Cal Davies was born six months after White Sox won their last Newcastle Baseball first-grade premiership.
He is now 39.
Davies started playing juniors for the club when he was about five, and hasn't missed a season since.
He has lost two grand finals previously, in 2013 and 2023, but gets another shot at ending the club's premiership drought in Saturday's decider against Mayfield Boomerangs.
He will do so as captain.
"It was tee-ball when I was five, and I've kept going ever since," Davies said. "My dad started with the club in '86, and I was at a field pretty much ever since I was born.
"I've been playing first grade with the boys for about 24 years now, since I was a teenager.
"We're in our 80th season, and haven't won it in 40 years. If you look at it that way, it all seems pretty poetic.
"I didn't think I'd get another chance at it."
In a stroke of luck, White Sox will have a chance to end their long-running drought on home turf.
They are hosting the decider at their Plattsburg Park home ground in Wallsend, a venue that was locked in before the season started.
It's a field they made home more than a decade ago, after previously playing out of other suburban grounds, including a period when they were essentially nomads.
They also again meet Boomerangs, who they beat 8-6 in the 1986 decider.
"Home field, grand final, couldn't write it up much better than that," Davies said.
White Sox, the competition's oldest club and 13-time major first-grade premiers, have made an unlikely run to the biggest game of the year. They finished the regular season third, coming from behind to beat Toronto 8-6 in the last round to qualify for the finals, after initially looking down and out. An 8-1 win over minor premiers Belmont in last week's prelim booked their spot in the grand final.
After missing finals last year, it has been an outstanding first campaign under new coach Shane 'Bucket' Barclay.
"White Sox have been trying to re-establish themselves, and somehow we've managed to get here in a year," Barclay, who won 10 premierships as a player and "five or six" as a coach with Belmont, said.
"It's more about changing the whole dynamic of the club, from the juniors up, and it's going to take a while, but the opportunity has turned up a little bit earlier than I expected.
"Now we've got it, we're going to do everything we can to grab it and come out victorious. The guys have worked their freckle out since February."
Boomerangs are the defending premiers, having ended their own 32-year title drought last season.
Davies said they present a different challenge to what he and the White Sox encountered in 2013 and '23, when they lost to some "pretty red-hot" Belmont teams, twice featuring Alex Wells and the earlier encounter also his twin brother Lachlan, who have both played overseas.
"We had a couple of heart-breakers there," Davies said. "Boomerangs are a tough outfit. On paper, they are the class of the comp. But we've had close battles with them this year."
Boomerangs beat White Sox twice during the year, White Sox won a game and they also had a draw. Boomerangs then beat Belmont 12-4 in the major semi to make the grand final.
"It will be cool for them to be back in the grand final on their home soil," Boomerangs captain-coach Joel Pettigrew said of White Sox. "It's great to see, they're a great club ... and personally we're quite happy for each and every one of them to make it. But that doesn't mean we don't want to take the biscuits. It should be a good game."
After losing the 2024 grand final, Pettigrew, who played his 200th first-grade game last month, said his side's breakthrough title in 2025 "meant the world to us", but he felt being the defending premiers had actually "brought a little more pressure" this year.
"We've had some very close games this year. There was a bit of a target on our backs," he said. "It's been a tough season with a few guys being out, but we've come home strong ... and put together a very good performance in the major semi. Hopefully we take that momentum into it."
The first pitch of the first-grade grand final will be thrown at 2.05pm, after the second-grade decider at 11am between Boomerangs White and Toronto Tigers.
