Sunday Morning Coffee — January 12, 2025– Keeping Both Eyes On The Ball

By Roy Berger, Las Vegas, Nevada

I was going to begin today’s SMC with the lyrics from Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust and a week from now it might be fitting. Then we got word on Tuesday that Peter Yarrow of the great 60s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary died at 86. So, we’ll change direction. Instead, paying tribute to their 1969 chart topper written by John Denver, Leaving on a Jet Plane. It seems very apropos.

I’m off this morning to Vero Beach, Florida, via Orlando, to do something that a couple of years ago I said and wrote I would never do again — play old-guy baseball.

My destination for the week is baseball fantasy camp. Popular with a graying demographic, typically 100 or so wannabes gather for a week to try and reenact what once was our dream— playing big league baseball — until reality hit and we just didn’t have the talent. Today, some forty, fifty, sixty years later, that talent didn’t magically appear but as long as we can stroke a sizable check we can still live in a make-believe world for a few days and be kids.

This will be my 15th fantasy week. My first in 2010 was special. It was the 50th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Pirates 1960 World Championship team. That was my team. I was eight years old. When I reported to the Pirates camp in Bradenton, Florida, I was 57 and hadn’t played hardball in some 42 years. It mattered not. I truly was that kid again, star struck by the former Pirates players on hand at camp who were my once upon a time idols — Vernon Law, Bill Virdon, Bob Friend, Bob Skinner, Joe Gibbon, and the 1960 World Series legend — Bill Mazeroski. I actually played rather well that week, managed by Mr. Virdon. I went into knowing it was a one and done. Check off that item from the bucket.

Other than aches and pains, my baseball camp experience did result in two books.

Well, it didn’t exactly turn out that way. I caught the bug. When the first pitch is thrown this Tuesday there have been 14 additional camps in 15 years: nine Pirates, four Yankees and a stray Tigers week. Somehow, something I never saw coming, the experiences resulted in two authored books — my 2014 The Most Wonderful Week of the Year and Big League Dream in 2017. Both were best sellers among my relatives.

The actual baseball at fantasy camps is bad. Very bad. Looking like a cross between adult Little League and the Yankees top of the fifth inning, World Series Game 5 defense against the Dodgers, pretty much describes the games we play. Making the camp more enjoyable and enhancing our fantasy is that we are joined by ex-big leaguers like those 1960 Pirates, guys we once revered who coach us while laughing at our on-the-field futility. At night we take the former pros to dinner; then we go back to the hotel lounge to revel and listen to the stories they tell about the old days, which to us ex-kids were the golden days of the game. Some of us even stay awake to the now ungodly hour of nine o’clock.

The success of some of my past camps was not defined by batting averages or wins and losses. Unconventional, but I’ve used some of the fantasy weeks to accelerate rehab from various surgeries; the goal being to play ball the following January. I’ve overcome rotator cuff and shoulder impingement procedures to be on the field four months later. My greatest victory was the 2018 Pirates camp, five months after a five-artery heart bypass, my cinco de bypass. I worked my ass off to be able to play. I wasn’t sure if my chest would rip open on the first swing of my first at-bat. It didn’t. That was my ultimate win.

Indirectly, my biggest flop led to today’s airplane ride. It was at Pirates camp three years ago. I really had no business trying to play. I couldn’t see anything clearly, which I quickly found out is a prerequisite to playing baseball. In late 2020, Deuce, our then three-year old chow-retriever mix had a piece of my eye for breakfast. In all fairness, I surprised him from behind and his spooky instinct was to bolt his head and teeth to the forefront, and he got me in the face. My left lower eyelid was nearly severed, barely hanging on. I had emergent surgery to reattach it and then two subsequent ones to solidify. Then another one to try and clear out the scar tissue the result hopefully allowing the eye free movement to coordinate with the right and have clear, coordinated vision. It didn’t work. I was prescribed specialty prism-lense glasses to try and regulate light to get my vision back. That was a little better but for the most part everything continued to be blurry. Plus, I was almost always dizzy as the eyes didn’t send a coordinated signal to the brain.

In spite of it all I wanted to play ball one more time. It wasn’t a good idea. When I went to Pirates camp in 2022 at age 70 I knew it would be iffy, but it actually was worse than that. Things were a blur. At-bat it was like playing whack-a-mole, just swing and hope you can hit the ball. Somehow I got four hits in 17 tries. In the field, at first base, on any given throw it was like swatting bees and trying to find the one to catch. I saw multiple balls. More of them hit me on the finger than I caught. I played sparingly that week. It was incredibly frustrating and humiliating. I said I would never subject myself, or my teammates, to this again. I lied.

Then a miracle of sorts happened. While I never gave up hope that something could be done with my sight, my confidence was waning. I visited a steady stream of eye care professionals — I saw optometrists, ophthalmologists, neurologists and even got a referral for an almost impossible appointment with neuro-ophthalmologist at UCLA’s Stein Eye Institute in LA. I saw everyone but Dr. Bosch and Lomb. No relief. Everything was still a blur.

Until I found Dr. Grace Shin here at home in Las Vegas. She and Dr. Adam Rovit both recommended the same potential solution. It’s called adult strabismus and in my case that meant operating on my good eye, the right one, and adjusting the gaze to align with the injured left eye that had no upward movement because of the compacted scar tissue. Incredibly, it worked. The prism lenses, like Meta fact checkers, became history. My dizziness, from imbalanced sight, was virtually gone. Maybe I can’t thread needles for a living but I’m pretty confident I can once again hit a 40-mile-an-hour ‘fastball’ and catch a slow throw at first base that normally takes two hops to get to me. We’ll see this week. Literally.

