BLUE BELL, Pa.- When the ballplayers first saw Jim Fullan swinging a bat last year, they figured he was just someone’s dad, hanging around practice.On a rainy, windswept afternoon, last month, the Montgomery County Community College Mustangs were practicing inside, fielding grounders in the gymnasium and taking pitches in the batting cage before a busy week of games. The pitching machine was set to 85 mph and no one dialed it down when Fullan stepped in.
“You know, the more I talked about this, the more people laughed at me,” Fullan said. “That made me want to do it more. It seemed like a joke at first, but I will see it through.”Robert Grady, a longtime friend and former coworker in the postal service, told Fullan to skip baseball and just become a motivational speaker or coach.
Fullan’s father, Art, 88, thinks his son was a late bloomer in baseball, better at 56, maybe, than 16. “And if I have a runner on third to tie the game and I have batter on deck that struck out three times, I feel confident I can put Jim in to hit,” Fitzgerald said. “I know he’s going to make contact.”
The players don’t really overthink it. Most of them have long hair curling out from their ballcaps. Fullan sports a graying buzzcut.