Kubs & Kids

The spryest baseball crowd in the country are the oldsters who sit in the winter sun at Waterfront Park, St. Petersburg, Fla. Ordinarily at this time of year the benches crackle with gossip about the newly arrived Yankees and Cardinals, who have trained at St. Pete for many a spring. This year, with big-league ball clubs warming up in their own backyards, St. Pete's oldsters must be content with their own ball clubs: the Kubs and Kids.

The Kubs & Kids are rival teams recruited from St. Pete's Three-Quarter-Century Club. For 14 winters these septuagenarians have played a 25-game series for the championship of the "Sandspur League" (named after a prickly Florida burr). They play under somewhat different rules from the Yankees and Cardinals. They use a softball and a softball diamond, play six innings instead of nine, and errors, too numerous to count, are never counted. But no big leaguers were ever more eager to make a home run or a snappy double play. They make plenty of both. Average number of runs a game: 32.

Unlike younger clubs, the Kubs and Kids have little holdout trouble. The players rush to practice year after year. In this year's lineups there is only one former big leaguer: Kub Catcher Fred ("Jake") Ross, retired streetcar maintenance man from Rockville Center, N.Y., who once played with the New York Metropolitans (a forerunner of the Yankees). One of the league's leading sluggers, who plays second base for the Kubs, is 83-year-old Frank Peckinpaugh, father of the great baseballing Roger.* The Kids' most eminent character is 77-year-old Elmer Veitch, onetime North Dakota State senator. Oldest player is Detroit's and the Kids' Elmer Wilken, 86.

Occasionally a newcomer tries to put something over on the teams. A few years ago a retired doctor was welcomed into the league. First time at bat, he socked a ball into left field, trotted around to second base, then turned a cartwheel to prove he was not in the least bit tuckered. His suspicious teammates delved into the doctor's background, discovered he was only 73, banished him.

Last week, as their series approached the finish, the teams were neck & neck, eleven victories apiece. The eventual winner will play the St. Petersburg High School girls' team--an annual event that draws some 3,000 spectators.

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