Ponce, Puerto Rico ? Emilio Navarro swivels his hips several times, then bends down to touch his toes.

Not bad for someone who’s 104 years old. He doesn’t need a cane to get about and is known to go out dancing now and then. He doesn’t use glasses, either.

“And I don’t have many wrinkles,” he says in Spanish. He smiles, then allows in English: “Just a little bit.”

But the former professional baseball player isn’t being honored for his spryness. He is being honored as America’s Outstanding Oldest Male Worker for 2010 — Navarro still keeps the books and controls the finances at the game machine business he started.

Navarro, believed to be the last surviving player of the Negro American League, was chosen for the honor over dozens of candidates nominated in 30 U.S. states by Experience Works, the United States’ largest nonprofit training center for older workers.

Navarro, known affectionately as “Millito,” began working at age 12. He cleaned shoes, sold newspapers and hawked “dulce de coco,” a popular coconut treat in Puerto Rico, to help his mother financially.

“She didn’t know how to read or write,” he said.

He didn’t particularly enjoy those jobs, but eventually his passion — baseball — gave him a living.

At 17, the 5-foot-5 Navarro signed with the Ponce Lions in Puerto Rico and went on to play for the New York Cuban Stars in one of the black leagues in the U.S. He later played in the Dominican Republic and in Venezuela.

Navarro then worked as a coach and athletic teacher at schools in Ponce and Caguas. He also managed a baseball stadium in Ponce for 10 years — the job that proved his least favorite.

Navarro later opened the game machine business, Shuffle Alley, which his sons now run.