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Since I turned 40 in 2017, I’ve done yearly surveys of pro athlete ages in the primary team sports I follow (baseball & football) to see how many of my fellow 40-somethings were still at it. The owner of a body in its late 30s or beyond begins to understand that competing physically with anyone younger ceases to be any kind of good idea. We may have experience and knowledge, and our hand-eye coordination may hold out for many more years (but even that’s no guarantee), but numerous systems will have started to decay or break down entirely. Recovery time from minor bumps and strains goes from days to weeks or months. Or never! We just start accumulating damage.

So let’s see which old people are left.

Previously:

Baseball

It’s official: There are no more major league players older than me.

But we have an update. Last year Bartolo Colon finished the season as the oldest player left in the majors. He also earned the title of Last Remaining Player Older Than Me. But as a fun gesture to honor their future Hall of Famer, the Mariners added Ichiro Suzuki to the active roster for their two-game series in Japan to begin this season. Ichiro’s last appearance came on March 21. So for two days into the 2019 season (and only those two days) the league continued to have a player older than me, Ichiro Suzuki.

Bartolo didn’t end up pitching this season, which wasn’t surprising given that, despite continuing to find employment, he hadn’t actually been all that good at his job for two solid years. Also worth noting that a couple other older guys who appeared in previous years’ lists are still holding down gigs in foreign leagues: Walter Silva continues to hang around the Mexican Leagues, and Koji Uehara plays in Japan.

The oldest player left in the Majors is Fernando Rodney, at 42 (and around two months younger than me). He’ll be part of the Nationals’ World Series roster. Good for him! (At this point, I figure if enough ex-Tigers win World Series titles, I can retroactively count it for the Tigers.) Fernando is the last 40-something remaining in the league, though there are a handful of 39-year-olds who ought to be playing next year.

Football

Per Pro Football Reference:

Old football players - Adam Vinatieri and Matt Bryant

Two survivors from last year’s list, both kickers. Adam Vinatieri missed a bunch of kicks the first couple of games this season and might’ve been close to losing his gig, but rallied and is doing well now. Matt Bryant has remained steady.

No way to really say how long these guys can keep it up. As noted in past years, since kickers don’t have to tackle or outrun anyone, it really just comes down to how long they can avoid some kind of leg injury or other nagging problem. George Blanda was the oldest player of all time, starting his career as a quarterback but transitioning into a kicker. He last appeared in a game aged 48 years, 3 months, 18 days. Our dudes have to be thinking about trying to surpass that. Adam Vinatieri will turn 48 next year, in December 2020 (the table above is a bit misleading–it’s currently his Age 47 season, but he won’t get there until December 28), but the season will end before he’d make it to 48 years, 3 months. He’d have to still be playing on opening day 2021, when he’d be something like 48 years, 8 months.

Update 29 October: I just read that Matt Bryant got cut from the Atlanta Falcons. He’s had a mediocre season so far and presumably the abysmal Falcons are just taking the opportunity to give a longer-term guy some seasoning. I also learned that Bryant actually hadn’t been in Atlanta’s plans for this year at all. They hadn’t actually re-signed him for this season but brought him back after their intended replacement bombed in the preseason. So for the moment Adam Vinatieri is the only remaining NFL player older than me, but we’ll have to see if Matt gets another temp gig this year.

To close the book on last year’s list… Punter Shane Lechler didn’t end up playing in 2018 and retired in the offseason. (When you don’t have a job, but “retire,” I guess that just means you stop practicing. Or your neighbors kindly ask you to stop punting footballs over the fence.) Phil Dawson did eventually get to try some kicks, and usually was still making them, but fought through a hip injury and the team eventually put him on injured reserve. He also retired, very amusingly signing a one-day contract to do so with the Browns, his original team. He must have enjoyed his time there, because those were some miserable Browns teams.

Three other active players are into their 40s: Tom Brady (turned 42 just before the season started), and Drew Brees and Josh McCown (both 40). Brady is still excellent, and I hate him and the Patriots so much. He has said various things about retiring, but it’s certainly a year-to-year thing. For Bill Belichick, too. They could win another Super Bowl this year and both walk away, or just keep grinding until they die or drive every non-New England football fan away from the sport entirely. I’d imagine Drew Brees is about done. The Saints have had some bad playoff luck the last couple of years. If they break through I’d guess he quits while on top. But really, probably just a season-to-season decision at this point. Josh McCown is a perfectly adequate career backup who just keeps getting jobs. I hope he outlasts everyone.

