By Brenna Wiegand
“Right down the middle now!”
“Third base!”
“Stan, Stan, he’s our man…”
“No pressure! No pressure!”
From the sound of the cheers, you could be at a Kennedy High School baseball game.
Instead, the cheers rang from across town at 1 Towers Lane where Mount Angel Towers hosted a “beanbag baseball” tournament on June 4 involving three other retirement communities.
The sport has become a senior craze up and down the West Coast. Maybe it’s because theirs was a baseball generation; it always draws a crowd. The tourney began with Towers Angels taking on the Stoneybrook Beavers from Corvallis while Salem’s Madrona Kids and Hidden Lake Stars squared off on the other half of a packed hall.
“Batters” throw at a box with nine circular holes indicating first, second or third base, “Out,” “HR” and “Foul.”
Each player has three attempts at tossing the beanbag “ball” into a hole, advancing or not depending on where the bag lands. The bases are three chairs set side-by-side marked 1, 2 and 3.
For some, it takes determination just to get from their chair to the plate; it’s not unusual for a player’s gear to include a walker or wheelchair.
Players dig through the team basket looking for their favorite beanbags as they are heralded with cheers and advice. There are cheerleaders and pompoms and home run hitters pick from the candy bucket while the HR horn blasts.
“Put the ball in play!”
“Think chocolate!”
“Hershey’s for Gersch!”
There’s sympathy when a player strikes out.
“Ah, shucky darn,” Mae Walden of the Stoneybrook Beavers exclaimed, adding as an aside, “That’s my cuss word.” She was on her feet cheering most of the game but couldn’t play because she’s blind.
Stan Taylor of the Towers treated the crowd to a yodel each time he came up. If he forgot, they reminded him.
“Well, I almost hit the bucket,” one lady said resignedly as she stepped off the plate. The crowd burst into laughter.
Refreshments and a themed baseball buffet lunch rounded out the full, day.
“This job has been the richest blessing of my whole life; I know God wants me here,” said CeCe Taylor, Towers activities coordinator. “They have taught me about loving people and forgiving people. It has also changed my whole thinking about living in a place like this. I would move in, in a second.”
Youth groups have come to play the Angels – including the Kennedy baseball team, which won by a tight margin.
“Once a team wasn’t able to make it so the staff played and it was just a hoot,” Taylor said. “It was so much fun.”
Ruby Friesen doesn’t attend many practices.
“I don’t know that practice helps all that much. You do real well one day and the next time you just don’t,” Friesen said. “I like to see whether I can ever make a home run, which I do now and then, but not often.”
The Angels were last in the June 4 tournament, but their spirits remained high. Getting to congratulate the other teams looked nearly as much fun as the game itself.
