Saturday, August 16, 2008
The ancient mariner
41 year old Olympic swimmer Dana Torres had me thinking what I was doing at that age. She's a consummate competitor in a sport with a strong culture of older swimmers & plenty of opportunities to compete even if for gray-haited geezers - an honored group in competitive swimming, but those ain't the Olympics. Dana's competitive drive is tempered with older athlete's Just happy to be here attitude & a generous sportsmanship. She's narrowed her goals. She's so experienced that she snaps into her racing mentality in a matter of seconds, maybe I admire that most of all. Many younger athletes have all sorts of intense rituals & tics they have to go through beginning hours before a competition. For Dana it's Let's go, it's race time.
For men, 40 is when we're absolutely forced to readjust our relationship with baseball. Only a handful of ironman pitchers & designated hitters are active at that age. There's a few managers in the major league dugouts younger than that. The fantasy is over. I identified with short guy infielders who could bunt & steal, most of whom probably became beer distributors in the midwest, joined Rotary, & are very soft around the middle.
For men, 40 is when we're absolutely forced to readjust our relationship with baseball. Only a handful of ironman pitchers & designated hitters are active at that age. There's a few managers in the major league dugouts younger than that. The fantasy is over. I identified with short guy infielders who could bunt & steal, most of whom probably became beer distributors in the midwest, joined Rotary, & are very soft around the middle.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
My sport is hockey, and there are still a number of very good players over 40 skating regularly in the NHL. To me, that is truly a man's sport. In baseball, if a pitcher has a hangnail, he's out for two weeks. In hockey, a player takes a stick in the mouth and loses two teeth, and he only misses a shift, and he's back on the ice. Hell, I remember when Rob Blake, when he was playing originally on defense for the L.A. Kings, broke his ankle during a playoff game, but he stayed in the game. If he took of his boot (hockey terminology for skate), he'd never be able to put it back on, with the swelling and all. So he chose to keep skating until the end of the game. Hell, one player I remember, either Jeremy Roenick or Keith Tkachuk, broke his jaw, had it re-wired, and was back playing in under two weeks, wearing a special helmet with a face mask that protected his lower jaw area.
Real men play hockey.
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Real men play hockey.
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