Mike Lynch, that rookie, is 42. He slammed that double in only his second at-bat of his first game with the Orioles of the Baltimore Senior Baseball League, as they took on the Cardinals at Towson High School on one soggy Sunday earlier this month.

"I was expecting something else, but (the pitcher) left it out there," the Hanover, PA man said of the throw. This was his first time on a baseball diamond in 15 or 20 years.

Baltimore Senior Baseball, sponsored by the Towson Recreation Council, started in 2006 with just four teams and just over 40 players, all of them at least 40 years old. Now they have eight teams with 110 players in all, a season that stretches from April to August and a championship game at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen.

During the season, the games rotate among baseball fields at Owings Mills, Randallstown, Pikesville and Towson high schools.

Taylor Lucas, the league's commissioner, said the league got going "just so we had the opportunity for guys who loved baseball and still wanted to play."

Lucas, a Cockeysville resident who plays for the league's Cubs, says the league runs on slightly different rules. Baserunners can't crash into players, and the first seven innings can end if six runs score in the inning.

The players and coaches, many of whom come from vastly different jobs and backgrounds off the field, are all united by a common love of the game.

"When you're here, you've got friends on every team," says Cardinals player Kevin Scally, 46, of the Greenbrier neighborhood in Towson.

In a sense, it's a throwback to the kind of baseball they played when they were kids. Players bark out calls from bases and coaching boxes. There are no taunts, only cheers.

"Most of us played high school at least, some played with college," says Orioles manager Mickey Kocur. "You never lose if you play baseball and you love it."

Kocur, a jovial 56-year-old from Arnold, jokes that "The operative line of the league is 'Dedicated and medicated, I'll play every day.'"

Many of the older players, he says, hurt for long after the final out.

"They're icing down all the way till Thursday just so they can do it all over again."

Few players exemplify that philosophy quite like Wayne Edwards, 60, of Overlea. He's been in the senior league for more than two years. He looks much younger, his twinkling eyes poking out from under a batting helmet.

Edwards was sidelined following February knee surgery, but that didn't stop him from suiting up, cleaning up the field following a storm and coaching at first base. And at the game against the Cardinals, it became a family affair, as his son, 40-year-old Dave of Ferndale, made his first appearance as an Orioles starting pitcher and his grandson, 15-year-old Brett did scorekeeping and helped his father warm up. Dave's wife and daughter watch from the sidelines.

"He gives me tips," Wayne Edwards said of his son. "He's been trying to teach me for 30 years, maybe even longer than that."

Carl Helfand takes the plate clad in Cardinals red. He adjusts his glasses. His mouth plays with a strip of plastic in much the same way you might see a player toy with a toothpick. Kocur briefly considers challenging that, but the umpire can't think of a rule it violates.

Helfand, 66, is the oldest player on the team. The Owings Mills man's jersey, No. 64 bears his age when he started playing. He recalls a chance meeting with other players 2 1/2 years ago while on his day job with a carpet cleaning business. Before he knew it, he was on the team.

"This helps keep me young," he says. "It's the kind of stuff you've got to do."

Getting back in the game has its bumps, though, for someone returning to it after so long.

"I never knew 90 feet was so far away, " he said. "Last year, they had to remind me to put my helmet on."

On the backs of rallies like the one Lynch sparked, the Orioles won, 9-4. The senior league Orioles, the defending champions, are looking to make a return appearance and, Kocur jokes, set an example for their Camden Yards counterparts.

"It set the trend for them. Now the real-life O's can step up this year and here we go."