Featured player

'Skipper' Geller Helped Launch Senior Ball in Philly

Jan. 1, 2002 – Jack Sirard contributing writer

PHILADELPHIA ˆ Lawrence "Skipper" Geller might have retired several years ago, but you'd never know by looking at his current resume.

On a typical week, you can find Geller playing senior softball on the fields of Philadelphia, working on stage as a veteran actor and helping out at one of the city's medical schools.

Ten years ago, Geller was one of the cofounders of the Not Quite Over the Hill League in the City of Brotherly Love, a league that launched the highly successful run of the Philadelphia Whuz Kids. That over-50 team's name is a takeoff on the nickname of the pennant-winning Philadelphia Phillies' major league team of the early 1950s

Geller, who is now 68 and going stronger than ever, is only too happy to report that the league now has nine teams operating on a busy schedule. In fact, senior softball has become so popular, that Geller started a league for those over 60 called the Medicare Mavericks.

The former high school hardball pitcher says he was on the sidelines for many, many years before going back to the sport 20 years ago.

"George Coady and I founded the Over the Hill League for those 50 and older in 1992 when we were looking for something to fill a few idle hours," Geller says. Although Coady has since hung up his spikes, Geller plays on and on.

"Like a lot of teams in the East, we get started in mid-April and wind it up at the end of July with a tournament. Some of the players and local teams then go on to other tournaments nationwide," he says.

Geller plays day and night. His 50-plus team plays night ball in Philadelphia, and Geller is also on the mound for his 60-plus team in the mornings. That league was launched in 1997 with four teams and now has grown to seven competitive squads. "We generally play Tuesday and Thursday mornings from April to July, take a month off and then resume play from August to October," he says. Then the cool weather sets in and it's time to kick back until spring.

Geller says that the tremendous increase in senior athletics in the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania has helped fuel the growth of senior softball. "It's grown so much that a lot of the surrounding counties now have their own programs and players who used to come into the city are playing in their own areas," he says.

One of the ideas that he's kicking around now is to set up some inter-county play, which will bring new faces into the game. "We need to keep growing," he says.

The former civil rights investigator for the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations wrapped up a 20-year career in 1996 and spends a good deal of his time doing free-lance writing for community newspapers in the area.

"When I retired, I knew there were some things that I really wanted to do, such as playing softball and writing, and so far it's working out just fine," he says, adding that the longevity of the Not Quite Over the Hill league speaks for the interest that the league has kindled among players in the area.

"It seems like every day there's a game or two being played for our teams and on a busy week that could translate into four games for me," he explains.

When he's not on the ball field or writing a news story, Geller is busy in Community Theater. This past year, the 30-year veteran of the stage was in "St. Joan," the story of Joan of Arc, and "12 Angry Men".

While he likes an occasional comedy, Geller says he gravitates toward the more serious plays and for the past three years has run the Anne Frank Theatre Project, a touring show that plays at schools, synagogues and universities in the Philadelphia area.

"We do an abridged version of "The Diary of Anne Frank" and then spend an hour or so after the play discussing it with the audience," Geller says.

Taking his acting a step further, Geller also does what's called standardized patient work in which he portrays a patient with a set of symptoms that first and second-year students at local medical schools interview.

"We do this to help the students practice their interviewing techniques so that they become more sensitive to human needs and learn to work with their patients better."

Reflecting back on his softball days, Geller says he started out playing senior softball in 1991 as a substitute outfielder but after his team was eliminated in the Senior Olympics he hung around to watch the championship game.

"I had never pitched softball using the arc but I saw a pitcher for a New York team that mesmerized me. He had such a great motion that I wanted to emulate. I've been working on my pitching ever since."

"I'm an average to good hitter but pitching is where I put a lot of my energy. I continue to learn every year, hoping to get an edge on the hitters," he says.

And with the Whuz Kids winning four straight championships in the city in the mid-1990s with Geller on the mound, he must have done something right.

Geller reports that his league is one of the few in the country to outlaw the use of aluminum bats. "We know that as we get older that our reaction times are getting slower. With the balls coming off the aluminum bats so fast we wanted to take some steps to increase safety of the field and reduce the risk of injury," he says.

The move was quite controversial when it was put into effect 18 months ago, so the league decided to re-evaluate its position after a season. "It created a great hullabaloo at the time, but when we put it to a vote of our players after one year 75 to 80 percent didn't want to go back to aluminum. So we're sticking with the wooden bats," he adds.