Photos by Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

ISF Senior World Cup participants Dave Robertson (left) and Walt Louden play on the 70-and-over Pompano Beach (Fla.) Bums.

To end the game at 5-4, a Joe Corbis Pizza player from Maryland slides into a second baseman from Legends Human Kinetics from Florida.

From left, Delores Lewis, Margie Smith, Wanda Winner and Katty Krondon cheer on their husbands, who play for Joe Corbi's Pizza of Glen Burnie, Md., during Friday morning's game against Thomas Engineering of Manassas.

Taking it easy during the golden years? That's not always the case, as a member of Joe Corbi's Pizza walks to the dugout following a loss to the Florida Legends.

Rocco Cambareri, 73, a one-time minor league baseball player, is now a member of the 70-and-over Pompano Beach Bums.

Minus the Iowa cornfields and Kevin Costner, it was a scene straight out of the movie "Field of Dreams."

Gathered at the Moyer Sports Complex, hard by the banks of the Roanoke River, were hundreds of men's softball players acting much younger than their ages.

They played for teams like the Dudley Martin Jokers, Angle Inn Doghouse and McCalls Outlaws, but don't let the names fool you.

This was no rec league event.

The occasion was the International Softball Federation's Senior World Cup, with competition in 14 classifications for players age 50 and over. More than 50 slow-pitch teams are in action this weekend at Moyer, the Botetourt Sports Complex and Arnold R. Burton Fields.

"You figure on seeing balls bounce off guys' heads, not that that won't happen occasionally," said Bob Johnson, coach and starting catcher for the Pompano Beach (Fla.) Bums, a 70-and-over national power. "But I think you'd be amazed at the way these guys can still run and by the ability they really have.

"People are all asking me to describe it and I say, 'It's no different than Little League, other than your parents aren't there to see you play.'"

That probably was the case for many of the players Friday, but not for 65-year-old Fred Shotwell, a Roxboro, N.C., resident who pitches for Thomas Engineering of Manassas.

Shotwell's 89-year-old mother, Evelyn, had made the trip from Roxboro and was sitting in the stands with Shotwell's brother, John, the girls' softball coach at James River High School.

"They go all over the place and play," John Shotwell said. "I've never seen anything like it."

Thomas Engineering normally is coached by R.B. Thomas Jr., who gave up those duties this week to serve as tournament director. Thomas is a Roanoke native and 1959 Jefferson High School graduate whose 90-year-old father, Richard Sr., threw out the first pitch Friday.

"Senior softball is a major part of adult softball now and it's growing all the time," said Thomas, who is the ISF's director of senior softball. "There currently are more than two million senior softball players -- men and women, but mostly men."

And, not all of them come from a softball background.

"I've been playing about 14 years," said 75-year-old Fred Scerra from Marlboro, Mass. "I'd never played before. I'd never done anything like this, but I was recovering from leukemia and was looking for challenges. I saw an ad in the local paper and decided to look into it."

Four years ago, Scerra was browsing a senior softball Web site when he noticed that a team from Canada, the Central Ontario Elder Dogs, was looking for a pitcher. It was a perfect match, although Scerra thinks he's the only American on the team.

"Playing softball and traveling; now, that's the life," said Scerra, who estimates that he plays 225 games in a year's time. "What else am I going to do?"

There are concessions for the older set. Senior softball has 11 position players, instead of 10. Courtesy runners are plentiful. There are two home plates, one approximately 6 feet from the regular plate to prevent collisions.

Nevertheless, it was nothing to see a 65-and-over team like Joe Corbi's Pizza lose a 9 a.m. game to the Florida Legends and come back to play the Georgia Nuggets at 10:30.

"We've played three, four and even five games in a day before," said Joe Corbi's manager Guy Cremen, who says that he has five or six 69-year-olds on his roster who are waiting to age up and make a run at the 2009 national championship, when they will be "rookies" in the 70-and-up division.

If so, they're going to have to contend with the Pompano Beach Bums, whose roster includes a former professional baseball player, first baseman Rocco Cambareri, a 2006 inductee into the senior softball hall of fame.

Cambareri remembers playing in Roanoke when he was in the Appalachian League in 1955.

"I was in the New York Giants' system," said Cambareri, who played for Wytheville. "I played with Willie McCovey. I played with Sandy Koufax in amateur ball. Brooks Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, I could name a million of them."

Cambareri has been back to Roanoke but only to "check the mileage" on a stopover to Florida from his summer home in New York. He actually played two softball games Thursday in New York, then made a 460-mile drive to Virginia for a game less than 24 hours later.

"I could have wrung his neck," said Sandra Johnson, who is married to the Bums' coach and serves as scorekeeper and Advil dispenser. "Their minds think like 20-year-olds. They think they're invincible."

While there were some sculpted bodies on the fields Friday, Cambareri's was not one of them. But, he got a new hip at 67 and "it's done wonders for me," he said.

One teammate got a new hip three months ago, another is slated for hip surgery after the season and a third is coaching third base following rotator cuff surgery.

"I play 250 [softball] games a year and about 50 rounds of golf," said Cambareri, who sensed that some elaboration was warranted.

"I'm only 73, you know."