Florida's Activity-Loving Village People

THERE'S A PLAYOFF atmosphere at the ballpark at Saddlebrook Center, and the TV crew taping the game on this steamy Florida afternoon has no shortage of highlights to choose from. One inning ends with a disputed play at the plate; the next, when an outfielder bellyflops on the perfectly groomed grass to corral a line drive. And the fans behind first base are buzzing — about Jim McIntosh's new knee pads. "They've got the support, here, see," explains McIntosh, an affable Wisconsinite with a bristly white moustache. Murmurs of approval spread across the bleachers.
Just then, a batter crushes a pitch to the fence in right-center. He starts around the bases at a sprinter's clip, even racing for home when the outfielder mishandles the ball. But he can't keep up the pace — he draws up lame, looking as though he's pulled a muscle, and he's easily tagged out at the plate. "That's a shame," says onlooker Lee Applegate. The batter, he explains, is "one of the kids in this league. He's probably 62."

It may seem a little odd to see a bunch of granddads doing battle on a professional-grade softball diamond. But this is just a glimpse of the frenetic hive of activity that is The Villages, a retirement community so big and sports-obsessed that it supports 90 softball teams — not to mention 25 golf courses and a 1,000-seat polo stadium. Though this is just a midseason, recreational-league game, the teams play all-out, with deft double plays and nose-to-nose arguments with the umpire. And the media attention is genuine: Tomorrow's paper and TV news will give the players their due. After all, this is a community that takes play seriously because play proves that "older" doesn't mean "old."

A mini-city 90 minutes north of Disney World — in the middle of nowhere, in other words — The Villages has quietly grown to become quite literally the biggest retirement community in the country, by taking the "what, me retire?" movement to a new extreme. While traditional retirement communities might seem like sleepy enclaves sheltered from the outside world, The Villages is a self-contained replica of that world, designed so that inhabitants never need to leave. Some 200 restaurants and stores cluster around two artificially antiquated town squares. Villagers have their own movie multiplexes, their own radio station and their own "college" — albeit one where cake-decorating and watercolor lessons replace physics and Econ 101.

This exurb for the Ex-Lax set offers an exaggerated version of the kind of retirement that more and more of us say we want. Today's older Americans insist that their leisure years be as intellectually and physically stimulating as their careers were — they don't even like the word "retirement." Consequently, the "active-adult community," which combines low-maintenance homes with recreational amenities, has become one of the hottest trends in real estate. In a 2005 survey by home builder Pulte, 59% of respondents between the ages of 40 and 49 said they intended to move when they retired. Builders are assuming that places like The Villages might be their destination, and there are now about 1,250 active-adult housing complexes in the U.S., more than three times as many as a decade ago.

Still, none of those developments match The Villages for sheer size, or for its activity mania. It's a testing ground for the notion that the average seventysomething can and should be just as busy as the average fortysomething. And for residents who keep their vigor, it's like Christmas every day. Still, even here you can't avoid reminders of the physical and emotional challenges of growing older, and in the face of that reality, The Villages' life-as-permanent-vacation philosophy raises its own questions. This is, after all, a community that has more bowling lanes than hospital beds, and that's not always the right balance — as the action back at Saddlebrook shows. Lee Applegate, himself nursing a knee injury that has sidelined him for months, watches as two more players hobble off the field with strains and sprains. "I worry a lot about these guys," he says. "Everybody comes out here, tearing around like they're invincible."