Heading up author Jim Higgins' top-10 list of aging jock fears is the question “When the game’s on the line, do I still got it?” Photo by Oliver Rickwell.
Editor’s note: The author, Jim Higgins, is a teacher at Spaulding High School in Barre and for six years has written a sports column for the Times Argus newspaper. A shorter version of this story appeared in his “Local Angle” column Aug. 8, 2011. He can be reached at jimhiggins@pshift.com.
One day I might write a book entitled “The Peculiar Fears of Aging Jocks.”
Heading my top-10 list of aging jock fears will be: “When the game’s on the line, do I still got it?”
At the professional level of such anxiety, baseball fans await the outcome of 49-year-old pitcher Jamie Moyer following his elbow surgery. The popular pitcher with 267 wins (including a 7-1 stint with Boston in 1996) believes he’s still got game and awaits an invitation to a spring camp to prove it. We’re rooting for him.
At the amateur level of mojo testing, Vermont’s aging jocks have numerous opportunities. One I’m especially familiar with is the Vermont Senior Baseball League for players over the age of 38.
However, for the ballplayers over 55, like myself, the performance expectations are slightly reduced in a league that features about five 40-something studs in every line up.
Yes, we elders still want to make an occasional great play under pressure, but most of us who were playing Little League ball when Sputnik launched in 1957, and who have joyously returned to competitive hardball later in life, well, we have a few other peculiar fears on our minds.
These include the global: “Am I a liability or can I still help my team in some way?” and the more personal, such as, “Can I lace up my spikes without pulling a back muscle?”
Pain-free lacing is one thing, but for many of us, there’s yet another, more existential question lurking: “When do I finally hang up my spikes?”
Playing in the senior baseball league for three years and subbing a bit for the past two years, I’ve watched dozens of spikes disappear from the playing fields. Some of these retired players revisit the game once or twice as an emergency fill-in, but most recognize their newfound fragility and exit permanently while golf or roughhousing with the grandkids is still an option.
For the jocks who retire from the game, the question is no longer: “Do I still got it?” The question is: “How long can I sustain what I got left?”
Bob Stanton — soon to retire, maybe
Bob Stanton of Waterbury is among the league’s elders, and he’s wrestling with these questions.
He turned 60 the same day his Montpelier Monties (8-4 in early August) eked out a 2-1 win against the Waterbury Warthogs. Earlier this season, Stanton, an educator, pitched his first 9-inning shutout since joining the league 13 years ago.
But that shutout milestone is threatening to be a capstone. Stanton’s now making noises imminent retirees make, such as, “I’ve come to realize how challenging golf really is.”
For Stanton, hobbled slightly this season by a baseball-induced injury, senior baseball has gifted him with many milestones.
“Maybe my most cherished moment,” Stanton said, “was stepping off the rubber last season and watching my 36-year-old son, Ryan, play centerfield for the Monties. It’s one thing to be healthy enough to play this game at my age, it’s another thing to see your adult son out there also.”
Another milestone for Stanton was outliving his father who died at 57. “Like my older brother, I had my eyes on 57. Will I meet that benchmark? Will I still be around and still playing ball? It has been a great gift to do that.”
The hanging up your spikes decision is usually a painful one for us Sputnik-era Little Leaguers. Especially so because we grew up when summers were baseball, and more baseball. There were pick-up hoops, for sure, but no soccer, no lacrosse, no pre-season football training, no hockey, and mercifully few electronic diversions. From May to the end of August, we played baseball and some wiffleball with our chums.
“There’s magic in baseball I don’t find in other sports,” said Stanton. “Every time I walk out on the field, part of me wants to pinch myself. It brings the little boy out. It feels like you’re getting away with something. It’s a gift.”
Ray Foley — not just yet
For the jocks who retire from the game, the question is no longer: “Do I still got it?” The question is: “How long can I sustain what I got left?”
Ray Foley is also 60, pitches for the Killington Summit Lodge Saints, and, like Stanton, has played in the league for 13 years.
Foley, who owns a municipal recreation software company, pitched in college, twice making it deep into the College World Series regionals with Northeastern.
Unlike Stanton, retirement from baseball is not looming for Foley. “My arm feels fine,” he says. “It hurts, but it’s fine, it’s doing OK. As long as the arm holds up I’ll keep on playing.”
Foley keeps his arm and shoulders “fine” by year-round swimming and right arm-centered exercises. He also plays every winter in a Florida senior baseball tournament and coaches both Vermont Babe Ruth and Legion ball in June and July.
Foley claims to have no enduring images of himself as a young baseball stud. “I really don’t have a vision of myself and what I did a long time ago,” he says. “I just go out every time and try to pitch a no-hitter until somebody gets a hit. Then I try to pitch a shut-out….”
Foley’s Killington team is playing through a rare down year. They’re now at 4-6 with the playoffs about three games away. Six guys have been with the team the whole 13 years, and annual turnover, he says, is about average.
“People just get tired of playing,” Foley said. ‘Every Sunday through the summer can be tough.” Injuries are also in play. Foley said the other pitcher for his team just hurt his shoulder and is out for the season. That could mean a lot more pitches for Foley, for better or worse.
60 and the slow fade
My recently-deceased mother (at 85) loved quoting Art Linkletter to her four children. “Growing old is not for the faint of heart,” she would sigh. In the evening, after a few “Sink the ship, hon!” vodka and sodas, she would grunt, “Getting old sucks!”
But I often wonder if aging jocks suffer more psychic pain when their bodies betray them. Perhaps in the same way a revered intellectual might suffer if his mind slowly succumbed to dementia.
More psychic pain or less, who’s to say, but we do know that kryptonite is unrelenting. What might once have been a baseball symbolizing joyous play now morphs into a little green rock slowly sapping our powers, and not even Superman can do much about it.
Closing in on the finish line
I asked Charlie Barasch of Plainfield, baseball player, umpire, poet, New York Times crossword maker, among many other things, to ruminate on aging and baseball.
“It’s often said that baseball is different from other major sports because it’s played without a clock — outside of time,” Barasch said. “This is a perfect situation for those of us in our sixties. Although we love hearing that 60 is the ‘new 40,’ those of us in our sixties know we are closer to the finish line than the beginning, and any opportunity to temporarily escape from time, however you accomplish it, whether through art, fishing, stacking wood or playing baseball, is especially welcome at this age.”
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LOL Jim. It is rough to get old.