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GET OFF MY DIAMOND!
Longtime Mahoning Valley baseball players continue chasing balls and strikes
BOARDMAN
They may not move as fast now, but they sure wear out faster.
They may not be young, but they’re young at heart.
They may have grandchildren now, but they still love the Grand Old Game.
They are players in the senior men’s baseball league, which comprises 18 teams in two age divisions: 48-over and 58-over.
The entire league is mostly baby-boomer generation players, but could trace its roots to the pioneer Youngstown Baseball Oldtimers Association.
The senior league includes three Youngstown teams as well as teams from Warren, Girard, Hubbard, Springfield, Salem, Greenville, Pa.; Chester, W. Va.; and Jamestown, N.Y. Most play home games at their vicinity’s high school fields or a community park. Crestview High School is a home field in Columbiana County and Chester plays its home games in East Liverpool.
The 48-and-over independent league is the more established age group and is usually referred to as 50-and-over, says Jack Hay, secretary.
It may include 48-year-olds, but a player must be 50 to be on the mound.
“A team can have four exemptions below 50, but we’ve always maintained that you’ve got to be 50 to pitch,” Hay said.
The newer 58-and-over league that formed about six years years ago has grown from four teams to six.
“They’re all pretty decent and a lot of the same guys play both [age groups],” Hay said.
The 48-and-over teams play on Sundays, while the 58-plus teams are in action on weekdays.
“The middle of the week works better for the older guys, who are not as competitive, but they’re still good,” said Hay, who plays for the 48-and-over Boardman Fog. “Some [guys] aren’t ready to give it up until they’re horizontal.”
A handful of the players have professional experience, while several others played at the college level.
The former minor leaguers include Mike Glinatsis (Dodgers Class AAA), Bill Sattler (Expos AAA) and New Castle’s Cedric Hawkins (Mets AAA).
“They make the league so much better,” Hay said.
“Sattler still throws pretty good,” he said of the former Woodrow Wilson product who plays for both the Youngstown Bucks (58-over) and Chester (48-over) in the league that forbids base stealing and a baserunner’s advancement on passed balls.
Other recognizable names are Chip Zitello (Youngstown State Hall of Fame) and Carmen Nocera, a former Geneva College player. While the league appears viable now, survival depends on new blood.
To encourage younger guys, the senior league has allowed 47-year-old players, but not more than two.
“We’re not getting younger,” Hay said of the league, collectively. “There’s some evidence of younger players, but not as much as we would like.”
At first, one 47-year-old was permitted, but the allowance expanded to two.
“Of the four exemptions, two can be 47s,” Hay said. “It seems like the 47s haven’t made much of a difference yet, but we’ll see how things develop.”
In addition to Hay, a former Boardman High quarterback (1969 grad) who retired as a teacher at his alma mater, the Senior league’s president, Dave Smercansky, is a former Boardman teacher and athletic director.
Both are also assistant baseball coaches at Westminster College.
When Hay needed an umpire for a game recently, he called on former Boardman and YSU graduate Tom Zetts.
Although the 32-year-old Zetts may have thought that the job would be easy money, he found the senior players to be quite feisty.
“There are a lot of special rules that keep the game moving, so I was told to just call balls and strikes,” Zetts said of his job from behind the plate as the game’s lone arbiter.
“But, like all competition, when things got close, guys argued,” he said of his call of a pickoff play at second base. “I’m only one guy and I’m at home making the call [at second]. I couldn’t run out to get a better view, so that made it tough.
“I didn’t feel offended that they’d try to question a call; that’s part of baseball and part of guys being competitive and wanting to win.”
Hay had thoughts on Zetts’ role that day.
“I’m sure, in the back of his mind, he was thinking ‘this can’t be too demanding,’ ” Hay said. “But, after a couple close plays, he heard from guys.
“Sure, part of it is the ‘grouchy old man’ thing, but it’s them doing the best they can. Some days there are errors and dropped balls, but people would be surprised at some throws or plays or the pitching.”
Zetts, who teaches math at Boardman, played one year of baseball at YSU, then was quarterback under Jon Heacock from 2004-2007.
Zettts’ baseball umpiring has segued into football officiating.
“My goal is the Big 10, which I feel is pretty lofty, but reachable,” said Zetts, who, although not assigned to a crew yet, is scheduled to work seven Division III Ohio Athletic Conference games this fall.
