I once read that two hardest days in a man’s life are the day he lives to be older than his father ever did, and the day a president who is younger than him takes office. Now my old man is kicking at 71 and at current course and speed I’ll be in my mid 90’s before I have to worry about being older than a president, but I can empathize with my future self. Crossing over each of these invisible lines makes you a specific kind of old. The former attacks your mortality, the latter your usefulness (which honestly might be harder to swallow). But both will make me feel unreservedly old.
But feeling old isn’t quite as scary as its not so distant relative; feeling un-young. Until very recently I’ve felt decidedly young. I work in tech (young people work), I have two kids under four (young people territory), I live in New York City (young people city). New York in particular keeps you young. On a visit here when I was a kid my mom struck a conversation with an older man walking next to us. He was bringing dinner to his friend who couldn’t leave the house.
“Me?” he said when my mom asked his age, “I’m 101 - my friend is 95, but I’m from New York - she’s not…”
Anytime I’ve thought about getting older in New York I’ve thought about that and felt decidedly young.
Lately though, I’ve started to notice the signs of un-youngness. My hair has been graying for twenty years, but at my last haircut I noticed it might have crossed over to 51% gray, 49% brown. I wake up sore. Not awful or painful, just sort of shouldn’t-I-feel-better-after-a-night’s-sleep sore. When I have a drink I have A drink, one drink. Two hurts tomorrow, three hurts when I’m actually drinking it.
Not old man territory - but not young man territory either.
I’m in my 40s so I’ve been thinking about this a bit too much. One day recently I couldn’t stop thinking about this after a series of group texts with two Jeremys1 and a Brendan about albums that we grew up on that were considered classic rock in the “25 years old or older,” qualification2. From there it devolved into “classic movies,” like Elf and Fight Club and proximity comparisons like “the day I was born was closer to the Korean War than it is to today.”
“What is young?” and more importantly “what is un-young?” took over my day and I think landed on what the un-young version of the older-than-my-dad and the older-than-the-president moment is; older than the oldest professional athlete. Sports are the definition of the territory of the young. It’s the most appropriately ageist territory there is. The Venn diagram of youthfulness and athletic is just two concentric circles.
My thesis became this: The day you reach the age where every professional athlete is younger than you is the day you become un-young.
So I had to know; how many professional athletes are older than me? How many men stand between me and the un-young? I used the four major North American sports mens leagues because team sports are harder to keep up in, I live in North America, and I’m a man. I was seeking my “equals.” NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB. Professional, major league, capital A, Athletes.
To set the stage there are 3,767 active roster professional athletes in North America in the four major leagues. The MLB has 945, the NBA has 390, the NHL has 736, and the NFL has 1,696. This made me feel very good about things. I figured a couple hundred guys would be older than me. I was a little worried about the NBA - off the top of my head it struck me as the youngest of the young man arenas, but the rest - old guys can hang. Look at Tom Brady, or look at him two years ago anyway. Field goal kickers, third string goalies, middle inning relievers, depth chart guys. Hundreds of guys older than 42 (43 in April), I was sure of it.
Wrong.
The oldest player in the NBA is Lebron James. He’s 39 - younger than me3.
The oldest player in the NFL is Jason Peters. He’s 41 - younger than me. Really? No third string quarterbacks? Isn’t Joe Flacco 50 by now4? Is he still in the league5?
The oldest player in the NHL is Mark Giordano. He’s 40 - younger than me. This shocked me - hockey just feels like where old man strength reigns supreme.
The oldest player in the MLB is Rich Hill, 43 years old. Here we go. I’d have preferred the hundreds of guys to be in different leagues, but ok, baseball is old man territory. It’s also sort of the youngest at heart. I mean it’s baseball…kids love baseball.
On to the rest of the list; who’s next? The second oldest is Justin Verlander. He’s 40…
Holy shit, it’s one guy.
