Sixty-four-year-old John Meeden is regarded as the best player out of the two million aging baby boomers who belong to "senior softball" leagues, but nobody knows much about him, even his teammates. J.R. Moehringer of the LA Times traveled to St. Louis to see if he could find out more about the mysterious Meeden. It's a wonderfully-written piece.
"Here he comes!" someone shouted.
At last, walking slowly toward us from the parking lot, was a man built very differently from the men gathered around me. He had none of their Midwestern roundness, none of their low-slung solidity. He was tall, lean, somewhat frail, and instead of clomping along on big feet, as the others tended to do, he picked his way forward delicately, as if someone had told him to watch out for broken glass.
He was dressed differently too. Rather than the dapper uniform worn by his teammates, Meeden wore baggy street clothes–he preferred to play in his everyday duds, his teammates insisted–and he carried a sad little Kansas City Chiefs tote bag. Also, while every other man looked as if he'd been to the same Supercuts that morning, Meeden wore his white hair rakishly, almost foppishly, long. The wispy strands fell well below his shoulders.
