* I have been remiss

these last few days, the aftereffects of a dislocated finger suffered during a softball game with my new team, which I can also use as an excuse for my poor typing of late. (Thanks to those who have written out of concern.) This does, however, open the door for a couple of related reviews and commentary.

The incident occurred on a 50-and-over league, which I joined out of a) a mild concession to age, and b) a disinclination to play against 25-year-olds and getting my brains beat in every week. This league, which consists of more than 30 teams in five divisions, consists of hard-core players who still have the desire to play.

That said, it was still a shock to take part in a “draft,” which I had never done before. It reminded me of being chosen in a schoolyard pick-up game. with all due modesty, I acquitted myself well enough and was sought after by a few teams.

But in the first game, playing second base, I took a hard, low throw from the third baseman that dislocated the right ring finger. I looked at it, bent at about a 45-degree angle in the wrong direction. I don;t know what compelled me to do it, but I simply took hold and pressed it back into position. The evening was so cold that the numbness seemed almost natural.

The next day, all purple and swollen, I didn’t play the field, although I probably could have handled first base. It’s a slow recovery but I hope to be back in the sadle in no time.

This is a long way to get to the next review.

My little boo-boo is nothing compared with the gentlemen profiled in Beating the Breaks: Major League Ballplayers Who Overcame Disabilities, by Rick Swaine. The author breaks his book down (no pun intended) by players who had missing limbs or extremities, including Jim abbott, who tossed a no-hitter for the Yankees; Monty Stratton, convincingly played by Jimmy Stewart in the eponymous movie; Bert Shepard, a fighter pilot in World War II who was captured by the Germans and had his leg amputated, and, of course, Pete Grey (played unconvincingly by Robert Carradine in a saccharine biopic, A Winner Never Quits featuring Dennis Weaver and Fiona Flannigan as Grey’s Slavic parents and a cutesy-pie Fox Huckleberry as a little kid who loses his arm in an accident).

The second section of in Beating includes players who had to muster through with “severely damaged limbs,” including pitcher Dave Dravecky, a cancer survivor. I saw the comeback game in which his arm broke during a pitch. A truly sad situation.

Swaine also profiles players with “maimed or disfigured extremities” (“Three Finger” Brown, Carlos May, et al); “impaired organ function or chronic illness” (Dummy Hoy, Ron Santo, John Hiller, Walt Bond, and company); and “neurological and psychological disorders” (Jim Eisenreich, Jimmy Piersall, etc. I finally got a chance to see Piersall’s biopic, Fear Strikes Out, played ridiculously unconvincingly by Anthony Perkins, who looks like he forgot to take the hanger out of his uniform top. As a testament to the production values, in one scene — a game against the White Sox — a close-up of the pitcher features a left-hander, but pulled back to a wide shot, he miraculously becomes a righty.)

The final chapter serves as a roundup of various conditions that didn’t quite fit elsewhere, including Mickey Mantle’s osteomyelitis, as well as those afflicted with cancer, kidney disease, asthma, TB, diabetes, and other maladies.

So it kind of puts my little dislocation into perspective. a mere bag of shells, as W.C. Fields might describe it.

* * *

Also appropriate to my own situation are a couple of books that came out to mark the short-lived Senior Professional baseball Association (1989-90), in which former major leaguers tried to give it one more try, with mixed results

David Whitford’s Extra Innings: A Season in the Senior League, and The Forever Boys: The Bittersweet World of Major League Baseball as Seen Through the Eyes of the Men Who Played One More Time (whew), by Peter Golenbock. Both were published in 1991.

Whitford takes the journalistic approach, chronicling the fledgling enterprise on a mostly day-to-day basis. Golenbock, whose books consider everything from Cubs, to the Mets, to the Yankees and Dodgers — not to mention the fictitious coupling of Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe in 7, does the somewhat sadder profile route, interviewing the poor souls who refuse to call it a career, reaching for another season of glory, regardless of how minor it might be.

I hear ya, Pat Zachary, Alan Bannister, DaveRajsich, et al.

And finally, there’s the other Extra Innings: The Joys and Pains of Over-30 Baseball, previously reviewed here.