10 August 13 - 19, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | every Dallasite. Filling the gaps that most rec leagues create through exclusivity is a large network of leagues and coalitions that instead aim to keep people off the bench and keep sports accessible to all, filling a basic hierarchical need. And they’ve never had bigger rosters than they do right now. You can’t teach an old bandit new tricks A few weeks ago, Dane Shillan was playing baseball, as he does five days a week, when he experienced irregular shortness of breath. The retired police officer visited an allergist first, which led to a referral to a car- diologist and ended in an urgent surgery to clear a blockage in his main coronary artery. Five days after being stitched, he was back on the field hitting home runs. Shillan is one of many players in the MSCSA who had stints in Major League Baseball, trying out for the Boston Red Sox at 17, only for a pre-season injury to end his professional baseball career before it even began. Still, he’s one of his team’s best play- ers, and on a good day, can still hit the ball out of the park and easily run the bases. It’s clear that even in retirement, holding a bat is as easy for him as breathing, and potentially just as essential. “It brings life to a lot of guys,” says Massa, who started playing the game again 10 years ago. Most of Shillan’s teammates on the Ban- dits can make it all the way back to home base, steel hips securing them as they round the diamond and maintain an impressive pace all the while. Some of them are even happy to dive, wearing the dust just as pridefully as they did in the ‘70s. Experience isn’t necessary to join the league, though it is competitive, and every player, no matter their skill level, will bat. “You can tell just by the way a person moves whether they know how to play the game or not,” says Massa. “There is just as much head in this as there is physicality to the game.” In MSCSA, there are 27 teams, split across three age divisions (60 and over, 65 and over, and 70 and over). There are 516 ac- tive players in total, and 109 of them joined this season. Massa, 72, plays a division down because there are too many in the 70 and over division, which is the highest in de- mand, and because he can swing as well as the “youngsters.” The rules for the league are fairly flexible; if you want to play, you can. The oldest member of the Bandits’ rival of the season, the Richardson Roadrunners, is 91. He doesn’t run the bases, but he sure swings, and on occasion, fills in as umpire. Most of the men in the senior league are retired, going to their softball games every Tuesday and Thursday morning like church. One player and his wife, the team’s honorary cheerleader, drive down from the Oklahoma border twice a week during softball season. Some of the players are retired airline pilots and CEOs; others have the long hair and wil- lowy builds of the original Deadheads who saw Jerry Garcia play live; and some of the players (about 25) are even former college women’s softball stars, giving the best of the old-timers a run for their money. “Some of the guys are really old school and don’t want to play against a girl,” says Massa. “‘Dude, she played D1 college soft- ball. She’s better than you, so shut up.’” In their 60s, not much has changed. The players still jeer the other team, challenge calls and layer the dugout floor with tobac- co-less spit. “What happens within the dugout hasn’t changed,” Massa says. “It’s the same stuff. It’s probably one of the best things that I’ve done since I started playing again.” Massa says the conversations are the same, but the context is a little different. “It’s funny, when you’re 16, you’re talking about who has what drug,” he says. “We’re kind of still talking about that same thing now, but we’re really talking about those things for ailments.” While the Bandits may have traded LSD for extra-strength Advil, the heart of the game remains the same, and the players mock each other like they’re still throwing in the high 90s. “We all still think we’re 17 years old,” he says. “Boys will be boys. A lot of the guys, they just want to get back out on the field.” For most of the players, softball has be- come all-encompassing, giving them new reasons to rise out of bed in retirement. The league doesn’t just keep them young; it keeps them alive and proves that you’re never too old to have a little fun. “It does bring back a lot of camaraderie with a lot of the guys,” Massa says. “It builds a really strong community. When someone’s significant other passes on, we’re there to help each other out. My team has gone through several – all sorts of older injuries. But the team pulls together as a community, and we do what we need to do to help each other out.” The league for lovable leisure Every first Saturday of the month from March to November, the Oak Cliff Sandlot (OCS) plays a pickup game of baseball in a park. A good percentage of the balls pitched won’t be hit, so making it off home base elic- its a loud celebration, but that’s if the people in the dugout aren’t too busy chatting amongst themselves. There are lots of com- petitive recreational baseball leagues in Dal- las; OCS isn’t one of them, by design. Patty Evans started the association (he doesn’t describe it as a league and prefers “coalition of the willing”) in 2022, after managing a team in a competitive circuit be- came exhausting. He wanted post-game drinks, win or lose. In fact, he wanted the beer cracked before the game was even over, and he wanted everyone to experience the joy of being on a team, even if they were bad. “I had always noticed that during [com- petitive league] tryouts, there were lots of guys that honestly were never going to get picked up by these teams,” says Evans. “They were just dudes out there wanting to play baseball, and their skill level wasn’t re- ally on the competitive side. I realized there was a market for it. There were players available. I just had to find them.” Not only do the competitive leagues elim- inate many decent players who hope to enjoy their favorite sport, but they also offer few opportunities to women. The OCS welcomes all with open arms; there aren’t many unrep- resented demographics in the coalition. Since its inception, OCS has grown to 10 teams, totaling hundreds of players city- wide. The coalition recruits new members at each pickup game, with demand increas- ing tenfold over the last two years, according to the Mudbugs’ coach, Jo Pearce. OCS doesn’t do standings, and there are no tournaments, either. “That’s why we don’t like to use the word ‘league’ because that has connota- tions of wins, losses, who’s ahead, who’s not ahead… last place, first place,” says Evans. “We don’t do that. That’s very against the ethos of sandlot [baseball], really. It’s more about just the actual playing of the game and hanging out.” Evans says a harsh reality of baseball is that you can be on a team for your entire life and have not played a single minute in a game since childhood. His coalition isn’t like that — everyone makes it out of the dugout. “All they wanted to do was play baseball,” he says. “We have lots of people that, at some point, were told ‘You can’t play base- ball anymore.’ We’re just giving them that opportunity.” Occasionally, OCS will get an exception- ally good player; usually they’re happy to tone down their skills, understanding that the coalition is about creating community and that striking everyone out is a bad way to make friends. “Winning and losing doesn’t matter; it’s just all about the experience of getting to play baseball and hanging out with people and be- ing outside, fresh air, and getting a little bit of exercise and having a beer,” says Evans. The Lost Souls of Dallas Aaron Hilbert was never picked first for kickball as a kid. He grew up “an over- weight, closeted, fat kid” in Louisville, Ken- tucky, in the ‘90s when the country’s culture was far from what it is today. “It was a different time then,” he says. “There was never an inclusive team where I could openly walk down and show up.” By the 2010s, he was proudly out, work- ing as a bartender in Dallas’ gay nightlife Finding home base from p8 LGBTQ+ rugby in Dallas Sandlot baseball in Dallas Greg Kindel Photography Photo by Mike Brooks
