Lexington's Boys of Summer

Two teammates on Prime Time, a Lexington Senior Softball League team, have been buddies since nursery school.

They went to Hancock and , Adams, and , and played ball for Lexington in 1985. They’ve grown up on these streets, lived on Forest just a walk away from the , and now, their young children sit in the stands, watching their daddies run in the dirt in late June.

“Don’t you remember this?” one of the guys asked, leaning on the back of his SUV, reminiscing as the two began talking about particular girl teammates from their little league team, the Phoenix, in its first year when the league was co-ed in Lexington.

The sounds were droning out, and it was if the two grown men, both in their early 40s, were sitting in a tree house reading comic books while stuffing their cavity-filled mouths with sour gummy worms, spoiling the spaghetti and chicken dinners their mothers had prepared.

The fellas of Prime Time, an A team in the Lexington Senior Softball League, beat Foul Play, a B team, 16-4 Thursday night at Harrington Elementary School.

And, while the men enjoy winning, the 5-2 Prime Time team really participates in the summer league for the after parties – drinking Miller and Bud, grilling hot dogs and eating pizza and just hanging out with old pals.

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The gang is a senior group, with players in their 40s, 50s, 60s and even a few rambunctious 70-year-olds. The head-honcho, Frank Nestico, or “Big Toe” as his comrades call him, has been playing for 40 years. He hand-picked the guys about 10 to 15 years ago, back when Prime Time was in its infancy.

The green-and-white-clad squad grew up with baseball, together in Lexington.

These men enjoy Tuesday and Thursday nights in center field, under the lights on familiar grass, running in the same dirt they trudged in when they first put on their little cleats.

Here in week 9, Prime Time has six more games until the playoffs, which run mid-August to early September, when the sun begins to hold back on its 80-, 90-degree warmth. About the time when the aches and pains come, the stiff shoulders reveal themselves and the knees just don’t want to move as quick.

But still, the chuckles will continue to be heard, drinks will pour out of bottles and cans as fast as their mouths will run, and the wives, brothers, sisters, toddlers, babies, 7-year-olds, aunts, uncles, second-removed cousins -- all of them true family members of the best nature -- will still sit in their folding chairs and on bleachers to watch as well as celebrate in parking lots and grassy fields.

Summer is about relaxation, past times, cold beverages, simple friends and a sport that involves a bat, a ball and four bases.