Is it better to have a team full of experienced, veterans? Or would you rather your team be chock full of promising rookies? It's a tough question to answer, and one that doesn't even necessarily have an answer. Let's take a look at the oldest and youngest teams in the leauge to see if it will shed some like on the age old question.

Oldest Team: Melbourne Beavers

Contrary to rumors floating around the shuffleboard circuit, the Beavers did not move their Fort Lauderdale spring training camp down I-95 to Century Village and hire Jack LaLanne as strength and conditioning coach. Still, they are the oldest team in baseball, a 162-episode version of thirtysomething.

With an average age of 35, Melbourne officially gets the nod as the "Grand Daddies of the Senior Circuit".

Yancy McCormick, 38 realizes his days of leading the team may be numbered. "I'm starting to get to that age where your body starts failing you," McCormick says as he rubs mineral ice into his throwing arm. "It's just a fact of life, I guess." At 36, Al Knickerbocker isn't far behind.

It's never pretty to watch a player get old. Watching a whole team do it is like watching a train wreck. One thing's for sure: the future is now for the Beavers.

Youngest Team: Pittsburgh River Rats

Whether it's the perils of playing in a small market or for an owner too cheap to want to pay the price to compete, the River Rats have put together a roster that seems to feature more rookies than veterans. The result is a collection of players long on enthusiasm and painfully short on experience including many who made the quantum leap from Double A ball right to the major leagues.

At an average age of 27, Pittsburgh are certainly very green. "There are some games we feel like we belong," says twenty five year-old second baseman Brody Bye. "There are other games we feel like we're a little kid getting beat around out there." Chris Hor, 24, nods along, smiling from ear to ear.

"A lot of people see us as the future of the franchise," Reyes Wassinger, 22 says. "That may be so, but you won't get me, Brody, Chris or Nikolas Tomasetti up here to say it. We know we've got a long way to go."

But as first baseman Tom Lobert, a fifteen-year veteran observed, "You know guys are younger and they do things a little different. Different isn't always bad. It's just different."