Editor’s Note: Rubén Rosario is a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. On Aug. 27, he wrote about Jim Wicks, a Vietnam Veteran and Austin native.

By Rubén Rosario

St. Paul Pioneer Press

I saw him struggling this year as I never had in recent ones. He would labor mightily at times to walk. He would grab at something — the side of a car, a wastebasket, a pole — to steady himself before he’d take another step.

I would ask if he needed help. He would say no with a smile. A walker for now is out of the question. As Jim Wicks told me last week, “I am a bit embarrassed using one.”

I understand completely.

Wicks, 72, who has kept score for my hapless, winless but lovable over-50 slow-pitch softball team, has Parkinson’s disease as a result of exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

He reminded me a bit this season of Robert de Niro’s character in “Bang the Drum Slowly,” a movie about a catcher whose skills gradually deteriorate as a result of a terminal illness. That is, except for the fact that Wicks is hardly the kind of simpleton masterfully portrayed with sensitivity by one of America’s greatest actors. Wicks, I would later learn, has seven patents to his name while working for 3M for many years.

Humility and grace

After missing most of the past four years for cancer-related health reasons, I made most of the games this summer and hit .600. Nice, but that wasn’t the highlight of my season. Wicks was.

It was watching Wicks battling this thing with humility and grace. It was watching him show up for the games, even in downpours, with that scorecard book in his hands. It was watching him shoot the breeze at the customary post-game suds-and-sliders sessions Monday nights at Neumann’s, the North St. Paul bar that sponsors us.

Jimmy Carter, the most walk-the-walk Christian man to become president, in my view, is being deservedly lauded for the way in which he is dealing with his recent cancer prognosis. But quite a number of Jim Wickses in the world gallantly live out their lives amid personal hardships and quietly serve as inspiration for others who will never merit headlines.

Wicks, a native of Austin, Minnesota, spent a year in Vietnam with the U.S.

Army medical corps in 1966-67 and worked 28 years as a microbiologist and lab researcher with 3M.

He was featured on the cover of a 1986 company magazine. He was a member of an award-winning surgical-medical team that came up with an improved system to test bacteria for drug susceptibility in minutes instead of hours.

He also was athletic and competed in the company’s tennis and softball leagues. His Parkinson’s diagnosis came after muscle fatigue and soreness did not improve with physical therapy.

“Jim had spent quite a long time with the emerging symptoms before the doctors were able to finally identify the problem,” said Stephen Thelen, a longtime friend and retired 3M research specialist who pitches for our team. “Jim felt that once the diagnosis was made, he would be able to get the proper medication, relieve the symptoms, and get on with his life — and that’s exactly what he did.”

Busy social life

Wicks gave up tennis, retired in 2002 but continued to play softball until about five years ago “when I noticed that I would get dizzy when I swung the bat.”

Ever the scientist, Wicks knows everything there is to know about Parkinson’s and religiously follows a diet and medication regimen that includes ingesting five pills every three hours. He surprised me one day two years ago with a file folder containing articles about the latest promising treatment for my cancer, multiple myeloma. He had taken the time to research it.

He has a busy social life. I tried unsuccessfully several times to reach him by phone last week.

“Oh, he’s out at the (State Fairgrounds) sampling some hot dogs,” said his wife, Carol. “He may be back soon, but then we are heading out to a ballet.”

He plays Texas Hold ‘em for fun with friends weekly at a watering hole in Maplewood. As he told me, “You really need to stay active as much as you can.”

Wicks has an only child, a son, Ted Wicks, a Texas-based energy executive from a previous marriage.

“I always respected Jim a lot for his positive attitude and his ability to carry on with his life as normally as possible,” Thelen said. “When Jim displays some cognitive or physical problems at softball or elsewhere, I don’t think too much about it. I know Jim has some issues in these areas sometimes, but I completely understand and accept the situation.”

Wait till next year

I saw Jim struggling to keep score at our last game recently. As he explained to me, he starts out writing big but then the words involuntarily get smaller on the paper.

He sometimes forgets how many players scored. We remind him.

Our winless season this summer ended mercilessly with a rout. One player on the other team hit three moon shots well over the fence that I believe are still orbiting the planet. I checked for his birth certificate and syringes on the rival team’s bench but saw none.

Seriously, we are regular mutts, most over 60, who play in a league in which numerous players from other teams play year-round or compete in national tournaments. But like Jim, we all still have inside us that child running fast and wild around the bases or hitting a screamer.

I told Wicks I was writing a piece on our season. He doesn’t know he is the centerpiece. Perhaps he’ll sue me for this. He has grounds for proclamation of character.

The league commish, whether out of pity or to get rid of us, recommended moving us to another weeknight league that he believes is more commensurate with, ahem, our age and skill set.

I asked Wicks if he would grace us with his presence on the bench again next year.

“Oh, I don’t know if I can do it,” he told me. “Maybe by that time, I may be in need of a siesta.”

Say it ain’t so, Jim.

—Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.