Sport: Never Having to Grow Up

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It was a perfect day for baseball. Now if only the baseball had been perfect. At McKechnie Field in Bradenton on the Gulf Coast, the midweek weather might have been auditioning for a Florida picture postcard, but the hometown Explorers committed three errors, looked orphaned on the base paths and lost by nine runs. After the game, Wayne Garrett, the former New York Met, who entered the lineup in the eighth inning, was asked if he was exhausted from playing. "No," Garrett sighed, "but I was tired of watching."

Welcome to the Senior Professional Baseball Association, where the crack of the bat meets the creak of the bone. Founded this year by Arizona real estate developer Jim Morley, the S.P.B.A. is into its first three-month season, fielding eight Florida teams of ex-major leaguers 35 or older (catchers may be 32). Most of the superstars are missing: Reggie Jackson is occupied with his classic autos, Jim Palmer with his underwear, Pete Rose with hawking his tarnished name. But enough good ole boys of summer are participating to help ease the winter of discontent every baseball addict endures between the last out of the World Series and the first bud of spring training.

They will also be tapping the deep font of goodwill toward aging sports idols. The American male wants to keep seeing athletes do what they once did best. In golf, the senior circuit earns more money than the entire women's tour. Former tennis aces draw big crowds in their own slots at the major tournaments. Boxing, aside from Mike Tyson's bum-of-the-month festival, is one big Over the Hill Gang. Last week's waltz between Sugar Ray Leonard, 33, and Roberto Duran, 38, was the top-grossing fight in history. Next month George Foreman, now bigger than Mount Rushmore and twice as old, will face perennial white heavyweight Gerry Cooney. Someone will get hurt -- probably the first one who throws a punch -- and people will pay to watch. Like rock 'n' roll, sports used to be a young man's game. But with the graying of America, the Stones go rolling on, and geriatric jocks are big business.

Well, maybe not big Senior Baseball business. The eight S.P.B.A. owners, each of whom staked a reported $850,000 for the first season, are not expecting quick profits. With some games attracting as few as 100 paying customers, a team or two may fold before the scheduled February play-offs. The players, whose salaries average $23,000, won't get rich either. But what they want is to prove, to themselves and others, that there is life after Fan Appreciation Day. "Hell," says ex-Yankee Graig Nettles in the S.P.B.A. yearbook, "if I can stay in baseball, I may never have to grow up." The same goes for the fan, especially at long distance. Just checking S.P.B.A. stats in USA Today keeps the faithful in touch with the game's liturgy. To catch a Senior game on a remote radio signal -- to hear "Bobby Bonds now batting against Rollie Fingers" -- is to be time-warped into any fan's favorite baseball era: Back When.