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A Modest Proposal from a Modest Fan


Some of those things are TOTs caps:  Tucson Old Timers.  The cap in the foreground is the one Denny Heath hauled around for about twenty years.  It marked the 25th anniversary of the TOTs:  1968-1993.  A current TOTs cap lurks in the background.

The juicer?  That belongs to Mari.  It seemed to suggest the same era.

The TOTs--Be honest!  How is that for an ambiguous name?--have played baseball, not softball, not slow pitch pumpkin ball, not fast pitch softball, but baseball with baseballs, for forty-five years!  Floyd, the oldest active member of the team, whose 88th birthday the club celebrated this week, was only 43 when the TOTs started playing, and even had Floyd known about the club, and wanted to play in 1968, he would have had to wait until he was 60 years old.  There are no half-baked, half-done kids on the TOTs!  It takes a full-grown man to play baseball three times a week, all year around:  start at age 60; go right on past 88, the way Floyd is doing it, the way Clarence did it!

Denny's cap has been prodding me to suggest something.  The TOTs should not be wearing the kinds of uniforms kids and mere striplings of the sport wear.  They should wear old-time uniforms.  For instance:












The critical component, as you can see, is in the cap.  Current baseball caps owe too much to seed corn caps:  too much corn and beans, too much Cargill, too much Monsanto, too much feed and fodder!  

And the second most important element is the jersey.  Take a look at those old timers!  They had baseball jerseys!  Big baggy sleeves, rolled up sleeves, don't get in my way at second base jerseys!

I am easy when it comes to pants.  Of course baseball players should wear stockings and stirrups!  But let us be honest:  if most of the TOTs had to bend down and strap on stirrups, they would never stand upright again!  But the TOTs of Summer ought to honor tradition.  They ought proudly to pull on a cap that snugs down onto the head, or that circles around the way the old timers' caps did.  They ought to have jerseys with room for waggling; maybe even with wrist buttons.  

It would be too much to ask for handlebar mustaches. No one suggests that, like Ty Cobb, the TOTs file their spikes to a fine, cutting edge, just to make it easier to slide into second.  No one is seriously proposing that forty-four ounce ash bats be made mandatory, except for Jack.  And even Jack does not expect everyone to be able to snap a bat around the way he does, nor to be able to remain upright while the momentum screws him into the ground.  

But if the TOTs are going to go on and on, as they have done for most of a half-century already, they should look the part.  How can they expect to draw the crowds they already don't attract unless they make their image match the fact that they are not just another bunch of kids playing ball?  They are Old Timers!  They should look the part!

I can hear the cheers now!  Can't you?

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