As the Major League Baseball playoffs get into full swing this week, some of our town’s finest baseball players are taking their own talents to a diamond here at home — in the name of fitness and fun.
The group meets up every Wednesday for a 90-minute pick-up game of slow-pitch. They hit. They run. They flash leather. They talk trash. Sometimes one or two of them even grab a pair of purple and white pompons and cheer each other on. Perhaps the best thing about this squad of local ballers is that all of them are over the age of 60.
Put differently, with this crew, every day is Old Timers’ Day, and that’s the way they like it.
The group calls themselves the Prune Pits, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Prune Packers, the collegiate summer team that plays here in June and July. Poetically, the Pits shred the ballfield behind Healdsburg Elementary School — almost as if they’re summoning youthfulness from across the yard.
Prune Pit Nation is a relatively new phenomenon; the first get-together was Sept. 6 and, going into this week, the squad has only played five times.
The team was started by 77-year-old Gail Jonas, who got the idea while watching her grandson play.
“I’m a loyal follower of his winter league games and practices, and when I sit there I look at all these young kids playing and all these sedentary adults sitting around and watching them for several hours,” Jonas said last week as she donned a Tweety Bird ballcap and stretched out. “After a while, I started thinking, ‘I want to play.’ But I didn’t have anybody to play with. So, I figured I’d ask around.”
The “ask-around” process comprised posters on community boards at The Flying Goat and the Downtown Creamery & Bakery. Jonas also relied on an archaic version of social media — the kind where humans meet other humans in real life and inform each other with voices about upcoming events.
About 20 players showed up for the team’s first practice, and anywhere from 16-18 have attended subsequent Wednesdays. Players range in age from 60 to 87. Some of the players participated in competitive baseball or softball during their younger days and still are quite spry. Others, like Jonas herself, haven’t played competitively in decades. Still others are temporarily limited in their mobility — on a recent Wednesday, for instance, Denny Drowty served as the designated pitcher since he’s awaiting knee surgery.
Wonderfully, however, physical ability doesn’t matter one bit. Jonas and her crew bend the rules a bit to make games easier. Under the new approach, batters are allowed five strikes instead of three, each half-inning is capped at five runs, and fly balls to right field are automatic outs.
“Before this thing started, I envisioned myself sitting on the bench watching one of my teammates trying to run to first and getting stressed out that the person might collapse on the way,” said 62-year-old Lo Pelligrino, who still works at Shelton’s Market. “It has turned out that these fears couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
Indeed, most players play with a youthful exuberance, huffing and puffing around the bases with smiles. When someone complains about ailments, he or she does so in a self-deprecating way. Jonas herself rails about her recent hip replacement, playfully mocking her inability to hit the ball past the pitcher.
Also, the crew brings pompons to every game, and players grab them and egg each other on like authentic cheerleaders.
During a recent game, 66-year-old Mike Felder was particularly vocal, yelling support for his own teammates and dishing smack to his friends on the opposing squad. Felder noted that he played 15 years of senior softball before seeing Jonas’ flier, and noted this opportunity was too good to pass up.
“This is like being little kids again,” he said. “Nobody cares about the score. We just want to have fun.”
Looking forward — and, in many ways, capitalizing on growing interest — Jonas has big dreams for the Prune Pits. First, she said she hopes interest in the sessions will grow to the point where the crowd can support multiple teams. After that, Jonas said she’d love to see enough participants to populate an entire league.
Sure, these are big dreams for a small-town baseball gang. To paraphrase “Field of Dreams,” Gail Jonas has built it. Now, hopefully, they’ll come.
Matt Villano’s new column appears twice monthly and spotlights good people in the Healdsburg community doing great things. Learn more about him at whalehead.com.
