Some traditionalists forsake the power of aluminum for the feel of wood

If the leaves are turning colors in Kansas City, Mo., Bill Harmon is getting the 55-and-over baseball team he manages, the Kansas City Cubs, ready to head for sunny climes and a shot at the glory of a World Series. Or two.

Every fall, Harmon leads his team--which includes a 72-year-old amateur hall-of-famer--to the Major Senior Baseball League World Series in Arizona. More than 9,000 entrants will fill out the rosters of the 490 teams in one of 29 divisions of the Men's Senior Baseball League World Series, which takes place Oct. 15 through Nov. 4. (MSBL also runs its Fall Classic tournament on the East Coast, which runs from Nov. 2 to Nov. 11 in Tampa, Fla.)

After the MSBL tournament in Arizona, Harmon's team travels to Florida to play in another adult baseball tournament -- the Roy Hobbs World Series, which takes place Oct. 21 through Nov. 18. The Roy Hobbs tournament, which is named after the ill-fated character in the Bernard Malamud novel "The Natural," features eight divisions, including a women's bracket.

In both fall tournaments the Kansas City Cubs compete in the wood-bat division, preferring the solid knock of cowhide against lumber to the ping of aluminum bats. They also play a wood-bat tournament in Las Vegas in March.

Wood-bat competitions have been making a comeback in senior baseball leagues in recent years, but Harmon and his team have been competing exclusively with wood since he started playing in the inaugural 1988 season of Kansas City's Adult Baseball League.

Harmon, a 59-year-old tire wholesaler, played varsity basketball and football at Missouri Southern College, but the little school had no baseball team, he said. Still, he was a good player, an experienced hand at American Legion ball with some semi-pro experience.

But "after college it was softball or nothing, so I was excited at the opportunity to play baseball again," he said. "It was probably 20 years between at-bats for me."

From the start, his league chose to play with wood bats. "Most leagues were metal, but our league started out with wood in '88," he said. "Most of us were old-timers and liked the wood bats."

For years they were a relative rarity. But lately, more teams are competing in wood-bat tournaments around the country. "We had a vote a couple times and decided to keep them," he said. "I think that gives us an advantage when we go to wood-bat tournaments."

But Harmon, who plays shortstop, isn't a wood-bat absolutist. "I use a metal bat to practice sometimes. They're neat. The ball really jumps," he said. "The big lure is average. A metal bat will add about 100 points to your average."

But there's a lot to be said for the romance of a piece of lumber. Harmon has fond memories of the Mickey Mantle model bat he used as a kid. And "I like the feel, the touch, the smell," he said.

Most bats are still made from hickory, but a growing number are made of maple, and that's what Harmon prefers. "They're a little harder," he said. That makes them slightly more brittle, but "I break maybe one or two a year."

Harmon uses a 35-inch maple bat. He special orders them a dozen at a time from a couple different suppliers, including Tennessee-based Old Hickory Bats, he said.

Most of the players on the team are in their late 50s, he said, but the squad includes pitcher Don Meyer, 72. Meyer was inducted into the St. Louis-based Amateur League Hall of Fame in 1999, according to the organization's Web site.

David Heinzmann is a staff writer at the Chicago Tribune. Matt Murray contributed to this story.