Youth returns when exathletes play softball

Drifting and dreaming In the pleasant spring evenings, out in my car alone, I enjoy drifting down to the south end (Torrington) softball fields to lean on the fence along the right field line and watch an inning or two.

It’s slow-pitch and a spectator sees some excellent plays in the infield and long drives that send outfielders scrambling. These guys play hard.

Softball is one of the enduring sports which goes a long way toward satisfying the needs of a lot of young-to-middle-aged men whose glory days on high

school and college fields are over. A friend from my 30 years at the Hartford Courant, Al Simonds, the best all-around newspaper man I’ve ever known, was an advocate of sports that are played by men, and women too, who want to keep on after the cheering has stopped in high school and/or college. Softball, twilight baseball, rec basketball, etc., answer a real need.

Dreaming of the days when I played a mean third base myself — mean because I did it so poorly — I drifted on up Oak Avenue to Carbone’s Market and purchased an “Italian” on a hard roll, just like I used to. Tony Renzulllo, ultimate Giants fan and the former owner who sold the place a couple of years ago, wasn’t there. He had gone home. Yup, he still works there just about every day, all day. And by the way, business appears to be booming, just like before, at the city’s most famous grinder shop. ********** Friday noon: This just in – the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation is moving its headquarters from 32 City Hall Avenue to 33 East Main St., in Torrington. It will be closed May 26 for the move, reopening June 1. ********** It was Will Rogers who said, “All I know is what I read in the paper.”

He would have loved Friday’s Register Citizen, which gave us a couple of stories that I was deelighted (as Teddy Roosevelt used to say) to find. The first was in the Spotlight section on Page A2 and featured a large picture of Dick Van Dyke and smaller ones of Mel Brooks and Norman Lear.

The three aging comics, along with Carl Reiner, are the principals in an upcoming HBO documentary called “If You’re Not In The Obit, Eat Breakfast.”

Quoting from The RC story, “The four long time friends star in the film which explores what makes for a vibrant, active life after 90 . . . Reiner, 95, serves as host of the film, interviewing his friends Brooks and Lear, along with 95-year-old Betty White and 100-year-old Kirk Douglas.”

It’s reported that Van Dyke will be singing and dancing “onscreen in the new ”Mary Poppins,” in theatres next year, and offscreen with his wife, Arlene Silver, who is more than four decades his junior.”

The story also makes mention of a routine Brooks and Reiner performed many years ago, called “The 2,000 Year Old Man.” I’m happy to tell you that I own that performance, thanks to my old friend and 1952 high school classmate Bob Summa, now residing in Florida. Summa presented the CD to me one day for no other reason than he knew I’d enjoy it.

Side Street — No man ever had a better or more loyal friend. ********** The second Friday RC treat was a CT News Junkie op-ed column by Terry Cowgill of Lakeville. I can’t dig into it but the headline will give you the general drift: “Most state pols despise Trump, but not Lieberman.”

I can’t go deep with this – maybe later – but I can tell you that Cowgill, who is managing editor of the Berkshire Eagle in Great Barrington, usually hits the mark, in or around the bulls eye — and he did it with this one.