'Popeye' Sperling packs punch

.Photo: Alan, age 9, at his Jewish day school with his left bicep noticeably intact.    

     By Bill Tarrant

     ‘Popeye’ Sperling packs punch

     Alan Sperling incurred a scary injury this season that turned out to be benign. In fact, it merits a moniker – “Popeye”.

     Alan felt something in his shoulder exercising in the gym a couple of months ago. Days later, when he took fielding practice at Manhattan Beach, he heard something pop after catching a ground ball. Soon, a sizeable “meatball” appeared atop his upper left arm. The tendon attaching the “short head” biceps to the shoulder had snapped and rolled back into a ball.

     The initial prognosis from the orthopedist was season-ending surgery.

     The strange thing about this is that Alan has never felt any pain and could still use the arm. So, surgery was scrapped in favor of physical therapy – and Alan continues to play without noticeable impact on his performance.

     In Gold’s Aug. 17 game against Silver, Alan had a single, double, scored a run and knocked in another. For the season, the 7-rated player has a .600 OBP and a .700 slugging percentage.

     “I caught a ball that Carey (Conway) hit and didn’t feel a thing,” Alan said. “That’s been the biggest surprise. It all just went away. It’s still there (the “meatball”) and will be there the rest of my life, I guess. And I don’t quite have the strength in my left arm.”

     In senior softball leagues, where dugout discussions of medical procedures and illnesses can sound like a TV hospital drama, Alan’s weird injury has to qualify as an Emmy-winning episode.

     He joined the Culver City league in 2014, not long after moving out to California, and has been on three championship teams. He started his adult softball career in his native Maryland and has played every year since.

     He graduated with a BA in radio and television from the University of Maryland and for three years had summer internships with the local CBS affiliate in Washington DC. He recalls being on the sound crew that went into the Democratic Party HQ in the Watergate building after the 1972 break-in that ultimately doomed the Nixon presidency.

     But the early 1970s was not a good time to look for work in journalism during those “stagflation” times. Alan joined his father’s car wash business for a few years, then started his own firm supplying fresh food for restaurants. That morphed into working for a company that sold frozen food equipment to restaurants.

     The 76-year-old has two daughters, who have given him two grandchildren, and a son who with his wife is expecting twin boys within weeks. He and his wife Susan have been married for 52 years. “I love being married. I consider myself a fortunate man,” Alan said.

     He rides his bike 20 miles a week and plays children’s songs on his guitar for the grandkids.

     But there’s nothing like the game, he says.

     “Being on that field is my happy place.”