Why this Canberra athlete is about to play his 1000th game after 47 years

The Weston Creek baseball club formed in 1977. That same year Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket spawned, Star Wars hit the screen for the first time, ABBA passed The Beatles in record sales, and Canberra City hosted West Adelaide at Manuka Oval in the first National Soccer League game.

Come Saturday, 60-year-old Serena will play his 1000^th game for the Indians - and he's reaching the milestone at a Stirling Oval ballpark named in his honour.

Serena started playing baseball as a junior in under 8s at the Woden Rebels, before he was a part of the breakaway group which formed the Indians ahead of the 1977-78 season.

He took a break from under 12s to under 18s to focus on soccer and cracking the Canberra Cosmos pathways - but he soon went back to baseball, and hasn't missed a season since.

"It's exciting, and I'm pretty proud of the achievement given it's just amateur sport. To turn up week after week, year after year, and accumulate that sort of number is a pretty proud achievement," Serena said.

"It's quite a long time treading the lines. We were pretty successful in the 1980s, we sort of became the team to beat."

Serena played 860-odd first grade games and won countless championships. He represented the ACT and played for the Canberra Bushrangers in the first iteration of the Australian Baseball League in the 1990s.

And there is no end in sight for the Weston Creek president.

"I'm still enjoying the actual game when I get out there at 10am on a Saturday with a bunch of guys I've known for years, I still enjoy the challenge of the actual game, hitting, running, fielding," Serena said.

"I think I'll just keep going until that love of the game is gone I suppose, and I don't see that on the horizon anytime soon."