On board the air-conditioned bus ambling east on Interstate 10 from The City of Katy Fussell Senior Center toward Minute Maid Park, more than 20 of the oldest and most passionate Astros fans turn their monthly bus trip into a septuagenarian summer camp adventure.

Across aisles and over seats, they exchange endless laughter, soft-spoken gossip, bucket-list items and Astrodome memories. There is talk of witnessing Sandy Koufax at his peak and dreading Tony Sipp at his worst. Two sisters wear Jake Marisnick T-shirts, but their love for Houston baseball began with the 1950s Buffs. Another woman at 73 years old is attending her first major league game.

Gary Ankrum, 75, a Californian who retired from telecommunications and moved his fandom unwaveringly to the Astros, picks out the games for the group.

A collective eagerness is especially palpable this evening. It is $1 Hot Dog Night.

“I really wanted to base it on the giveaways,” Ankrum says.

He also is the leading trickster, known for pilfering popcorn and firing brazen zingers.

A sneeze from the back of the bus shatters the din.

“Goodness gracious,” Ankrum blurts. “Who shot who? You’re firing blanks back there I hope.”

It does not take long for him to follow with a Viagra joke.

Astros games bring out a frisky, at times mischievous, spirit that these seniors can have fun indulging only among fellow fans.

“We have to behave at home and stuff with our kids,” Beverly Ryan said. “Not here.”

They get to act like any other unrestrained patrons at the ballgame.

“We get to shout and raise hell a little bit,” Ankrum says, finishing with one of his loud cackles. “Getting out, shooting the bull, harassing people.”

AARP has sponsored visits to see the Astros for 46 years, according to Pat Baker, the center’s activity director. The bus, which the Harris County Commissioners office lends, frees seniors from the risks of driving on the highway.

“I don’t know any senior centers that do all the stuff we do,” says Kathy Collier, a Fussell part-time clerk.

Stories to tell

Collier is the rider on the way to her first game, which, after skydiving and kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland, will allow her to check off a third bucket-list item.

The plush setup helped the Fussell Center maintain its loyal baseball pilgrimages, which will continue with Friday night’s Astros series opener against the Kansas City Royals.

“We sat there when nobody else was in that stadium,” Baker says, referring to the losing seasons. “I get real frustrated with all these folks that have come on these last few years. Where were you when we were here screaming and there weren’t that many people up in the stands?”

The center has fans who saw Ernie Banks, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Ted Williams play. They watched the Houston franchise evolve from the Colt .45s. Some of them still have the posters they made for the Killer B’s.

The crew sat in the right-field stands for Game 4 of the 2015 American League Division Series, watching the Royals score seven runs in the final two innings to deny the Astros a series clincher. Kansas City advanced two nights later.

Royals catcher Salvador Perez launched an early home run in Game 4. Baker, the clan’s matriarch with bright eyes and a poof of cinnamon-colored hair, will not forget it.

“He hit a home run, and they beat us!” she vents.

The ball struck her in the head.

“And she ain't been the same ever since,” Jenny Templeton quips.

Not everything is a kidding matter. A ride carries extra weight for Nevelynn Melendy, 84, a widower whose husband was an Astrodome usher decades ago. Her memory is fading, but she also has flashbacks of her sister.

“After she passed, it’s been hard for me to come and realize that my sister is no longer with me,” Melendy said. “She was a big fan, too.”

On some days, the group includes more transplants than locals.

“You can’t live here and get away with being a fan of another team,” says Penny Fife, 79, whose thick Massachusetts accent makes clear the baseball team she grew up revering.

In addition to indoctrinating new fans, the center offers vital opportunities for seniors to socialize daily.

Fife moved to Texas in 2010 and wound up marrying Charles Fife, a local who taught the refresher bridge course. She tells their love story while sitting at a table so she can rest her mobile oxygen tank upon it. She leans over, hugs Charles around his hip, and presses her cheek against his belly.

“He looks good,” she says, peering up. “He got his hair cut today.”

Ankrum does not romanticize the consequences of aging alone: “You lay on the couch and die.”

“The center’s been a lifesaver for me,” Jean Miles, 81, says. “I was depressed.”

“Lonely,” her daughter, Laura Hughes, chimes in.

Trips to Minute Maid Park have given the mother and daughter a new bonding activity.

Hughes, who is 52, turned from skeptical to fanatical about the experience. She had seen the bus driving around Katy before and assumed it was used to transport prisoners.

“You’re kidding,” she thought when she first saw the seniors lining up to board. “We’re getting on the prisoner bus?”

Now Hughes looks forward to the games as much as anyone.

“I was very surprised at all the people and how fun they are,” she says. “Young at heart. They were all in their Astros gear.”

She was more surprised by their devotion. No senior visited the restroom.

“Some of these old people can hold it way longer than me,” Hughes says. “They don’t get up, and they scream the whole time.”

Into the game

After getting chauffeured to a ballpark entrance, the seniors scarf down dollar dogs outside Section 315 and then head to their seats.

A cluster of the group’s liveliest women cheers and coos from the back rows — and the game has not yet started. They are unabashed admirers of the Astros, even when Marisnick, one of their favorite players, is not in the lineup.

“Eye candy,” says Ryan, one of the sisters wearing Marisnick T-shirts.

Seated nearby is Sheila Gershenson, a woman in her early 80s, who grew up in New York City and sounds like she never left. Her family visit to Cooperstown, she explains, was not complete without stopping along the way at the Lucille Ball Museum.

“Isn’t Jake’s hair gorgeous?” Gershenson says to Ryan, her R’s sounding like W’s. “It’s flowing. Adonis.”

“Especially when his hat flies off,” Ryan adds.

Mickie Christy, 84, bops her head and sways her arms to the blaring pregame bravado of Cardi B’s “I Like It” over the speakers.

“You can’t help but bounce to that,” she says.

Christy is the most diminutive of the bunch and often the most demonstratively comedic. She too adores Marisnick.

“He’s got a nice tush,” Christy says, raising her hands and scrunching them firmly.

Gershenson shares a tidbit she heard on the radio.

"When (Justin) Verlander has to pitch," she says, "he doesn't have sex the night before."

"What do you know about sex?" Christy snipes.

Once the game is underway, the women engage with it more than the average fan. They do not check their phones. They break out Ziploc bags of candy in the second inning, a sign they won’t be leaving their seats.

Their insight ranges from generous to cutthroat.

“Marwin (Gonzalez) is good,” Gershenson says, raising a finger painted in purple nail polish to match her eye shadow. “You could play him anywhere.

“Sometimes they keep putting Sipp in, which drives me crazy,” she says, uttering the lefthanded reliever’s name with contempt.

Even Marisnick does not have Gershenson’s full approval.

“I think he needs a shrink,” she says. “He gets up in his head.”

Ryan heckles an opposing batter when he squares around with a runner on base.

“What? You’re too slow to run out a double play, so you’re gonna bunt him over?” she barks.

Ryan shows her fangs. Christy and Eunice Randall tense their biceps for the Flex Cam.

“My BFF,” Randall says, pointing a thumb at Christy, who again is lost in a song.

Randall, 88, has a combined total of 73 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. For nine innings she behaves like them, free of inhibitions, giggling with peers and shouting for the sake of a backyard game played on the biggest stage.

The Astros win. The seniors are not itching to leave. Remarkably, none is rushing for the restroom.

With a wink and a devilish grin, Randall sums up the group’s commitment with one word: “Depends.”

hunter.atkins@chron.com

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