By Carolyn Webb
It’s a blinder of an autumn day, and Geoff Freeman and Graeme Bales are limbering up for their 58th season at their baseball club.
Many of us play sport at university and leave it behind when we graduate. But Freeman and Bales joined the University of Melbourne baseball club as teenagers in 1968. And they just didn’t quit.
Pitch perfect: Graeme Bales (left) and Geoff Freeman have played for University of Melbourne baseball club since 1968.Credit: Justin McManus
At a social game to open the club’s own 100th season on Saturday, the tall, enigmatic, white-bearded Freeman imagined onlookers muttering, “Who’s that old fart out there? And what the f---’s he doing here?”
But there was a lot of love at the club’s home, Ross Straw Field in Parkville, for pitcher Freeman, aka “Lurch”, and catcher “Balesy”, who are both in their mid-70s and are the club’s longest serving current players.
Club coach Steve Lehmann, who played alongside them in 1998 as an 18-year-old, said it was extremely unusual to play baseball into your 70s.
Freeman pitches at the club’s centenary heritage day at Ross Straw Field in Parkville.Credit: Justin McManus
“It boggles my mind,” he said. “It’s unheard of.”
Lehmann, who retired as a regular player at age 38 in 2019, said given the wear and tear on his own body, “for me to play another 30 years would be crazy”.
Former coach Garry Bitmead, 74, said he admired Freeman and Bales’ “enthusiasm for the sport and their ability to keep doing what they love”.
“I think it’s a habit they can’t kick. They love the sport, they like the connection they have with people.”
The University of Melbourne team that competed a year after it was founded, in Adelaide in 1927.Credit: University of Melbourne archives
Freeman says he hasn’t found a reason to stop playing. The seasons reel you in, he observed, often starting on a gorgeous April day.
By July it’s freezing and you vow to quit, but by season’s end, it will be almost spring and a lovely day.
“You say ‘this is all right’ and so you sign up again,” Freeman said.
Freeman said he had been “incredibly lucky”, with few injuries.
The University of Melbourne team competing against Adelaide University at Sydney University in 1947, with M. Quinlivan of Melbourne catching.Credit: University of Melbourne archives
“It’s because I’m very slow. It’s the fast runners who pull hamstrings.”
Bales has been less fortunate with injury, the worst happening 25 years ago when he tore a meniscus cartilage in his knee.
Bales now has tendonitis in his Achilles, “but it will be right in a couple of weeks”, he said.
“I keep playing because it’s such terrific fun. I do not get bored with it.”
Jack Barker, 98, said when he played at the club from 1946 to 1948, there were wooden bats, instead of today’s metal ones, and no pads or helmets.
Baseball teams often played on football ovals and were sometimes thrown off before games finished, to make way for VFL games.
The University of Melbourne baseball team base moved from the university to the purpose-built Ross Straw Field, in Royal Park, in 1977.
A decade ago, it faced demolition to make way for the East West Link tollway, but the project was scrapped.
Club president Megan Kelly said the club was founded in 1926, technically 99 years ago, but the centenary was being held in its 100th season.
A centenary gala dinner will be held on August 2 at Melbourne Zoo’s Leopard Lodge.
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