There are 3,767 professional athletes in North America in the four major leagues and one of them is older than me. One. I won’t dignify that with a percentage6, but my good God.
In fact in the NFL there are only three 40-somethings, there are zero in the NBA, there is one in the NHL, and six in the MLB. Ten guys in their 40s across all four sports. Again, no need for a percentage7 but that's almost all of the capital A Athletes that aren’t even in my decade. I started to look it up by age band but I quickly saw that wasn’t going to help much.
After taking some days to react to this my thinking went back to Rich Hill. I had to know more about the one guy standing between me and the un-young.
On March 28th - opening day - Rich will suit up for the San Diego Padres, his 13th team in his 20th season. He’ll have also turned 44 earlier in the month. On his first start he’ll be seeking the 91st win/trying to avoid the 74th loss of his career. But, it won’t be a start - because he moved to the bullpen as his speed and game longevity ebbed. If he gets traded mid season to one of the 17 teams he hasn’t laced up with yet he’ll tie Edwin Jackson8 for the most teams played for (14) in MLB history. He’s pitched in the world series (two of them) but never been a part of the team that won one.
I read this Atlantic article about him and two things stuck out for me. First this quote from Hill when asked if he’s staying in the game it to win one. Spoiler; he’s not.
“Once we get to the end result, you win the World Series or reach the final outcome of what you’re doing, it’s looking back and (realizing) it’s the journey that you’ve gone through and the appreciation that you have for the game. The more appreciation I have for the game, I’m not really looking at raising the trophy. That’s not really the goal. It’s who you become in the process.”
The other quote that stuck with me from that Atlantic article was from a teammate in his 20s:
“It truly shows that if you’re willing to put in the work and want to play for a long time, as long as you’re willing to adapt, you can play as long as you truly want to,” said teammate Tanner Houck, who’s 17 years younger.
These two quotes seem to make the case for why, for how, he reached the peak of his game at 36 years old, well past when most capital A Athletes have retired and why he got his biggest contract when he was 37 (three years; $48m) despite having been out of professional baseball two years earlier. Over those aforementioned 20 years he’s gone from A, to AA, to AAA, to the majors, to the independent league, to Venezuela’s league, and back again. In 2024, at 44 years old, he’ll make $8m playing in the majors yet again. Nowhere near the league minimum for a guy who on paper seems to be hanging on for dear life.
He just keeps playing and adapting. Adapting and playing.
So Rich remains young. He’s older than me and younger than me at the same time. He has what Laird Hamilton would call a Beginners Mind; always valuing what he doesn’t know over what he does. Not bothering to care what the path should be. Playing and adapting.
I think I have to take it all back. Well, not the dad or president part - those feel right and I suspect are brutal - but the un-young part. Rich Hill will almost certainly retire this year- he has to, right? And when he does he’ll have the incredibly rare distinction of causing himself (and me for that matter) to now be older than all of the other professional athletes. Maybe when he does he’ll go do something entirely out of left field like join the Peace Corp or become a college professor. Maybe he’ll do what all the other ex-capital A Athletes do; license his name to a car dealership, buy a few KFC franchises, or try the announcer’s booth.
But I suspect that whatever he does he’ll remain young. Maybe becoming un-young isn’t about arbitrary comparisons. Avoiding becoming un-young is simple. Scratch that, it’s straightforward - incredibly difficult - but straightforward. I think you become un-young when you let yourself, you stay young when you don’t.
“As long as you’re willing to adapt, you can play as long as you truly want to.”
Jeremys or Jeremies?
Blink-182 qualifies here. On second thought, give me that third drink.
I’d have never guessed the oldest guy in the NBA was Lebron; impressive staying power.
39.
Sort of - The Browns.
99.97%
99.74%
40 - younger than me and retired.
I'm absolutely devastated to report that one of the Padres' top prospects is 17 freaking years old! Born when Rich Hill was in just his second season in the big leagues.
The top ranked men's doubles tennis player in the world is 43! Just won the Australian Open.