At age 72, lifelong Mineola resident Bob Ross, is getting ready for another softball season,
“You rest, you rust. You’ve got to keep doing things,” said Ross, who’s been playing for the association’s Hempstead Eagles for the past 12 years.
Ross said he has worked for many on the pointers he got about playing first base from the Brooklyn Dodgers Gil Hodges when he was a youngster.
Ross’s uncle, John Ross, a sportswriter for the New York Mirror, introduced his nephew to Hodges before a game at Ebbets Field when Bob was 11 or 12 years old. Ross remembers Hodges showing him “a little footwork and how to hold a runner on” among other things.
“He would give me tips. He was a very nice man,” Ross recalled.
And Ross learned his lessons well. Last fall, he was inducted into the Long Island Senior Softball Association Hall of Fame.
Ross was scouted by the Dodgers when he played in Little League for much the same reason he made the Senior Softball Hall of Fame.
“I could really hit the ball,” he said, smiling at the memory.
The senior softball association committee had only five years of statistics from Ross’s 12 years in the association to go on due to lost score books. But that was enough to tell the story.
Over those five years, Ross, who bats left-handed and fields right-handed, had a .430 batting average, hit an average of 10 home runs each season and nearly 37 percent of his hits were doubles, triples or home runs, according to Frank Marlow, chairman of the senior softball association Hall of Fame committee that selected Ross for induction last fall.
“We certainly had enough data to make sound judgment,” said Marlow, who managed against Ross and still plays against him as a member of the Hempstead Generals. “He is a very heady first baseman and a very, very good hitter.”
Marlow said Ross also is a “fine person and a good team member,” something several testimonial letters from former teammates and managers asserted.
In his first several years playing for the Hempstead Eagles, Ross said he maintained a .600 or .700 batting average every years.
He said he never really kept a count on the number of home runs he hit.
“I know I hit a lot of them. The other teams knew,” he said.
He is equally proud of his defense at first, emulating his favorite first baseman, Hodges, over the years.
“They all used to be impressed with how I could get unassisted double plays,” Ross said. “I dared people to hit it past me.”
Ross said he started playing in the Mineola Little League at age 11. A graduate of Mineola High School in 1959, he said he struck a double to drive in the only run for his team in a county championship game that Mineola won 1-0.
Afterward, he had a brief flirtation with the New York Mets in a tryout at the old Polo Grounds, but didn’t get an offer to play.
“I went to a camp where the scouts see you. The Mets wanted to talk to me,” he said.
It was around that time that he met his future wife, Janet, who was making the circuit of beauty contests, eventually winning 18 of them, including competing as Miss New York in the Miss America pageant. Ross was his wife’s chauffer.
“She was Miss Everything,” he said.
After they settled down and married in Mineola, Ross became a contractor and played softball in bar leagues, mostly for “the excitement and the friendship.”
While eventually playing in a league for 55-to-60-year-olds, he was invited to play on the New Jersey Jaguars, a travel team that used to play in tournaments.
“We used to travel over the eastern seaboard,” he recalled.
He said he thought his playing days were behind him after that. Then a friend at a lumber yard where he was picking up materials asked his age. He was encouraged to try out for the Hempstead Eagles and didn’t fail to impress.
“I went down and hit one over the fence,” he said.
Several years ago, while fighting leukemia, he said his doctor thought he was crazy when he told him he was going out to play softball. His doctor was primarily concerned Ross might be struck by a batted ball, but Ross said he told him, “I’m pretty good. I don’t miss.”
His wife, who was also his cheerleader at games, died two years ago. But he plans to keep on playing for the love of the game and the fun of it. He said his best times on the field have been playing occasionally with his two sons, Ron and Billy, on the same softball team in an all-Ross middle of the batting order.
“It’s about having fun, getting out and doing things,” Ross said.
