Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
Doc Edwards, now in his 57th year in professional baseball, signs an autograph for a fan. More Photos »
SAN ANGELO, Tex. — In the clubhouse for the San Angelo Colts baseball team, a squat shed of concrete and corrugated metal planted in dust just beyond the left-field fence, a white-haired lifer named Doc Edwards is telling another story when — bam! — a sound like a gunshot goes off. He keeps talking.
Now in his 57th year in professional baseball, Mr. Edwards, 76, has a deep bench of — bam! — stories that feature a cast of thousands, from Mickey Mantle to the kid playing second base tonight whose name isn't readily coming to mind at the — bam! — moment.
Finally, he is asked about — bam! — these unsettling bams. Just batting-practice home runs pounding the metal roof, he explains, and picks up where he left off, the interruption a brief rain delay in his spinning of another baseball-story beauty.
"I had one home run in Boston, barely scraped the top part of the fence," he is saying. "Then Mantle hit one to center field. One-handed. More than 420 feet."
It's true: This heavyset man eating chips and drinking a Pepsi spent nearly a decade playing and managing in the major leagues, and a spare few of us can say the same. But most of his career has been one long minor-league bus ride, managing the Wichita Aeros, or the Charleston Charlies, or the Sioux Falls Canaries.
Now here he is, still, starting his eighth summer as the manager of the Colts in the United League Baseball, an independent collective of faint hope that operates in Texas well outside the major-league farm system. Waiting for another game. Telling another story to the reassuring pitter-patter of raining baseballs.
"The next year I got traded from Cleveland to Kansas City for Joe Azcue and Dick Howser," he is saying. "Me and money for those two players. I just pray it was for more than 10 bucks."
The evening droops in the dry heat. Batting practice has ended, and the grounds crew tends to an infield so dusty that one worker is wearing the head covering of a desert nomad. General admission tonight is $2, and somewhere around here the mascot, Casey the Colt, is champing at the bit.
Meanwhile, in the compressed clubhouse, Mr. Edwards talks his way toward filling out another lineup. The pitching coach has stored a bicycle in the small bathroom to his right, and in the cramped locker room to his left, athletes in the pregame state of anticipation watch a television whose channels are monitored by their skipper. ("Just baseball," he says. "No smut.")
His tight office has a fly swatter on the table, three weathered Colts caps on hooks and, on the wall, a half-century-old photograph of a young New York Yankee taking a home-run swing, the 38 on his uniform made small by his broad back. In the baseball outpost of San Angelo, this portrait of Doc Edwards hangs as a reminder of what once was and what might, might be.
Howard Rodney Edwards grew up in West Virginia, where his father vowed to break his legs if he followed him down into the mines. He developed into a promising catcher, served as a Navy medic with the Marines — hence the handle — and eventually joined the Cleveland Indians' organization.
After a few years in places like North Platte, Neb., and Burlington, N.C., he became a peripatetic backup catcher for the Indians, the A's, the Yankees and the Phillies. His was a rarefied but precarious existence, the threat of being sent back down as ever-present as his catcher's mitt.
Mr. Edwards collected a duffel bag of stories along the way. Here's another one: He admired Mantle, his teammate in 1965, so much that he wanted to name his first son Mickey Mantle Edwards. His wife at the time said no way, so the boy was christened Howard Michael Edwards. But he goes by Mick.
The home-plate umpire appears at the door to collect a few dozen fresh baseballs, and Mr. Edwards greets him as Mr. Smith.
"It's Shults," says Johnny Shults, smiling in his acceptance of Doc being Doc.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 25, 2013
An earlier version of a summary for this article misidentified the city of the Colts. They are the San Angelo Colts, not San Antonio Colts.
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