It\u2019s been 44 years since Willi Blumer last missed a softball season. He would be damned if this year was the first \u2014 even if he was too injured to actually play. <\/p>\n
So when his longtime team, cheekily called Consenting Adults, gathered on a Central Park ball field last month, the 83-year-old pitcher settled onto the bench beside the people with whom he\u2019s spent a lifetime of hits and runs. <\/p>\n
Then, as he has for decades, he followed them to the bar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat felt great,\u201d Blumer told The Post of being back after recovering from surgery. There was never any doubt, he said, that he would make it back onto the field \u2014 even if he had to crawl there.<\/p>\n
That kind of devotion has held this ragtag co-ed crew together since 1982, when some of its members were in their late 20s or early 30s. That\u2019s long enough to make Consenting Adults the oldest probable softball team<\/a> in New York City.<\/p>\n The Consenting Adults softball team has played every Wednesday during the season in Central Park since 1982. Tamara Beckwith\/NY Post<\/p>\n Blumer, Ed Campbell, 77, and Greg Czuchlewski, 71, have been there since the very first season, and many teammates have been coming since the 1990s and early 2000s. Along the way, the roster has weathered personal triumphs, health battles, and losses, but the game has never stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on my records, the team has played 448 games starting in 1982. Projecting the 4 years I\u2019m missing takes us to almost 500!\u201d said Czuchlewski, the team\u2019s devoted statistician, who counts more than 135 people who\u2019ve played at least one game.<\/a><\/p>\n Endless summer<\/p>\n For Czuchlewski, softball has always meant youth. As a teenager in Queens, he and the neighborhood kids would play in the park from morning until after dinner.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was just like the heaven of having no responsibilities \u2014 it was still before people were getting jobs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n From left to right: Greg Czuchlewski, Willi Blumer, Keith Eisenstark, Terence Hanrahan, Michael Titowsky, Carol Baird, and Jim Rouen. Tamara Beckwith\/NY Post<\/p>\n In 1982, a friend in the magazine world pulled him onto a new team started by Scottish-born travel writer Robin McMillan, who borrowed its name from a racy marquee he\u2019d passed in Times Square. <\/p>\n Campbell, a psychologist, signed on that same year and claimed center field. Money was tight, and the first shirts were cheap leftovers originally printed for an exterminator. They had a bug spray can printed on them.<\/p>\n Back then, the team was young and fast. They didn\u2019t imagine they\u2019d still be playing 44 years later. <\/p>\n Ed Campbell, age 77. Tamara Beckwith\/NY Post<\/p>\n Like a Hulu sports drama, the scrappy team even had a big rival in their early years \u2014 the Boat Basin Bombers. Beating them<\/a> was the highlight of every season \u2014 and became the one time Campbell finally had his hero moment and blasted a ball right over the Central Park fence.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the only game that I ever hit a grand slam,\u201d he said. It was a triumph, even if the game wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cWe lost 10-9 in seven innings,\u201d he sighed. \u201cThe fame and success was very fleeting.\u201d<\/p>\n Into the trees<\/p>\n The team\u2019s endurance is even more remarkable when you consider that Consenting Adults have never been able to score an official practice or game space.<\/p>\n Central Park permits are tough to get, so for 44 years, they\u2019ve hopscotched from one patch of lawn to another. Today they play on a meadow near the Great Hill, where tree trunks and slopes are part of the field.<\/p>\n