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The love of the game keeps them playing
Over 50 Baseball
Gallery
Everyone is old school
in Mahoning Valley’s
50 Plus Baseball League
By Sean Barron
BOARDMAN
On several occasions, 52-year-old Cedric Hawkins threw the ball to get opposing runners out at first base in a manner that suggested he still has plenty of skills and much acumen.
Perhaps most of that comes from having been on the ladder leading to the major leagues.
“I was in the New York Mets organization and was drafted in 1986,” the New Castle, Pa., man recalled, adding he played minor-league baseball for the Little Falls (N.Y.) and Kingsport (Tenn.) Mets.
Photo Gallery: Over 50 Baseball
During a recent game on a field near Boardman High School, Hawkins, nicknamed “Ceddy,” played shortstop for the Boardman Fog, one of the teams that makes up the 50 Plus Baseball League Inc., a nonprofit organization with teams in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia. The league, which formed in the early 1990s, gives those age 47 and older opportunities to play regularly at a competitive level.
In addition, the organization fosters a variety of baseball competitions for youngsters and teens who are less fortunate by offering instruction, renovating facilities and providing funds to help them buy equipment, supplies and uniforms, according to its website.
Along those lines, the 50 Plus League provides free instruction to young people in hitting, pitching, fielding and other aspects of the sport, noted Dave Smercansky of Poland, league president.
Hawkins, a service specialist with Liberty Mutual Insurance in New Castle and a longtime Pittsburgh Pirates and Mets fan, began playing baseball when he was five. He said after the recent game in which the Fog beat the Youngstown Astros 12-3.
Jack Hay, league secretary and a retired Boardman High English teacher, provided six solid innings of pitching during the seven-inning contest.
The league’s 18 teams are in three divisions, including one for those 58 and older, and the season runs from early May through the Labor Day weekend, followed by a double-elimination tournament, Smercansky explained. Games are seven innings and do not include base stealing because of concern for players’ safety, he continued.
Players, some of whom are in their 70s, come from diverse backgrounds – everything from pharmacists to school principals — said Smercansky, who retired after having served 12 years as Boardman High’s athletic director and who has been a member of Youngstown State University’s Athletics Hall of Fame since 1995.
“We have a wide range of people from different professions who have a love of baseball,” he said.
Smercansky, who listed Cleveland Indians pitcher Andrew Miller as his favorite active player, also fondly recalled a doubleheader between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers at Forbes Field his father had taken him to. Starting the two games were legendary Dodgers pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, he remembered.
“I’ve been here 12 years. There aren’t too many opportunities to play when you’re this old,” said Chuck Nardone, 64, of Aliquippa, Pa., who played center field for Boardman.
Nardone, a huge fan of Pittsburgh Pirates great and Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente, said he played baseball in college and until age 40, at which time he began coaching his kids’ teams. Twelve years later, he picked up a bat and ball and resumed playing, Nardone said.
Among his favorite Major League Baseball moments were having watched on a black-and-white TV the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and New York Yankees, in which Bill Mazeroski famously hit a ninth-inning walk-off home run in Game 7 to make the Pirates World Series champions, as well as seeing Clemente play.
“I loved the way he approached the game,” Nardone said of the legendary right fielder. “He never let up or took a day off, so to speak.”
The Boardman Fog players may take some days off, but that neither dims their desire to continue playing nor to engage in the camaraderie that comes with their experiences on the field.
“It keeps me in shape; it keeps me playing,” Hawkins said. “I enjoy the team and the all-around fun. I will play until I can’t play anymore.”