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Time for my annual check-in on how many few pro athletes in the principal sports I follow are older than me. I’m 41 2/3 years old now, and can tell you that this is an age where not many people could or should engage in elite physical activities. So the number will be zero sooner rather than later. A year ago we were down to nine.

Now? Baseball first, as the 2018 season is winding down. Last year there were five left. But the attrition rate of 40-somethings is pretty high.

Oldest baseball players

Ichiro started the year on the Mariners’ roster, so he appears in this search, but his age-44 season proved to be one too many. He was unplayable and barely made it out of April. They cut a deal to make him a special assistant as a de facto retirement, although he was known to still wear his uniform to work and once got caught sitting in the dugout wearing a fake mustache. (Indeed, Ichiro is one of my all-time favorite players.) Since the M’s fell out of the race I guess I wouldn’t be shocked if they re-rostered him for the last week and ran him out there a few times. But unless he goes back to Japan he’s done.

Walter Silver is still showing up here because he’s active in Mexican pro baseball, so we won’t count him. No one else on last year’s list played again this year except for Koji Uehara, who went back to Japan to continue playing.

So, the immortal Bartolo Colon is officially the last active MLB player to be older than me. How long will he last? Well, maybe like two more weeks. He’s been terrible. Just playable as a back-end starter on a very bad team, the Texas Rangers, who have no pitching and are far, far out of the race and only need someone to burn through innings until the sweet release of autumn ends their torment. I suppose some team could use an unbreakable arm next year and give him another try, who knows? We’re all rooting for you, big fella.

As the 2018 football season kicks off, lets see where we’re at:

Oldest football playersSame list as last year! Well, checking more closely, Shane Lechler is off the list at the moment. He was supplanted by a rookie punter this year and is not currently rostered. He may well be the 33rd of 32 NFL punters so if anyone gets hurt or stops being good at punting he might get a call.

But for now, we’re down to three. All kickers. Interestingly, Phil Dawson’s team, the Arizona Cardinals, are so wretched through two games that he hasn’t even had a kicking opportunity yet. This is absurd. They scored a TD in their first game but it was desperately late so they went for the two-pointer. Then they got shut out entirely last week. Truly, kicking for the Arizona Cardinals is the dream career for us 40-somethings.

Speaking of football, the other thing I wanted to note is that I successfully eschewed fantasy football this year. My letter to me certainly helped. (Good to know. If you can’t talk to yourself, who can you talk to?)

Immediately liberating. Not surprising. I quit doing March Madness brackets a few years ago and thankfully didn’t have to be yet another person kvetching about their unfathomably improbable picks turning out bad. This feels similar. Every fantasy season is a terrific high of a draft followed by four months of uncontrollable failure. This year, it’s not! Yay!

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TO BE READ BY ME NEXT SUMMER, AND ALL FUTURE SUMMERS WHEN THE SIREN SONG OF FANTASY FOOTBALL CALLS

Dear Josh,

I am here to send you the following message: Do not play fantasy football again.

Every summer you forget what it’s like and you foolishly re-up. By the time you remember what it’s like, it’s too late to back out. So heed my warning now: Do not play fantasy football again. 

I understand it has been a part of your life for a long time. Your first season playing was back in 1998 on Sandbox.net, during your lost and lonely college student days (though thankfully past the full-on depression part). It was a time you needed something in your life and it was there for you. Your first ever draft pick was Terrell Davis, your all-time favorite actual football player, who carried you to a pretty respectable season even though the team was mostly bad because you had no idea what you were doing. After a few years on Sandbox you migrated to Yahoo and have been there ever since. You won a few leagues, were always competitive, and never gave up on a season. You played with your dad and countless friends. Sometimes it was the only thing you could talk about with certain people, so it was an important social bridge, too. It was there throughout the ebbs and flows of your interest in watching the actual games, whether you watched three a week or ten all year. All in all, it provided much enjoyment and entertainment and was, all in all, a very good thing.

