April 2, 2005: Headlines: COS - Nicaragua: Baseball: Sports: The Des Moines Register: In 1971, as a Peace Corps volunteer in baseball-crazed Nicaragua, the manager of the Masaya taxi-cab team "discovered" Jerry Perkins during a pickup game on a dusty vacant lot
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April 2, 2005: Headlines: COS - Nicaragua: Baseball: Sports: The Des Moines Register: In 1971, as a Peace Corps volunteer in baseball-crazed Nicaragua, the manager of the Masaya taxi-cab team "discovered" Jerry Perkins during a pickup game on a dusty vacant lot
In 1971, as a Peace Corps volunteer in baseball-crazed Nicaragua, the manager of the Masaya taxi-cab team "discovered" Jerry Perkins during a pickup game on a dusty vacant lot
In 1971, as a Peace Corps volunteer in baseball-crazed Nicaragua, the manager of the Masaya taxi-cab team "discovered" Jerry Perkins during a pickup game on a dusty vacant lot
Still in the game
What baseball means to me and why, at 56, I continue to play
The Des Moines Register
Jerry Perkins
April 2, 2005
[Excerpt]
"See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land." -Song of Solomon 2:11-12
For me, the coming of spring means it's time to lace up the baseball spikes.
And yet, it was just last fall when I had to re-examine why, at age 56, I'm still playing a boy's game.
Let me set the scene:
It was a cool October night in Phoenix. My son, Geoff, a 24-year-old southpaw, looked at me across a table of empty beer bottles and pizza boxes at the motel where our team was staying.
"How much longer are you going to play, Dad?"
"I don't know, Geoffrey," I said, shifting uncomfortably in my chair.
I'd just caught 12 innings in two days, and it felt like a steak knife was stuck in the small of my back.
My wet jersey, moist with sweat from the exertion of the two games our father-son baseball team from Des Moines had played that day, conducted the chill of the night air straight to my bones.
I needed a long soak in a hot tub. It was time to confront the truth. I'd cheated old age long enough. Maybe it was time to hang them up.
I've been playing baseball for 50 years, a career that's spanned Little League, my sophomore year in high school, the old Connie Mack summer baseball league in Des Moines and a brief career as a bullpen catcher for the George Washington University Colonials.
In 1971, as a Peace Corps volunteer in baseball-crazed Nicaragua, the manager of the Masaya taxi-cab team "discovered" me during a pickup game on a dusty vacant lot.
Before I played in a game for the "taxistas," however, I had to quit. A delegation from another town who had heard about the Masaya team's "Yanqui" ballplayer showed up at the Peace Corps office and asked the country director to send them a ballplayer, too.
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Story Source: The Des Moines Register
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Nicaragua; Baseball; Sports
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