When you get to be 71 years old, you want to be doing something instead of just sitting around, said Bob Hannah.

Recently elected to the Senior Softball Hall of Fame, Hannah does not do much sitting around.

He plays more than 200 softball games a year with multiple teams and sometimes plays as many as three or four games a day at tournaments.

In the offseason, winter leagues and senior basketball get going, and Hannah is right there for both of them.

Upon meeting LaraLee, the woman who would be his wife, he let her know what she was getting in for and that playing softball is just what he does.

She was up for the challenge.

“I told him, if I can go, I'll be there,” she said. “If not, you go out and have fun.”

All five of the Hannah's children were raised at the ballpark and the people they have met through the game have become like an extended family, she said.

They have known many of their friends for more than 20 years thanks to softball, and the camaraderie with his fellow players is one the main draws to the ballpark, said Hannah.

Teammates and competitors alike describe Hannah as “one of the nicest guys in the league” and simply “one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet.”

But one does not make the Hall of Fame just for being a nice guy.

Hannah is a first-pitch hitter who strives to win every time steps onto the field. With the Penn Valley Taco Shell team this year, he is batting right around .650 and has the team's only two home runs.

Surgeries on both knees, including a surgery in February of this year, have slowed him a bit on the basepaths, though he leads Taco Shell in triples, but he can still smack the ball into the outfield with authority and wield a sharp glove at third base.

He has competed in fast-pitch and slow-pitch World Series tournaments in Arizona, Kansas City and Washington, and he never gets tired of any of it.

“It's always fun,” said Hannah. “I enjoy playing with the guys, and I've made a lot of really great friends. If it wasn't fun, I would do something else.”

He started playing baseball at Riverside High School in Riverside and was named league MVP in his senior year.

He had a scholarship to play at Fresno State and earned a tryout with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but sprained his ankle the day before the tryout.

“It's one of those things you kick yourself about,” he said.

So, instead of going professional, he kept the worlds of work and play separate.

For 16 years, he worked at a heating company in Southern California before a trip to visit some friends of his in Nevada City changed the course of his life in a more fortuitous way than his sprained ankle.

“We came up deer hunting, and I looked around and said, ‘We've got to do something to move up here,'” said Hannah. “I knew enough about heating that I knew I could start my own business, so that's what I did.”

While he made his living and ran his business, he never stopped playing softball, and five years ago when he sold the business and retired, he used the opportunity to play even more.

“The business was fun and I enjoyed it. It was just time to retire,” he said. “They made us a good enough offer to retire, and that's what we did.

“The only thing about retirement is that you have to know what day is trash day,” said Hannah. “But as long as you get to the ball park on time, everything's okay.”

To contact Sports Writer Anthony Barstow, e-mail abarstow@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4232.