But it’s been twenty years. Now it’s time for it to go. Because, as you and I have come to realize, it is a very, very stupid game.

Truthfully, I think we knew this no later than like, year three. We probably suspected it from day one, if we are going to be frank here.

Most fantasy players know this. Anyone who has played any appreciable length of time has stories of the time they lost the week because their opponent’s kicker made six field goals on Monday night. Or how they were projected to win by 60 points against a team whose owner quit two months earlier, but the ghost team eked out a victory anyway when its starting QB had a career game and yours tweaked his knee five minutes before kickoff and sat out. Or how they finished in last place despite leading the league in scoring. Or whatever other cosmically unlikely thing that could only happen, weekly, in a game this stupid.

But it’s low enough commitment, and it does have some positives, so who cares? Well, I have decided I care. Even at ten minutes a week I don’t need the aggravation anymore. In tabletop gaming circles, a game with too many random elements sometimes makes it a bad game. Fantasy football is a game with random outcomes.

That should be plenty. But there’s more. If we truly require more from a game that already assigns wins randomly, let’s also add that not one of the in-game proceedings intended to enliven the experience ever actually work. The reason for this is that, as one might expect from a game with the lowest of low stakes, the commitment of the human participants runs typically somewhere between “negligent” to “literally forgot they agreed to manage a team.”

  • The draft: The commissioner and the smallest cohort of owners want to do a live draft. No one else objects, because they aren’t really paying attention. Most players’ interest began waning right after they agreed to play, but they figure, maybe they’ll show up anyway. They won’t.
  • Lineup management. Fantasy football owners are expected to optimize their starting lineups weekly. The most productive players should generally be assigned responsibility for generating team points, but next-tier players matched up with favorablly bad defenses might be swapped in. Owners must also negotiate team bye weeks. This all requires research. Few, if any, owners with jobs, children, or literally any other life interests will bother. I did bother. I played for 20 years, times 17 weeks, equals 340 individual lineups to set. I am meticulous by nature when it comes to games, and pretty good at remembering stuff, and would wager I made the time to decide on my lineup at least 335 times, with the remaining five being times I was probably traveling and just set it in advance and hoped for the best. I would further wager that my opponents did the same maybe 200 times, an imbalance of effort that would have stopped me years ago, if I was smart. Because it never mattered. I am certain my overall record is within a sliver of 170 wins and 170 losses.Touchdowns are notoriously fickle rewards, meted out unsystematically by the chaotic nature of the sport itself, and you will never, ever feel as though you are getting your fair share of them. Especially if you have invested time into obtaining them. So, I cannot recommend doing that under any circumstances.
  • Trades. What if you would like to fortify your lineup? You can turn to the free agent wire, home of backup tight ends and reserve wide receivers who somehow got a touchdown once. What if you need starting-level talent? To the trading block! Herein, you inform the league about which players you own the rights to that you would be willing to part with. Maybe others will do the same. (They won’t.) So you can offer more directly, contacting another owner directly. You will ask, “How about I give you player A for player B? According to all sources, they are expected to score exactly the same number of points in the future, only I have an abundance of players like player A in that position, and I need a player B who can fill a position of weakness, and you happen to have precisely the opposite situation.” This trade will be ignored by nearly all owners, because they aren’t paying any attention. In a rare case, they are, only the response to every trade ever has been: “No.” With the counteroffer, “Instead I will give you my three most dreadful players–that I shouldn’t even be rostering, really–for your two best players. This is sure to be great for you! Three is more than two.”
  • League communication. Ha-ha, a message board! This will be a delightful way to engage with the group! That no ever posts to, reads, or acknowledges the existence of.

I’m sure there are good leagues. It doesn’t help to look for them, however. A quick trip into the public leagues available reveals thousands of “JOIN MY LEAGUE AWESOME OWNERS ONLY WE ARE THE BEST” only with all those words misspelled and 9 out of 10 teams still available. You can pay money to join more serious leagues. These are the same but now you have less money.

I hope this will serve as a sufficient rant against the foibles of fantasy football as a hobby. DO NOT SIGN UP. YOU HATE IT. IT IS STUPID. YES, THE DRAFT IS STILL FUN EVEN THOUGH NO ONE SHOWS UP BUT THEN YOU’RE STUCK WITH THIS TEAM FOR FOUR MONTHS.

