Reminiscing with ... Al Lopez: 'the Senor' had a Hall of Fame career that included catching Walter Johnson and managing two pennant-winning clubs.

THE OLD SENOR'S EYES STILL sparkled, his handshake firm, belying his 95 years, and as we chatted in the den of his modest ranch home on the shoreline of Tampa Bay, there was no escaping the wonderment of those hands that once were on the receiving end of a Walter Johnson fastball.

"It was the spring of 1925," Al Lopez was telling me. "The Washington Senators were training here and they needed a catcher to catch batting practice. For some reason, they didn't want to use their regular catchers, Muddy Ruel and Pinky Hargrave, and I was playing sandlot ball when they called me and offered me $45 a week. Heck, I'd have done it for nothing, but that was my start in professional baseball.

"Johnson threw hard, maybe the hardest of all, but he was easy to catch because he was always around the plate."

The son of Spanish immigrants who came to Tampa's famous Ybor City district to work in the cigar factories in the late 1800s, Lopez wound up catching 18 years in the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates and Cleveland Indians from 1928-1947. The oldest living baseball Hall of Famer, he held the major league record for games caught (1,918) until Bob Boone broke it in 1987 and Boone's mark was then surpassed by Carlton Fisk.

In his second career as a manager, Lopez won American League pennants with the Indians in 1954 and the Chicago White Sox in 1959, while finishing second 10 times.

Inevitably, the conversation got around to the Yankees, who, despite the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, have a rather overbearing presence in this town.

Even before George Steinbrenner moved the Yankees' spring training base of operations here in 1996, the Bombers were never a particularly favorite subject for Lopez.