it’s a pretty little blur.”

Contact associate editor Bill Whitaker at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com. Check out Bill’s previous columns at www.brazosbill.com.