Snapshot NY: Octogenarians Recapture Youth On Field Of Dreams

HICKSVILLE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Baseball is a sport that doesn't have a clock. And that's a good thing because these guys are still ticking.

Welcome to the Bristal All-Stars game in Hicksville on Long Island where every player on the field is over 80.

"We have developed an amazing amount of friendships, too," says Nick "Yankee" Carelli, one of the regular players. "You know it's not easy to find friends at 80 years old that are your age. We're all on the right side of the grass, which is good!"

Photos: Octogenarian Fans Never Too Old To Dream Big At Yankee Stadium

Twice a week these octogenarians grab their gloves and, along with it, a little bit of their youth.

"We get transformed. We become little-leaguers when we come out here on Monday and Wednesday," Carelli says. "It's an amazing situation that we have here to still be able to do this."

"And now do you still feel like a kid when you walk on these fields?" CBS2's Steve Overmyer asked.

"You ask my wife. On Mondays and Wednesdays I jump out of bed, stretch, take my anti-inflammatory and away I go!"

It may not be Yankee Stadium, but where else can you see a 91-year-old man leg out an infield single?

"We all love this game," says Carelli. "If you've never played, you'd never understand it. It's the action. It's the competitive. It's so much."

"You're never too old to do something that you really enjoy," he adds. "Get out of the house. Get yourself moving and do what makes it happen."

None of these players were in the big leagues, but Carelli came close. When he was 18, he was discovered by scouts at an open tryout at Yankee Stadium.

"That must have been 1956. I walked out to centerfield where the monuments are, looked down and I saw a big footprint and said to myself, 'that's Mantle's footprint.' So I bent down, took some grass, put it in my pocket, took it home, put it in a plastic bag and saved it for a long, long time," he says.

The following year, the Yankees tried to sign Carelli. They offered him the going rate of $400 a month. But his baseball dreams had to be put on hold because his father unexpectedly passed away.

"I wasn't going to leave my mother for $400 a month. I figured I could stay home and earn a hundred dollars a week," he says.

It takes a lot of integrity to pass on playing for the Yankees to earn a stable living as a shoe salesman while supporting his mother.

"We were struggling to carry a house, and I wasn't going to put that on top of my mother. And me being 3, 4, 500 miles away playing a game, nah, I wouldn't do it."

It would kill some guys to come that close to their dream.

"I know, I know, I know. And I don't regret it. There was not an option for me to do anything else but that. No option. And I would make the same decision today," says Carelli.

Sixty-two years later, the sport he loves is still part of his life.

"I think it's my physical activity and my social activity. Otherwise, I'd be in Bloomingdale's with my wife," he says.

"You know what's amazing. In the middle of the week, I'll be limping or hurting. But when we get out here we don't hurt. All the pains go away for a couple of hours," he adds.

"It's an amazing situation just to be together with everybody," he says.

"Is it a brotherhood?" Overmyer asks.

"Good, yeah could be a brotherhood," Carelli says. "A brotherhood of old men who don't want to get old and don't feel old. And don't act old!"