(WGHP) -- They are, you might say, a team for the ages.
“I’m 84,” Paul McElroy said.
“I’ve been playing on this team for 20-some years,” Bill Inman said. “And I’ll be 87 in two months. I love it...I love softball. I love sports in general. I played full-court basketball until I was 78.”
Now, Inman plays for The Bombers softball team which believes it’s the oldest, continuously-playing team in the country. Getting out and swinging a bat is contagious.
“And my wife is playing softball now" Inman said. “She’s on the young team. She’s 70.”
That’s true. Their opponent on this cool, Monday night in Rural Hall is a group that is mostly in their 70s. You know, the young folks.
There is wisdom that age brings.
"Nobody on this field doesn’t know who Casey Stengel was,” said James Matney, the team’s coach. James is looking forward to the day he turns 80 and can join The Bombers.
They do have rules that help make things a bit more even.
“The way we play, there are safeguards,” Bomber’s player Paul McElroy said. “We don’t slide into second base or slide into home plate.”
“We have guys that can field pretty good, so I just try to tell them to back when they’re playing first base or second or where they’re at. If a good hitter comes up, I tell them ‘hey, back up about five or six steps’,” Matney said.
And those years have also provided them with some stories beyond the diamond they can tell. Paul McElroy pulls out a picture of himself with a group of boys from a long-ago contest.
“Oct. 1945,” McElroy said. “I was 7 years old. He was 10.”
The “he” in that sentence is Elvis Presley.
“It was a talent show at the Mississippi/Alabama Fair and Talent Show. I happened to be standing right next to Elvis,” McElroy said.
On this occasion, The Bombers have a good night and win 15-13. They all want to win, but it’s really about just getting out there when you’re older than 80 that is key.
“It gives you plenty of exercise,” said Bill Boyles, The Bombers’ catcher who will soon turn 95. “And it’s a mind game...people don’t know what you’ve got to know out here to play this game.”
See The Bombers in action in this edition of The Buckley Report.
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