He played the day his dad died. He played the day after he had 52 stitches sewn into his wrist following extensive surgery. And he plays today with a herniated disc in his back that causes him sheer agony whenever his six-foot-one, 280-pound frame barrels around the bases.
Mind you, Scott Fenton did not play June 26, marking the first game he's missed in the PoCo Over-30 men's baseball league since he joined the faction eight years ago.
That day, the 38-year-old catcher was in Atlanta, Ga. tending to industrial-sales job demands from which he couldn't escape but likely would have if he wasn't roughly 2,000 nautical miles away from planting his spikes into the diamond dirt at Thompson Park. And that's what dead-stopped his streak of what he measures to be 400 straight games, including playoffs, PoCo Over-18 fall ball and serving as a spare "at least 50 times" at one time or another on each of the PoCo Over-30's other eight teams.
Sounds like a fair excuse. Just don't let it happen again, man.
"I take a lot of pride playing in this league," says an earnest Fenton, who played 133 straight games, clobbered a league-best 102 RBI and batted for a .335 average since the PoCo Over-30 loop began keeping official stats in 2006. "It's not about being an individual on an individual team. It's about doing what's best for the league as a whole."
Fenton played PoCo minor ball since he was age 5 when he was first influenced by his father, Darryl, a former playing great with the old Vancouver Pharaohs senior men's squad. At 13, Fenton toiled for the national-champion Coquitlam Little League Junior division team which now, remarkably, houses six players on his PoCo Over-30 men's squad, the Redhawks.
Fenton wears No. 9 in memory of his dad, who used to wear the same digit when he played and died from a stroke suddenly at home in summer 2009. Later that day, Fenton suited up and played for the Redhawks in a league game at Maple Ridge's Larry Walker Park.
"He would have wanted me to play," reasons Fenton, noting that today (Friday), ironically, marks the second anniversary of his dad's passing. "I've gone through a lot of adversity, without saying. You've got to be a diehard to play at this age."
That same year, a tumor formed on the top of Fenton's right wrist-- his throwing hand -- that was fortunately found to be benign but still required removing. The next day, he played primarily just to keep his ironman streak intact. He did more than that. He went three-for-four at the dish, including swatting a home run virtually one-handed over the fence at Heritage Woods field.
A week later, he was still swinging when the stitches began to pull apart.
"A teammate of mine said 'You better not keep playing... you're a health risk,'" Fenton recalls. "I said 'No, I'll be fine.' But then it got infected. So I'd just press the yucky white stuff [infection] out and just keep playing."
Fenton first started playing in the PoCo Over-30 league in 2004 by happenstance, when he drove by Thompson and stopped to watch a little baseball before realizing the players were considerably more experienced than he first figured.
"I thought the players were, like, 18 and then I realized they were my age or older," Fenton says.
Fenton's first game was as a spare with now-commissioner Bevan Blatchford's Cubs unit. He promptly stepped up to the plate and swatted a dinger. The next year, he was a no-brainer top pick in the league's annual draft. He has since done much more than merely play, often volunteering his services to help tend to such matters as grooming fields and organizing the league's social events.
"Ninety per cent of the work is done by 10 per cent of the people," Fenton says. "That's just the nature of it."
Cardinals manager Steve Rizzo was the PoCo Over-30's commissioner when Fenton entered the loop and laughs good-naturedly about the latter's league involvement, and persistence, ever since.
"You can say he's always there to offer his advice -- wanted or unwanted," Rizzo chuckles. "What he doesn't have in style he makes up for with class. He's a good, kind-hearted fellow whose heart's definitely in the right place. That's what makes him the ironman he is."
Fenton's wife, Candi, and nine-year-old daughter Jenna often accompany him to games and cheer him on.
"I have no problem [with him playing]... I'm letting him do what he wants to do," Candi says. "I know he's a trooper. He gets his wounds but always gets back up fighting."
So how many more seasons -- and contusions -- does Fenton figure he has left in him?
"A couple more, maybe," he says. "It's a lot of fun but it wears on you."
So insists the man who just can't stop playing -- pain and all.