Some of the talented older players in the Senior league include former East High athlete Charlie Harris, now 73.
“You’ve still got to be careful with him,” Hay said of pitching to Harris. “If you put it in his wheelhouse — down main street — and he hits the ball in the hole, he’ll beat it out.”
One of the Youngstown Baseball Oldtimers Association players who made the transition to the senior league is Ron DiVincenzo.
“He’s a very tough out because he alwayts makes contact and puts the ball in play,” said Hay, who noted that DiVincenzo is the father-in-law of Waynesburg football coach Rick Shepas.
The Oldtimers — the forerunner of the Senior Men’s Baseball League — had 110 members at its peak, but is now down to 37, said Nick Granitto, a spokesperson for the group.
“We’re up in age and don’t know how much longer we’ll last,” said Granitto, who explained the changing-of-the-guard process between the older and newer leagues.
“There were a lot of new guys who came up who didn’t want to be a part of the Baseball Oldtimers,” Granitto said. “They wanted to be on their own.”
That was the beginning of the end for the Oldtimers.
“We fell by the wayside,” Granitto said of his organization that’s mostly a social group now. “We still have monthly meetings, but the only thing that holds us together is two golf outings and a picnic.”
Granitto played one year for Dom Rosselli’s Youngstown College team, then he played local amateur baseball in the Class AA League from 1951-57 with McKelvey’s. He last played at that level in 1970.
As an Oldtimer in 1986, Granitto, then 55, pitched at Cooperstown, N.Y., when Youngstown played the Penn-Ohio team from Sharon.
Biil Kozak, and Don Christian are two examples of men who played in the AA League until they were 50, then spent time with the Oldtimers before joining the Senior league.
“When I was 49 or 50, it wasn’t that much fun playing against 20-year-olds anymore,” Christian said. “You can’t throw it by them anymore, so you’ve got to realize your limitations. Plus, some were hotheads.”
Christian, 64, boasts that he pitched every year for 55 years when a lot of guys took 15-20 years off after their Class AA days. A handful of others, including Zitello and Jim Hamrock, played continuously through AA, but as position players, not pitchers.
When he started playing with the Oldtimers, Christian and Hay were on the same team.
“Because we were playing one game a week, one of us wasn’t pitching all the time,” Christian said. “That’s why Jack and I split and went on different teams — so we could pitch once a week. Officially, some of us belonged to the Oldtimers, but our guys liked being called Seniors. It doesn’t make you any younger but it sounds better.”
Christian, who manages both the Youngstown 50-over team as well as the 58-and-up Youngstown Bucks, hurt his right arm in the spring while throwing batting practice indoors, then again in late May while batting, so he needed rotator cuff surgery on June 9.
“The vibration from the bat torque went up my arm,” he said. “It was weak to begin with, but I tried to play through it. Dummy me.”
Christian, who had only 12 at-bats this season, is hoping to play in Florida in November, but he won’t be able to pitch until next summer. “I can’t wait to get back next year.”
But Christian isn’t the only one hurting.
“Out of 18 teams, there’s room for people no matter where they’re from,” he said of promoting the Senior league and its need for new players. “It’s great to have our kids come and watch grandpa play, but we’d love to get more guys to try it.”
Hardly any teams have sponsors, so players foot the expenses for uniforms, etc.
“Everybody chips in,” Christian said. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love baseball. I have two sets of uniforms, gray and white. We may be old but we still want to look good.”
While Christian spent time on the mound, Kozak was behind the plate as a catcher for 40 years, starting in the Class B League, then for YSU, then AA with the East Side Civics.
“All the throwing took its toll,” said Kozak, 67, whose wear-and-tear included multigame weeks when he was younger. “I’d play on my days off and throw batting practice, too,” said Kozak, whose layoff now is due to right shoulder problems.
Even while playing with the Oldtimers, Kozak, Zitello and Glinatsis returned for spot action in the AA League.
“We didn’t start every game, but four or five of us did it until we were about 60,” said Kozak and friends, who also felt that the Oldtimers didn’t offer enough of a challenge.
“We watched the Oldtimers, but, when you’re turning 50 and still able to play AA, it seemed that we had more to offer.”
Some of the local Seniors, including Hay and Smercansky, also participate in the Roy Hobbs NEO league in Akron.