“There I was rubbing elbows with the rich and the famous,” he said during an hour-long conversation in his Cary living room recently. “I can’t believe it. Did I really do that? Was I really in Yankee Stadium?”

Indeed he was.

Not only was Council at Yankee Stadium during the festivities for the 79th annual MLB All-Star Game earlier this month, he and Josh Hamilton stole the show.

Council went to serve as Hamilton’s pitcher for the Home Run Derby. Though Hamilton was the contest’s runner-up, he and Council were the story of the night. Hamilton belted a first-round record 28 home runs, including 13 in a row at one point, while the 71-year-old Council wowed the crowd with his elastic arm and folksy charm.

“It was just unreal, beyond my dreams,” Council said. “Imagine me up there in Yankee Stadium?”

It was a dream come true for Council, who harbored Major League dreams as a youngster growing up on a tobacco farm in Morrisville. But his youth wasn’t spent on sandlots or on Little League diamonds.

“I was an old farmboy,” he said. “I had to be out there in the [tobacco] field.”

When he got to Apex High, he tried out for the team and made it. He played three years before graduating in 1955.

A three-year professional career followed. He played in the San Francisco Giants farm system, with stops in the Nebraska, Minnesota and California before he was released in 1959.

With his chosen career over, he joined the Army and was shipped off to Korea for two years. His stint in the service afforded him the opportunity to continue playing, though. He played or coached Army teams throughout the course of his service.

When he was discharged in 1962, he returned to the Triangle and went to work for Eastern Air Lines. He remained with the company until it went bankrupt in 1991.

After Eastern went out of business, Council took three years off before going to work for the RDU Airport Authority, where he stayed until he retired three years ago.

While at Eastern, he had to give up his playing aspirations. But he couldn’t stay away from the game. When his son Dean was old enough to play Little League, Council volunteered as a coach. As Dean got older and rose through the various playing levels, Council followed along as a volunteer coach.

When Dean stopped playing after high school, Council continued to volunteer as a coach.

In the early 1980s, Don Staley, then the coach at Cary High, asked him to throw regular batting practice. Soon after, Staley handed Council a uniform and asked him to dress with the team.

“I was just tickled to death,” Council said. “It was like making the team again.”

In the mid-1980s, he started volunteering with Cary Post 67 for the American Legion season, a job he still holds today. And it’s because of Council’s devotion to the game and area players that Hamilton invited him to pitch in the Home Run Derby.

“He’s done so much for so many kids and probably hasn’t got a lot of thank yous for it. This is a big thank you,” Hamilton told The News & Observer earlier this month. “There are so many people like Clay that give and give and give and never expect anything in return.”

After the Home Run Derby, Council was suddenly a hot commodity. The next day he was walking down 42nd Street in New York, and a pedestrian stopped him and asked for a picture. He was approached by several people during the All-Star Game and even more as he walked through the airport on his way home. When he got home, his answering machine was full. During a Post 67 playoff game, he signed autographs.

“It’s exciting to be in the spotlight,” he said. “I may could learn to like it.”

Though the baseball season’s gone quiet for Council, he still gets his fill. He considers himself an on-call instructor. If someone wants to take batting practice, they’ve just got call him and ask.

Just don’t call on a Sunday morning. Those are reserved for his mother, whom he picks up each week for church and then breakfast at Bojangles.

Every year he thinks will be his last on the baseball field. But then spring rolls around and he gets on the mound again, just to see how the right arm feels.

If his arm remains as sharp as his wit, he has a number of years to go.

On his days of playing football at Apex High, he said: “I wasn’t too good. They used me for a dummy all week. The easiest time I had in football was on Friday night. It was game night, so I took a rest.”

On his selection to his first American Legion team: “They kept 22, and I must have been 22nd.”

On his age: “I’m so old when I eat a restaurant, I have to pay in advance.”

On the field is where Council feels most a peace. He jokes (sort of) that maybe one will serve as his final resting place.

“I’ll probably die right there,” he said. “But I’ll die happy.”