SLIPPERY ROCK - For 13 years, Chris Burtch didn't pick up a bat or throw a baseball.

Basketball was his sport. He played it, coached it and lived it.

Baseball was on the backburner of a busy stove top full of hoops, family and teaching social studies at Slippery Rock High School.

But when the opportunity came up to play baseball again, Burtch couldn't pass it up.

Now he is an outfielder, pinch runner and co-manager of the Slippery Rock Eagle County Baseball team in its first season back in the league since Burtch last played 13 seasons ago.

"The last time I saw live pitching was in 1992," Burtch said while stretching before a scheduled doubleheader against Saxonburg at Critchfield Park Friday afternoon. "I've had an interesting Eagle County League career."

He certainly has, and this latest chapter is perhaps the most intriguing.

Burtch played for Slippery Rock in 1987 and 1988, then, when that team folded, he played for the Butler Pioneers the next two seasons.

In 1991, he and childhood friend John Hicks re-formed the Slippery Rock team, which played in the league for two seasons before going belly up again.

Now, Burtch and Hicks are at it again, managing and playing for another incarnation of the Slippery Rock team.

Burtch coached the Slippery Rock High School boys basketball team for five seasons, compiling a 72-57 record. In his first season at the helm, he led the Rockets to their first playoff berth in nearly two decades.

But Burtch stepped down as coach in the late winter of 2004. Baseball is his chance to stoke those competitive fires again.

"The thing that was really exciting for me is I'm probably in as good a shape as I've ever been in," Burtch said. "I get to be around the guys I used to coach in basketball and it's a nice distraction from all the responsibilities of being an adult."

Mike DeCola, a Slippery Rock University pitcher and former standout baseball player for the Rockets, played for Burtch's basketball team for several seasons.

DeCola said he is getting to see a new side of his former coach.

"He's just like one of the kids on the team," DeCola said. "I talk to him different now than when he was a coach."

Burtch is 1-for-3 in his return to the diamond, but has mostly been inserted as a pinch runner for the pitcher and catcher, taking advantage of his still spry wheels.

"He can move pretty well around the bases," DeCola said.

But in the beginning, DeCola wondered if Burtch actually would play baseball again.

"I didn't think he was going to do it," DeCola said.

Hicks didn't give Burtch much of a choice.

The two grew up together on Cooper Street in Slippery Rock. Burtch remembers the two playing catch, tossing a baseball over their street to one another.

Hicks, who is nearly four years older than Burtch, all but ordered his friend to play.

"I think the quote was, 'We're going to have an Eagle County team and we're playing,'" Burtch said.

Hicks, who is an English teacher and the assistant baseball coach at Slippery Rock High School, left the area to teach in Las Vegas before returning in 2001.

The thought of re-forming the Eagle County team didn't occur to him because of his pursuit of a doctorate in literary criticism."

This summer, Hicks is doing his dissertation and baseball is a way for him to escape the stress.

"I can come up for air three days a week," Hicks said.

Hicks hasn't been able to play much because of a knee injury.

Still, Burtch and Hicks are having fun recapturing their youth in the Eagle County League on a very youthful team.

"It's neat John asked me to play again," Burtch said. "It's amazing. John and I were these guys' age when we started the team in 1991. You know how competitive and passionate I was about coaching. This is a nice little distraction for me."