00:00At 50 years old, I like to imagine the most exercise I'll be getting is lifting up the
00:04TV remote. But for one Kent baseball fan, he stepped up to bat at the Kent Baseball
00:08Club in Hadlow near Tunbridge, despite his age, to play the sport he always dreamed of
00:13trying out.
00:14If you speak to my wife, you say I've got the mental age of a 16-year-old anyway, but
00:17the body, it doesn't keep up. I'm on my third pacemaker, which I had when I was 26, but
00:23it didn't stop me. You know, you've only got one life, and I wanted to give it a go.
00:29And baseball is one of those things that I've always found passionate. I'm not one
00:33for going to the gym all the time. I do go to the gym, but who really enjoys that? I
00:37want to get fit on doing something I really love, and I felt I would love baseball. I
00:41thought I'd give it a try, and yeah, I fell in love with it.
00:44He's calling himself the 50-year-old rookie, and he's been documenting his experience so
00:48far. He originally fell in love with the sport after visiting family in Canada in
00:52the 80s and watching the Toronto Blue Jays. The Kent Baseball Club play in Division
00:573 and Division 5 of the British Baseball Federation fielding two teams, the Kent Buccaneers and
01:02the Kent Mariners respectively, who used to be separate clubs, the latter being from Medway
01:06and the former from Tunbridge until they merged to help player numbers.
01:09Now unlike Simon, I've never seen a game of baseball, so I felt a bit out of my league.
01:14So I took some time to make sure I've covered all my bases.
01:19Now, baseball is a pretty simple sport when you're watching it, but it's a little different
01:23when you're playing. Now, the aim of the game is to get more runs than the other team, and
01:27the way you get those runs, well, that's mainly by batting.
01:32Once you bat, you can then start to make your way around the diamond, and you get one point
01:36once you reach the home plate. And reaching the home plate gets you that one run, trying
01:41to get more than the other team, and you take turns between batting and pitching.
01:47Once my catching practice was over, I learnt a bit more about the curveballs that trip
01:51up beginners the most.
01:53First hurdle is having a ball coming towards you that's not the lightest thing in the world
01:57that you've got to try and stop from hitting your face, I think. And that's probably the
02:01hardest thing for a rookie, to kind of teach them to not be scared of the ball, to put your
02:05glove in front of your face, and you will be fine. That is probably the hardest thing
02:09to get through to people, especially when they haven't played a kind of batting ball
02:12sport before, or one that involves hand-eye coordination. That's probably the biggest hurdle.
02:16In terms of hitting the ball, people find that relatively when they first come to practice,
02:20so I think it's more about getting over that kind of nervousness of that ball coming towards
02:25you by someone who's been playing a lot longer than you.
02:27With that in mind, I thought it was time to try out hitting.
02:32Well it wasn't a home run, but I was happy with my hits. But next time,
02:35I think I'll bring gloves.
02:40Finn McDermid for KMTV in Hadlow.
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