The 100 Oldest

Anyway, back to the summer of 2012 and how I went from more or less selecting random baseball players, to developing some sort of plan. As I studied the list of the 100 oldest living former major league baseball players, I was flush with excitement. This, I thought, could be a worthy project - a theme, a focus - to document the careers of the oldest players. They were all age 87 or older, all the way up to the 100+-year-old Connie Marrero, who was at the time, at the top of the list.

As a lifelong baseball fan with a decent understanding of baseball history, I recognized many of the names on the list. But of course, there were plenty of folks whose brief appearances meant that only the most dedicated fans would know (or perhaps those who'd actually remembered watching or listening to them during their playing days).

Most of the players on the list had debuted during the 1940s. There were just a few from the 1930s, including longtime player Bobby Doerr and the lesser known Art Kenney. Interestingly, the oldest player, Marrero, had debuted in 1950. Someone born in 1911, as he was, could have in theory debuted at the age of 18 in 1929. But the Cuban-born Marrero remained an amateur player until about 1946, hence his late entry into the majors.

Determined to begin calling some of these most venerable of players, I was armed with my 1983 edition of the Baseball Encyclopedia (didn't need anything newer for my purposes anyway!).

The first phone call I would place to one of these 100 oldest players was to Grady Hatton, who debuted in 1946, but was also manager of the Astros in the 1960s. Hatton was nearing 90 when I dialed his number that August day in 2012. But had I thought this through? What kind of questions would I ask him? Was I prepared for rejection? I had not prepared myself for the possibility that some of these players may simply not want to rehash their careers yet again. And the older the player, the more times he would have told and retold his stories. I mean, for many of these men, I would be asking them to remember the events of 60 and even 70 years before. So the questions in my mind were: Would they remember? and Would they *want* to remember?