So, that leads me to giving it one more shot at playing the game that has been part of my life since 1960. Even if I’m 72. It may work, it may not. After some research I found the camp I wanted, one where I don’t know anyone. It’s the anti-Cheers camp, where nobody knows my name. If I flop, at least it won’t be in front of longtime friends whom I played with year after year at Pirates and Yankees camps. I know that sounds silly, but it matters to me.

Back in a Tigers uniform 15 years later.

Of the 14 previous fantasy camps I’ve attended, the Tigers in 2011 was probably the worst. But it never really had a chance. It rained virtually all week. When we could actually find a dry field, most seven inning games were turned into four. I had 15 at-bats the entire camp.

The Tigers organization has since disbanded their official fantasy camp. Former camp director Jerry Lewis, yes a humorous fellow, independently has kept the make-believe candle burning. The week moved from Lakeland, Florida, the Tigers spring training headquarters to Vero Beach, about 120 miles north of Fort Lauderdale and 100 miles southeast of Orlando. The site is the Jackie Robinson Training Complex, an 80-acre baseball haven, that from 1948-2007 was known as Dodgertown, the spring home of the Brooklyn and LA Dodgers before they moved their base to Arizona. Dodgertown was the first integrated MLB training facility thus the naming tribute to Jackie Robinson. Greats like Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Walter Alston, Tommy Lasorda, Branch Rickey, Willie Davis, Tommy Davis, Orel Hershiser, Fernando Valenzuela and hundreds more walked and played on those hallowed grounds. Come Tuesday, add Roy Berger to that list.

Eyesight aside, this camp will be interesting. It’s small. Very small. The numbers almost defy the chance of success. Thirty players have registered. Ages range from 43 to 75. I want to be a teammate of the 43 year-old. I’ll thank the 75 year-old for keeping me from being the Satchel Paige of the camp. Thirty campers is three teams of ten players over seven, maybe eight games. That’s less depth than a two-foot deep swimming pool. It’s shallow. Very shallow. It means after Tuesday’s first game, perhaps all three teams won’t have nine healthy bodies on the field. The injury bug will bite early. It always does. Guys try to use body parts that have been dormant since the Reagan Administration. Baseball muscles are different. It’s almost impossible to exercise something you almost never use. You don’t know they are there until they ache. The training room will overflow on Wednesday morning with torn hamstring, ligament, groin, quad and shoulder pulls. Plus, who can run anymore? Campers will go down like a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. At breakfast Icy Hot will be more popular than orange juice. And that’s only the first day. Injuries will compound all week. With ten players to a team being able to field a full, healthy squad as the games go by will be challenging. Play the under.

Camp director Lewis has billed this week as Legends Fantasy Camp. I don’t know about you but when I think of baseball legends I’m remembering the Babe, Willie, Mickey, Duke, Hammerin’ Hank and Clemente. There’s one problem. They’re all dead. And that’s tough to overcome. Instead, our legends and coaches for the next six days all have Tiger pedigrees: Milt Wilcox, Juan Berenguer, Milt Cuyler, Howard Johnson, Mike Heath, Doug Bair, Jon Warden and Rusty Meacham. Legends, no, but solid ballplayers during their careers. Even money some will return to the field when we run out of players.

While the weather marred my Tigers camp experience 14 years ago, I did have one memory in 2011 that never happened since playing almost 100 games of old guy baseball. The rain actually stopped for a day. I reached third base, still not sure how that happened. There was one out. Our former pro coaches, slugger Darryl Evans with 414 career dingers, was coaching first and the reliable southpaw pitcher Frank Tanana was at third. Frank had 240 career wins in the bigs. Tanana gave me the typical third base coach spiel on what to do in various situations. He told me about a fly ball and tagging up, but I didn’t pay attention because I knew with my speed, or drastic lack of, there was no way he would send me. Sure ‘nuff the next batter hits a fly ball to center. Tanana yells for me to go back and tag. I did. He then yelled, “Berger, go!” Clearly not thinking straight, I did. I huffed and I puffed. I was a slow caboose heading down the track. I wasn’t timed with a stopwatch but instead a calendar. No matter how close it was going to be at the plate I wasn’t sliding. That will never happen unless I collapse, and it looks like a slide. Somehow, with divine intervention I made it. I scored. I ran toward the backstop to hold me up and catch what little breath was left. I finally had a lifetime baseball memory. However, for putting me in that situation, I never spoke to Frank Tanana again.

The mantra for this week, and every fantasy camp, is to start slow then gradually taper off. Nobody will need to tell me that twice. This will be the last one for me, no matter what happens. I have to grow up so I can grow old.

So next Sunday morning, after a week of bumps, bruises and pain; good or bad vision; pulled hammy or quads, or trying to score from third on a sac fly, I have every intention to revert back into my Peter, Paul and Mary mode and leave Vero Beach on a jet plane, all body parts in one piece. Pre-boarding for extra time be damned. Another one will not bite the dust. At least, for my final go playing a game I love, that’s the plan.

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I’m proud that Medjet is sponsoring Sunday Morning Coffee. I spent 20 wonderful years with Medjet in Birmingham, Alabama, and can tell you unequivocally they are the standard-bearer for medical assistance membership programs. A talented staff, who cares about its members, is at the forefront of the company’s success. Whether you are traveling for business or pleasure, domestic or international, a Medjet membership should be an important part of your travel portfolio before you leave home. Check out the Medjet website at medjet.com or just tap on the Medjet logo and you’ll be able to get a look at Medjet’s services, rules and regulations, pricing, and an overview of the organization. And remember, any opinions expressed in Sunday Morning Coffee content or comments belong to the author and not the sponsor. Safe travels with your Medjet membership! — Roy Berger