Mound magician: Juanito, 67, can still bring it

There’s a game set for 9, but it’s 9:05 and only a few players from both teams, Nogales and Agua Prieta, are ready. By 9:25, most players have arrived, and they’re stretching, running and loosening up.

Some have a few noticeable gray hairs, some have a lot. They don’t all run the fastest, jump the highest or throw the hardest. But they’re certainly good. It’s a casual league, sure, but still competitive.

The Sunday Mexican Wooden League pits men 40 or older against one another. The bats are wooden; the men stretch and bend so not to end up that way.

One of them, the pitcher with the full head of gray hair, is considered a legend of the league.

They call him Juanito. And he’s 67 years old.

• • •

Leaning against the dugout fence, with an Agua Prieta teammate there to translate, Juanito thinks back on his baseball career.

Juan Lopez started playing baseball in Sonora when he was 9. At 17, he signed a contract with a team in Nogales.

In 1970, he played in the Primera Fuerza league back in Mexico, alongside a local legend, Rafael Romero. Juanito also played with Mike Brito, the famous, mustachioed baseball scout who brought Fernando Valenzuela to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In 1990, Juanito moved to Tucson, played semi-professionally for a few years, co-founded the Sunday league, and has lived in the Old Pueblo ever since.

“I really enjoy baseball,” he said through a translator, “baseball is my life.”

Now, Juanito is not quite 70 yet, just a spry 67-year old with a three-pitch arsenal — fastball, slider, and curveball.

He’s a righty, and his windup is simple and quick. His wrist turns ever so slightly upon delivery, making it sidearm-ish.

For most of his career, Juanito was a center fielder, but you won’t find him in the outfield, or the batter’s box, anymore.

“He doesn’t throw very fast, but he throws the ball all over the place; the ball moves on him,” said teammate Jesus Rodriguez, 41. “Everything just moves real slow, gets there.

“Once in a while, he will bring a fastball, but it takes him a while to bring it.”

Juanito’s fastball, when he throws it, reaches about 70-75 miles per hour, typically. Every now and again, he’ll hit 80.

“I just hope my arm doesn’t snap,” he said, laughing.

His Agua Prieta teammates do, too — entering Sunday, he sported a 13-1 record, starting every one of his team’s games. Combined in the last two years, he’s 29-1, and more often than not, he lasts into the ninth inning, or close to it.

• • •

Juanito co-founded the Sunday Mexican Wooden League in 1990 to relive some of his past baseball success and connect, if a bit, with his home country. Each team is named after a city in Mexico.

It wasn’t hard to find participants. About 10 players in the four-team league played professionally in Mexico. Gabriel Doyle, a former Pima College player, commutes from Nogales — he runs an exterminating company there — to play every Sunday.

Pima College athletic director Edgar Soto joined last week. His Nogales team faced Juanito, and struggled to do much of anything: Through seven innings, it had one hit.

When Soto bunted for a base hit in his final at-bat, his team had two. It wasn’t until Soto, 44, got to first base — and saw Juanito up close, looking his age — that it hit him.

“I’m bunting on a 70-year-old guy,” Soto said, laughing. “I’m just looking at this guy, and someone hit the ball between first and the pitcher’s mound, and he hops off that mound, drops back and catches it with a jump in his step and I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

• • •

For most of Sunday’s game, Juanito is quiet. By the fifth inning, he’s only allowed two hits and thrown about 60 pitches. The score is still 0-0, and he feels good. With men on first and second, two outs, he forces a Nogales batter into a groundout to third base.

“I only need one run to win today,” he said, smiling.

Juanito doesn’t talk much, if at all, in the dugout. Like most baseball players, he has a routine — albeit one that wouldn’t fly on most teams.

In between innings, Juanito walks to the back corner of the dugout, opens, his bag, pulls out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a book of matches. He lights one.

“That’s his Gatorade,” a teammate jokes.

Juanito stares out the field, puffing smoke as his teammates go to bat, try to score, at least, that one run. They score nine, winning 9-3, improving Juanito’s record to 14-1. Agua Prieta will play in the championship game Sunday.

Juanito will pitch in that game, too. The man simply doesn’t rest.

He works for the University of Arizona, cleaning the football and baseball stadiums. He does some volunteer work too, speaking to kids. He tells them, he said, to give it 100 percent in life, and in sports.

To stay in shape, he runs and walks 3 miles a day. The silent man says there’s no real secret to his longevity, but baseball — and the camaraderie — helps.

“No vitamins. Just exercise,” Juanito says.

“And,” he adds, no translation needed, “Bud Light.”