Sunshine & baseball again for BJ expats Tom, Mike & Tom

 BJ newsroom retiree Tom Moore and advertising makeup retiree Mike Williams are enjoying Florida sunshine and watching old guys play baseball in former BJ sports editor Tom Giffen’s 27^th annual Roy Hobbs World Baseball Series in Fort Myers, Florida.

Tom Moore, Mike Williams
back up Tom Giffen

Richmond, Virginia native Tom, who came to the BJ from John Knight’s birthplace, Bluefield, West Virginia, has been Giffen’s right-hand man at the Roy Hobbs World Series in Fort Myers, Florida for 12 years. This is Mike’s second year of helping with the daily newsletter that has player interviews and reports on the games.

The series is divided into age divisions ---youngest group is 28-plus and oldest is 70-plus.

Giffen in 1990 formed a four-team league of adult men playing out of Akron. The next year the league grew to 11 teams and joined Roy Hobbs Baseball, which was owned by Ron Monks of California. In 1992 Monks sold Roy Hobbs Baseball to Giffen and his wife, Ellen.

For several years, Giffen ran Roy Hobbs Baseball out of his basement and continued to work at the Beacon Journal. In the mid-1990s, as the organization brought in more and more teams, Giffen resigned from the BJ to work full-time at his business.

Roy Hobbs is the fictional hero of Bernard Malamud's novel, “The Natural,” and the movie starring Robert Redford as Hobbs.

For Tom Moore and Mike Williams, the fun will end Monday night when they fly back to Ohio.