That rare blend of enthusiasm, savvy and skill we know as Terry O’Neal came out of the sandlots of Blytheville, Arkansas.  He handled a near-miss at a St. Louis Cardinals tryout, stayed cool with a bank robber’s gun in his mouth, and still makes all the plays at shortstop.

Not many 76-year-olds (he was born Aug. 10, 1934) are ranging deep in the hole to make backhand picks and getting the runner, too—but that’s Terry.  And at least once a season, he’ll ball-fake a runner into a tag-out.  He’s usually a little quicker, a little smarter than the rest of us.  And snap, crackle, pop go his leadoff base hits.

As a boy in Blytheville (pop. 10,700 then) Terry played all the games in town, but principally baseball.  “We won the church league championship,” he recalls.  “I pitched the biggest part of the time in that league.  In American Legion ball, I played second base, and we won the state championship.  We beat Little Rock.  They had a benchwarmer, a gangly uncoordinated 13-year-old kid named Brooks Robinson.  Then we went to the regionals in Baton Rouge and lost two out of three.”

You knew Terry had to have been a good student.  He was salutatorian of his high school class, ticketed to attend Arkansas State College.  “I had my room reserved, but I backed out,” he recalls.  “Instead, I got an assistant bookkeeper job that paid a lot of money for an 18-year-old.  The job was at the Swift & Co. oil mill, which mashed soy and cottonseed into oil.  I didn’t have enough sense to know that when the harvest was over, that would be the end of the overtime.

“But I was saving to get married.”  Her name was Shirley Lovelady, and they’ve been married since Dec. 30, 1953.  They had one child, a boy, who was born in 1960.  He and his wife now live in Torrance, where they raised two children.

That summer after Terry graduated, he tried out for the Little Rock Travelers, a Detroit Tigers farm club, but he didn’t stick.  In his tryout with the Cardinals, he was the second-to-last cut.  “That’s when I could run,” the still-speedy Terry jests.

But he was able-bodied enough for the U.S. Army, which drafted him in 1957 and sent him to France to defend the Free World at the snack bar at an Army installation in Orleans, Joan of Arc’s city.  “I was a clerk-typist.  I did the duty roster and correspondence for the company commander.  It was hard duty, I’ll tell you.  I spent two-thirds of my time at the snack bar.  The captain would let me take his jeep: ‘If I need you I’ll call you at the snack bar,’ he’d say.”

In the service, Terry also played ball on the regimental baseball team.  Characteristically, he led the team in hits and runs.  “I left the Army as a three-striper Spec-5.  I was discharged in Oakland and came down to Torrance, where my wife was living with her parents.  I got into the savings and loan business.  A friend from home was working at Hawthorne Savings and asked if I wanted to be a teller, so that’s what I did.  Later on, I worked my way up to vice-president and manager.  Eventually, Bank of America bought the business.

It was a very enjoyable job.  The best part was seeing the people I hired move on up to better jobs.  I was on the California Savings & Loan League Security Board.  It was the year they were kidnapping managers, and we worked on ways to combat that.”

The obvious question: did Terry himself ever get robbed?  He says, “I never got over the last robbery, which was on Christmas Eve, 1992.  I had a gun stuck in my mouth.  They told me they’d blow my head off if I didn’t open the safe.  I told them I couldn’t do it, because it took two people who knew the combination.  I lied.  “Instead, they hit two tellers and got $1,600.  Guys from the FBI were at a meeting in a bowling alley two blocks away at the time of the robbery.  They were the last ones to get there afterwards.”  Terry’s reward for his bravery, loyalty and (maybe) stubbornness was “a bottle for the staff,” he recalls.  “That was our commendation.

“The weird thing was that on the following Jan. 2, we were shopping at Nordstrom’s and I saw the guy who had held the gun in my mouth.  I recognized him and yelled for security, and he ran.  I didn’t run after him because I’d been close enough to him before.”

When Terry got out of the S&L business after 35 years, he worked for Scott Robinson Honda, where he wore a straw hat and a smile.  “I was a greeter.  My job was to talk to customers as they walked in and make sure they got served.  I did that for 12 years.”

At the same time, Terry was an umpire for 25 years on ballfields in Torrance.  “I hustled and called what I saw and never had any serious problems.”  Not once?  “Well, there was one game involving the Torrance Police Dept. team.  They were down a run.  One of their players got a single and tried to stretch it, but he was tagged out at second.  He went ballistic.

“’You don’t know who I am,’ he yelled.  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.  ‘I’m a motorcycle cop for the City of Torrance.’  So I said, ‘Get on your bike and go.’  Well, he had his car at the game, not his motorcycle.  He said, ‘You got to throw out the pitcher, shortstop and left fielder too, because I drive them, and they’ll just go drinking if I don’t take them.’”

And, of course, Terry plays ball a little himself.  “I’ve played senior ball since 1996, and I’m still here. I’ve met some of the best guys I’ve ever played with.  We’ve got great camaraderie.”  As a hitter, he still follows his father’s advice:  “I like to swing at the first pitch because Dad said that if it’s close enough for the umpire to call it a strike, it’s close enough to swing at.”