He’s busting chops at 86 and loves it
Oldest camper points out baseball has followed him for many years
BRADENTON,
Fla. — Did you get your article in the paper yet?
Every morning this week at breakfast, inside the Pirate City cafeteria, Paul McCann has approached me with this question. Like a lot of folkshere,heonly wants to read a printed paper, and that’s not going to change.
One day when I whipped out my laptop to work, he pushed his chair back like it was carrying some sort of disease.
“Keep that thing away from me,” McCann joked.
But that’s McCann, the elder statesmen of this camp — at 86, he’s its oldest participant by nearly a decade — and someone I’ve found to be simultaneously hilarious and fascinating.
McCann grew up in Beechview and left Pittsburgh in 1959. The oil business took him to Panama, Costa Rica, The Bahamas and Singapore, and now he lives right here, in Bradenton. He even told me a story about how he once met Honus Wagner.
“Baseball has followed me,” McCann said, repeating a phrase he would use over and over during our conversations. “I have not followed it.”
We can talk more about McCann’s backstory and will, but let’s not bury the lede: We’re talking about an 86-year-old man playing baseball every day, squatting for every pitch and having the time of his life. It’s something McCann joked that he wants to do until he’s 101.
“I thought this might be my last [fantasy camp],” McCann said. “Now, after 3-4 days and feeling OK, next year will be my last.”
Let’s hope so, because McCann is a riot. He told me how, when he was 8, he was first introduced to baseball: He borrowed a mitt and didn’ t have it on when a fly ball was hit to him. In a rush, he didn’ t realize it was left-handed, and the ball cracked him in the face.
The next time McCann tried baseball was after he turned 72.
I asked multiple times over three different days what got McCann to try baseball again and come to this camp, and he refused to answer. He gave me a little something when I asked why he keeps coming back.
“We’re down to nine new people,” McCann said, correctly listing the numbers of rookies at this year’s camp. “That’s probably the same reason as everybody else.”
And that would be? “I’m not really sure. It’s a lot of things. The first couple years, it was the ballplayers. But it doesn’t matter who comes now.”
McCann then changed the subject and told me how, when he first started out, they had a thing here where the campers played the pros. One year, the campers won. No such games exist anymore.
“We beat them, 3-0,” McCann said. “I just figured they got [scared]. ”
The first team McCann played for down here was coached by Dave Giusti, who put McCann at catcher. Midway through the first game, he called McCann over with a question.
“He said, ‘You do have a cup on, don’t you?’ ” McCann recalled “I said, ‘Umm, no.’ ”
For someone his age, McCann is in incredible shape. He bikes 10 miles a day five days a week, although he said his quads have been bothering him some this year. A friend told him he should try riding a stationary bike backward, that it might help.
But even though McCann is in pretty good life shape, he likes to poke fun at his catching. Every pitcher McCann catches is greeted with the same request: move a couple steps off the mound to shorten the throw. He joked that he offers umpires 10 cents a ball if they would help him out and throw a few back to the pitcher.
“None of them have ever collected,” McCann said.
Back in 1968, McCann was a Gulf Oil executive and was one of the key figures in bringing the Pirates to The Bahamas during spring training, as they played the Dodgers the first year. The next, the Dodgers took on the Chicago White Sox. McCann keeps a baseball card in his wallet commemorating the occasion, one that includes a picture of Roberto Clemente.
McCann said he saw the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, at one point watching Josh Gibson hit a home run at a field in Dorm ont. He said he was also in former Pirates general manager Joe L. Brown’s office the day he fired Harry Walker (July 18, 1967), with Brown turning to Danny Murtaugh. McCann and Brown were working out details for the Bahamas trip.
“Like I said,” McCann said. “Baseball has followed me. I have not followed it.”
Hopefully, baseball continues to follow Paul McCann, a master of swinging bunts and busting chops. He’s absolutely one of the most entertaining characters I’ve met here and someone of whom I’m quite jealous; at that age, I’ll just be happy to be on this side of the dirt.
“My quads have definitely been hurting,” McCann said. “That’s the first time that happened. I couldn’t get up. But I have the rest of the year to heal up. I’ll be OK.”