Double Plays and Pacemakers : Softball: To play in the Anaheim Seniors League, the boys of summer must be at least 65 years old.

It would be easy for these Dodgers to make excuses for their 28-game losing streak.

Half of the team, more or less, has had heart bypass surgery. The second baseman is missing a lung. One outfielder suffers from intestinal problems, while another has a heart defibrillator strapped to his waist. Pacemakers are more common than double plays.

Yes, they could make excuses. But these men won’t, and besides, the other nine teams in the league could say pretty much the same things.

They are members of the four-year-old Anaheim Seniors Softball League, which plays every Wednesday at John Marshall Park, where the boys of summer have to be at least 65 to play.

“Losing, it don’t bother us,” said Dodger Manager Lou Hastings, who at 72 still lobs them up there as his team’s pitcher in these slow-pitch affairs. He’s also the league’s founder and, according to many, its “nice guy.” Hastings, it is said, can’t stand to see players sit on the bench, so many of the Dodgers’ starters were once other teams’ second-stringers.

“This is fun. It’s fellowship, exercise, a lot of camaraderie,” he said. “And for one day a week it lets us get away from our wives and the ‘Honey do’ syndrome.”

And even if the players’ medical records argue otherwise, the game keeps them young at heart.

Carmen Franco, the Dodgers’ 71-year-old catcher, said that after he had a heart attack last year, he pestered and pestered his doctor until the physician gave him the go-ahead to return to the team.

“I was raring to go,” Franco said. “I told him I would just go and coach the bases. He said, ‘If I let you go, you know you’re going to play. All right, but take it easy for a while. Just catch and don’t play more than a couple innings.’ ”

For others, the games bring back pleasant memories. Chester Hawes, the team’s 72-year-old left fielder, says that in 1937 the Brooklyn Dodgers invited him to spring training camp to try out for one of their minor league teams. But during horseplay with some friends that winter, he fell through a plate glass window, almost severing his left hand. He hasn’t been able to open it fully since.

“I could really play,” Hawes said, smiling and looking off into the distance, before quickly adding that it still doesn’t pay a batter to hit a fly ball to his part of the field.

Indeed, the players, whose skills may be a bit tattered around the edges, still can make the occasional great play. Some legs aren’t so quick, but others could outrun many a 33-year-old desk jockey. Some throws die in the breeze, but others still zip across the diamond.

The hitters can still smack some line drives, although a grounder can be just as profitable if directed to the infielder whose back has tightened a bit.

Because of the players’ ages, some changes have been made in the rules:

* To prevent blowouts, an inning is over if a team scores five runs, even if three outs have not been made. An exception is made for the final inning, when three outs must be made.

* On defense, teams field 11 players. On offense, the entire 15-man roster bats and baserunners can have pinch runners without having to leave the game.

* Sliding is forbidden, so baserunners are allowed to overrun second and third base, just like first.

* To avoid collisions at the plate, runners score when they cross a line that has been drawn from home plate to the backstop. Runners are out at home if the catcher steps on the plate before they cross the line. Tagging a runner coming home is illegal.

“We want to avoid contact because we just don’t mend as fast as we used to,” said George Boehm, the league’s 70-year-old commissioner. Boehm is also a member of the Raiders, which leads one of the league’s two divisions.

On Wednesday, the Dodgers came close to ending their losing streak. They were stinging the ball. Line drives were eluding the gloves of their opponents, the third-place Corkers. And balls hit by the Corkers--the kind that the Dodgers had bungled in the past--were more often than not being caught.

Hastings’ crew led 15-13 going to the bottom of the seventh, the game’s final inning. But after a couple of walks, an error or two or three and a timely hit, all was lost. Not that the Dodgers seemed to mind. They lost 33 in a row before their last win, so coming close can be a victory in itself.

Shortstop Phil Lupo, at 67 a youngster on the team, said Hastings briefly grumbled recently about the losses and suggested that maybe it was time for the team to get some new blood.

“I told him, ‘Ah, Lou, you wouldn’t do that,’ ” Lupo said. “ ‘This team is too important to the guys. They love it.’ ”