This week I sat down next to this man at the grocery store and I said, "Talk to me."

He smiled and said, "Okay."

He is sharp as a needle and I found out he is 98 and once played baseball for the Seattle Indians way back in 1935. His name is Russ Balzer and proved it by showing me his passport.

He also had a picture of himself in his baseball uniform.

He said Edo Vanni was quite an athlete out of Queen Anne and they both played with Freddie Hutchison.

Russ was a shortstop. He was two months shy of mustering out of the Army when a local guy with the team noticed him in a pick-up game in Seattle.

He asked him if he wanted to sign with the Seattle Indians.

"You've got quite a arm," the guy said. Russ was 26 at the time (1937)-- too old by the standards of the day.

"But he never asked my age," Balzer said.

He was impressed enough to sign him for $125. Russ signed, but never got the money. He was farmed up to Vancouver B.C. He hated the cold and wet and quit shortly after getting there.

Balzer was fast, too. He ran a 10.6 hundred, considered quite quick in the '30s. Jesse Owens had run the dash at the '36 Olympics in 9.4 seconds, a world record at the time.

Seattle has a long baseball history, beginning in the mid-1920s. Although the team has been known by various names through the years, what became the Seattle Rainiers once was known as the Seattle Indians.

For a lengthier history of the local baseball, go to:http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=7566 or Google Seattle Indians Baseball.

Russ spent much of his life serving in the U.S. Army as a top sergeant, gave that up and then had a career as a dock boss for American Can Company in Seattle.

He is a happy resident of the Vintage Apartments, across from Kennedy Catholic High School.

He is a smiling happy ex-warrior who lives a healthy life with a full set of teeth and no aches or pains.

He looks like he could still play shortstop.

I wonder if the Mariners can use him.