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A senior among seniors

At 110, his prime was in the pre-Negro League era 90 years ago, long before Jackie Robinson.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Silas Simmons arrived about 45 minutes late Saturday morning to mingle with the Kids & Kubs softball team at the team's waterfront field in North Shore Park.

He had to eat breakfast first - nurse's orders.

Despite being 110 years old and having seen the world unfold in three different centuries, he can't get away with skipping a pregame training meal.

But as soon as Simmons appeared just before 10 a.m. - transported from his home at the Westminster Suncoast retirement community by Kids & Kubs newcomer John Gist, a relative youngster at 83 - he was the man of the moment.

Nodding and speaking softly from his wheelchair, Simmons was showered with attention by members of the renowned club that only welcomes rookies after they have lived at least three-quarters of a century.

"Si, you're not playing today?" kidded Gist, who last year became the first African-American to play for the Kids & Kubs after 76 seasons.

"Just gonna watch," Simmons said with a smile.

It was Gist who had the idea of arranging the visit from Simmons, an old friend from St. Petersburg and a man with a link to baseball when the color barrier was still decades away from being broken.

Simmons was a lefthanded pitcher/outfielder during the pre-Negro League era around 1915 in Philadelphia and says he logged several seasons with the Blue Ribbons, who years later became the Negro League powerhouse Homestead Grays.

Simmons was presented with an official Kids & Kubs jersey. Team president Winchell Smith shook his hand and posed for a snapshot. One of the players grabbed an official green softball and quickly collected signatures from all the other members and handed it to Simmons as a keepsake. Then, in between innings of a practice game - the regular season begins in two months - Gist wheeled the most senior of seniors onto the field to let him throw a pitch.

But Simmons' shoulder was stiff and he had trouble maneuvering his arm above the arm of the wheelchair, so the ball merely plopped to the dirt.

"STRIKE!" yelled one of the players and the team broke into a round of enthusiastic applause and cheers.

Soon, Simmons was wheeled into the dugout, where he quietly held court, his memory still sharp, pulling details from his long and winding past.

"I met Jackie Robinson at a dinner before he made history with the Dodgers," he said. "'What a nice man he was."

He knew Don Newcombe, a Negro Leaguer who went on to star with Robinson on the Dodgers. He watched Ty Cobb play and once worked a government job with future Hall of Famer Hack Wilson.

Simmons was born in 1895 and spent the early part of his life in Philly. "I was a pretty fair ballplayer," he said. But he wasn't a star and instead earned a living at jobs from messenger to shoemaker. During both World War I and World War II, he loaded live ammunition for U.S. troops onto ships bound for Europe.

He eventually went to work for 25 years at a department store in New Jersey and retired to St. Petersburg in 1971 with his second wife, Rebecca. She died in 1999 after 40 years of marriage. Simmons had already been widowed once before when his wife, Mamie, died after 28 years of marriage.

His five children have also long since died, but he has nine grandchildren and more great-grandkids and great-great grandkids than he can remember.

In his room at Westminster, where he moved at age 104, he displays a letter from former President Clinton congratulating him on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1996 and from President Bush sending birthday wishes on his 110th last year. Simmons knows presidents. He was born only 30 years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and has lived through 20 presidential administrations.

He also knows baseball. On the wall above his bed, there's a photo of him attending a home game last year of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a team he watches avidly on a little TV in the corner.

At that game, one of his nurses handed him a special baseball hat: a souvenir from the Negro League Baseball Museum with emblems from the great teams formed more than decades after his birth - the Atlanta Black Crackers, the Grays, the Baltimore Black Sox, the New York Black Yankees, the Newark Eagles and many more.

It hung on the back of his wheelchair as Simmons prepared to leave after a half hour or so, sporting a new red hat from the Kids & Kubs.

"Thanks for coming down here to honor us," said eight-year veteran John Reynolds, 82, whose wife, Erla, was once a national caliber softball player and is now an Alzheimer's patient at Westminster. She lives just down the hall from Simmons.

The team intends to bring back its distinguished guest to throw out a pitch when its 77th season starts in early October.

That will coincide with another big day on the calendar, Oct. 14.

"Si" Simmons will turn 111, and he plans to be ready for another game.