 

IT IS NOT WORTH IT.

 

TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE.

 

Or at least, the 10 minutes a week you spend playing it.

 

Fantasy baseball is still OK though.

 

Love,

Josh

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When I took a bad step off a curb over the summer and ended a-sprawl in the street, I mentioned that I had lingering shoulder injury. I finally got around to seeing a doctor and was told that I have a rotator cuff strain (apparently these just take a really long time to heal and I have to take some anti-inflammatories and do some physical therapy to help that happen). The obvious joke would be: “There goes my curveball.” Except that it was my left (non-throwing) shoulder and I never had a curveball anyway. What this post pre-supposes is: but what if I did?

Well not exactly. I actually just wanted to use the tools on Baseball Reference and Football Reference to see how many professional sportsfellows continue to play who are older than me. If one relatively minor accident could hinder my athletic potential for months, I wonder how anyone my age could perform high-level competitive physical activity day after day. This list is a fairly easy delineation at this point: basically it’s a list of active 40-somethings.

Baseball first:

Baseball players older than me

Eight results at first glance. But Joe Nathan is out: he hasn’t played this season due to injuries and announced that he was retiring over the summer. Oscar Robles and Walter Silva are not active MLB players either, though they do continue to play professionally in Mexico (hence their inclusion in the results). Really we’re down to just five active MLB players. Four of them are pitchers. Bartolo and RA Dickey aren’t going to blow anyone away but they continue to be reliable innings-eaters, which counts for something. We might even see Bartolo in the playoffs if the Twins can escape the wild card game. Jason Grilli’s ERA is well over 6. Koji’s had the best year of any of them, he continues to be effective in a bullpen role for the Cubs. Ichiro is the only non-pitcher, and an unquestioned Hall of Famer, but hasn’t been all that good for years.

How much longer will they be around?

I think I can count on a few more years of knowing there are baseball players older than me. I’d guess Koji or RA Dickey will be the last one standing. Koji is still effective and Dickey, notably, is a knuckleballer, so he avoids the usual arm wear and tear. A starter with an average ERA who doesn’t get hurt will continue to have a job, however unglamorous. Bartolo, maybe about the same. Grilli is probably done though. Ichiro is the mystery. He seems to not mind just kinda hanging on. One suspects he’d play anywhere, maybe he’ll end up back in Japan for a while. What if he ends up just being a baseball vagrant like Rickey Henderson, playing for Independent League teams forever, just because they’ll keep him around.

Football

Players older than me from football reference

Tom Brady misses the cut–he’s 40 but didn’t get there until this summer. So all we have is four: three kickers and a punter. Adam Viniatieri is the oldest in either league. He might make it into is late forties.

How much longer will they be around?

Honestly no way to predict anything here. There’s no real age limit on these skillsets, but eventually you’re bound to have a bad month or get a nagging injury and that’s the end. As a forty-something myself, I would not want a job where much younger, larger, faster, stronger humans are battling, sprawling, brawling, diving, or jumping anywhere near me. That might dawn on any of these guys at any time as well.

Now: we wait.

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1. Read research and sports analytics-driven blogs

2. Read sports magazine-style sites with notable writer rosters

3. Watch games on TV with the sound muted

4. Watch games on TV with the sound on

5. Watch games in person

6. Read certain exceptional writers on mainstream sports sites

7. Watch in-depth programs on cable sports channels

8. Read local newspaper (local team information only)

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15. Get all of your sports information from NPR

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28. Read content filler on mainstream sport sites

29. Watch general news shows on cable sports channels

30. Read local newspaper (for non-local team information)

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50. Watch cable sports shows where two or more panelists bicker inanely

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57. Visit a local watering hole, wait to overhear conversations between old guys drinking rounds of bland light beer and occasionally glancing at ESPN on the bar TV

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83. Read celebrity gossip sites about sports

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168. Visit sites dedicated to posting grainy Youtube videos of minor speaking errors made by television announcers

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756. Be raised by progressive parents, never get exposed to sports media. Read lots of books. Play outside. As an adult, try to guess who might win the games based on written descriptions of the team logos.

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857. Eat the local newspaper.

858. Listen to sports talk radio.