We All Had A Ball

Really? The pop-up? Why do you miss it?

I don't miss it now. I missed it then. And three days later it's on national TV. At least my friends and I think that's me we see, though I find out much later it's some other guy missing a different popup. But by then, the damage to my psyche and reputation had been done.

What were you called? You and the other 62 men over 35 who for $2,195 each lived out a boyhood dream by working out with major-leaguers?

"Campers." I would have liked "prospects" better. By the way, two or three guys under 35 slipped in. Can you imagine how far I would have hit the ball if I'd been their age? I'm 41! True, I never hit a ball that far when I was under 35. That was the longest ball I ever hit in my life. And maybe the last. What a way to go out! But what if I'm getting better? What if I have yet to come into my oft fantasized own? Baseball! You just won't let go! I might say, however, that it was never my boyhood dream to miss a pop-up in front of thousands of people.

The All-Star School, which is operated by Hundley and Chicago entrepreneur Allan Goldin usually instructs kids, right?

Yes, we were the historic first middle-aged campers. And we seem to have struck a chord. Every television network was all over us. Another Cub camp, also in Scottsdale, is planned for April, and a company called Baseball Fantasies Fulfilled has announced an April camp in Tempe featuring old Dodgers.

How did the Cub camp work?

Very well. We had the Scottsdale facilities that the Cubs formerly used for spring training, and we were drilled in fundamentals by '69 Cubs Hundley, Jenkins, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Ernie Banks, Glenn Beckert, Jim Hickman, Rich Nye, Ken Rudolph and Gene Oliver, and by slightly later-vintage Cubs Jose Cardenal and Steve Stone. The old Cubs also played with us in intrasquad games. Nobody wanted to look like a jerk in front of them. Take away the Cubs and the camp would have degenerated into middle-aged doctors, lawyers, brokers and businessmen rolling around on the ground fighting over whose bat it was. There should be Cubs at the U.N.

And on the last day of camp, in Scotts-dale Stadium—where the fences are all deeper than 350 feet—before around 4,200 fans and a host of media folks who don't really care about the longest ball a person ever hit in his entire life, the old Cubs beat us 23-6.

Does that mean you were 17 runs short of being as good as a team of major-leaguers, one of whom, Jenkins, is still active, and, incidentally, is six-foot-five and is the guy who caught your soaring drive over his shoulder?