“Some of Our Players Are 80-some Years Old”
If you’re a fan of classic literature or sentimental cinema, the name Roy Hobbs may seem vaguely familiar — as Hobbs is the heroic protagonist in Bernard Malamud’s 1952 debut novel The Natural, later portrayed in the movie of the same name by Robert Redford. But to hard-core baseball fans (of all ages) who truly love the game and love playing it, the name Roy Hobbs represents something altogether better. That’s because Roy Hobbs Baseball is a one-of-a-kind amateur athletic organization that, since 1993, has hosted hundreds of thousands of “older” ballplayers in an annual World Series that, for 30-plus days each fall among more than 800 games, literally takes over Fort Myers. Meg Giffen is the Sales and Marketing Director for Roy Hobbs Baseball, and daughter of Tom Giffen, who at age 48 quit his gig at the Akron Beacon Journal to purchase the fledging organization out of bankruptcy — and over the next 26 years, turn it into a home run.
{ www.royhobbs.com }
By John Sprecher
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