Pace Paw Print

Media Credit: Alex Pandolfi Irwin "Doc" Schwartz shows that he still has the strength to keep up with people a lot younger than him.

Major league baseball (MLB) pitchers like Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson and a select few others are over 40 years old and considered to be "old" players of the sport.

Pace health and wellness professor Irwin "Doc" Schwartz would consider these players to be young. Schwartz is not only 64 years old, but the adjunct professor has been playing in some form of organized baseball or softball for the past 50 years and is still going strong.

Schwartz was born in the Bronx, and grew up loving the New York Yankees, idolizing Mickey Mantle, and admiring the game of baseball all together.

Schwartz liked playing all types of sports as a child, such as football and basketball, but baseball was different. "I loved all sports, but baseball is really more than just a game to me, it has given me my values. At certain turning points in my life, baseball has helped me through them," he said.

He used to go out into the streets with his friends to play stickball.

Even though Schwartz grew up being a shortstop, he loved pitching in stickball. "I would always pretend to be a Yankees pitcher, like Whitety Ford."

In 1959, Schwartz as the sophomore shortstop for Theodore Roosevelt High School in NYC, helped defeat Curtis High School 6-5 to become New York City Champions.

Not only was this a championship game, but it was the final game in the legendary Ebbets Field, home of what used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers.

"As a child, I had never been to Brooklyn, but I always watched the beginning of Dodgers games because they had people from the Happy Felton's Knotholes Gang showing children baseball techniques. When I stepped out onto that field, I was just in awe and amazed to see exactly where they once stood."

After graduating from high school, Schwartz went to Hunter College in the Bronx. While in college, Schwartz became the co-captain of the baseball team as a shortstop. After a few pitchers came down with injuries, the coach asked Schwartz to pitch. The result made him the most valuable player (MVP), and ever since he has always been a pitcher. In fact, as a pitcher he earned the nickname "Doc" for the way he operated on the pitching mound.

In 1968, upon graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College, Schwartz married Sheri Sietz and the couple moved to Yonkers.

After marrying Sietz, Schwartz still had a great love for the game of baseball and for physical fitness. He showed it by continuing to play fast pitch softball at night, while by day he worked in the Bronx at Arturo Toscanini Community Junior High School 145 as a health and physical education teacher, coach, and eventually assistant principal from 1968 until his retirement in 2001.

In that time he also worked as a personal fitness consultant, and created two instructional videos on home weight training.

In 1981, Schwartz and his family moved to Briarcliff Manor, where he still lives today.

After years of softball instead baseball due to his career and the upbringing of his three daughters, Schwartz joined the Westchester-Putnam Men's Senior Baseball League (+28).

It was not completely simple for Schwartz to adapt to this league, not ability wise, but socially. "Age was an issue in the first year. The commissioner wanted us to create a team of older players, and we did even though we went winless in the first year," he said.

Eventually Schwartz's team adapted to the league, when in 2002 his team won the league title and in 2005 Schwartz won the league's first ever lifetime achievement award.

After he retired, Schwartz always wanted to teach college students, and that dream came true when in 2000 he got to create a course at Pace and still teaches that course today.

Schwartz has four grandchildren, and not only gets the satisfaction of coaching his ten year old grandson's team, but his grandson also gets the satisfaction of watching his grandfather play.

In 50 consecutive years of playing, Schwartz has never been seriously injured.

"I work very hard; I love the game so much. I weight train all-year 'round. In my opinion, a combination of sensible eating, muscle strengthening, flexibility, and cardio-vascular strengthening is the key."

Schwartz continues to keep on pitching, and will probably continue until he physically cannot any longer.

He has kept his body well conditioned for many years, and with his course hopes to teach others to do the same.

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