By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
We normally talk about sports in these Tuesday entries but today we’re going to talk about a universal issue many who are not sports figures face. Sports is the most obvious example, but the issue is common to all.
Sooner or later, we all have to face the fact that we have lost that fine edge that has enabled us to participate or compete at a high level in our careers. For some it is a competitive fire. For others it is acute enthusiasm for a job, a dulling of the drive for excellence. For others it is the onset of fatigue, the lessening of energy to do assigned tasks that might seem mundane to others but are important in the world in which the individual lives and works.
In sports it’s sometimes called “the loss of a step.”
The desire to continue something although one is no longer capable of doing the best work is common, even something so common as driving a car, an issue that is instantly uncomfortable and often hurtful in relations between parents and children.
The issue is played out most publicly in sports where retirement age comes early.
As we watch sports, we see the players as timeless, ageless, figures. When they depart from the scene we watch from the grandstands or from our television sets as new uniformed figures take their place. But sports are filled with the drama of aging and the surprise realization that someone who is 40 is old.
And it is a surprise to those who remember them that they are so old when they die—Heisman Trophy winner Charles White was 64 this year and Oakland A’s outfielder Sal Bando was 78. New York Knicks center Willis Reed was 80; Vida Blue, 73; and arguably the NFL’s greatest running back, Jim Brown was 87.
How can that be?
it is because memory is in the moment. We see these people in our minds as they were when they were in the heat of battle. How can they have gotten so old?
It is because the game, whatever game it is, is eternal and its participants are frozen in memory as they were. We advance in years but our memories of them do not change. We are surprised that they have aged at the same rate we have.
Image it from the other side. Imagine you are 40. And you are old. And you face leaving the arena because you aren’t good enough to be in it anymore. The game is ageless but you are not.
Our two major league baseball teams are dealing with this issue. It’s most obvious with the Cardinals because they are dealing with high expectations this year. The stakes are less for the Royals, from whom not much was expected in 2023.
Both teams have pitchers who are, or who are becoming, shadows of themselves in their glory days.
A look at the Cardinals statistics after their trip to London lists nineteen pitchers used this year, based on earned run average.
Nineteenth on the list is Adam Wainwright, who is 3-2 in his nine starts this year. His ERA after his disastrous start against the Cubs in London is 6.56. He has pitched 46.2 innings in those nine starts. He’s allowed 71 hits and has given up 14 walks. He has struck out 24 batters.
85 base runners in 46 innings in nine games. He’s averaging five innings a start. He was hoping to win his 199th career victory on Saturday. He wants to finish his career with 200.
He is part of a pitching staff working hard to rise to mediocrity. The pitching staff’s overall ERA is 4.43, hardly contender level. Even Jack Flaherty, counted on to be the staff ace despite his injury history and MIA status during most of last year, is at 4.95 and has a losing record at 4-5. Only one Cardinals pitcher has a winning record. And he’s being mentioned in the numerous entries by various speculators as possible trade bait as the Cardinals look for a physical magic bullet that will save 2023 for them.
Wainwright will be 42 before the season ends. He is the third-oldest player on an active major league roster behind Pittsburgh pitcher Rich Hill, who is 43, and San Diego DH Nelson Cruz, who will be 43 on July l. The eighth-oldest active major league is Royals pitcher Zack Greinke, who is 39 (forty in October).
Greinke lasted 4.2 innings last Friday, gave up nine hits and a walk and dropped to 1-8 for the season. His ERA is 5.31 as we write this. In sixteen games, he’s lasted 81.1 innings. He’s given up 89 hits and 11 walks, 100 baserunners in those 81 innings. His stats are similar to Wainwright’s, remembering that Wainwright’s season start was delayed by injury.
Wainwright’s situation is attracting more attention because the expectations for the Cardinals this year were light years greater than those of the Royals. But neither is having the kind of retirement season they want; neither is providing a veterans’ spark for their teams.
For most of us, stepping away from what we have loved to do during our working lives comes at an advanced age. It would certainly seem to be easier when you are 65 or 70 or more than to realize you can’t keep up any more and you’re only 40 or 42 or in many cases, even younger.
We focus on Wainwright today because more was expected of his team—and him—this year.
Wainwright is a painful problem for the Cardinals. Each start in a season where every game is growing in importance is a crap shoot now. Sentimentally, it would be a shame for him to come up short of his personal career goal. But there comes a time when sentiment doesn’t outweigh winning.
This isn’t like an office. Millions of people including tens of thousands in the grandstands are not watching the deterioration of talent in an office. The personal goal of one player cannot outweigh the necessity of success by an entire team.
It is not beyond possible that Wainwright or Greinke could be a small part of a trade although they won’t bring much in the baseball market this year.
It is not likely to be much comfort to Wainwright, but here are some guys, among many, whose baseball cards we once had or would have gotten if we’d continued collecting who came up short of 200 wins: Trevor Hoffman 197; Claude Osteen 196; Larry Jackson, David Cone and Dwight Gooden 194. There also are a bunch of old-timers, some who are in Cooperstown, who didn’t get there.
42 years old. And you’re too old to play a game you’ve played since you were in single digits. Both Wainwright and Greinke had announced earlier this would be their last years. Now, perhaps, the lyrics of a popular sing might be making themselves heard, ever so softly in the backs of their minds.”
“Should I stay or should I go?”
And the opposite surely has crossed the mind of management, especially the Cardinals management—“Should he stay or should we let him go?” Are these roster spots better filled with players of the future rather than shadows of the past?
The poet A. E. Housman wrote many years ago of those who “slip away from fields where glory does not stay,” and recalled, “Early though the laurel grows it withers quicker than the rose.”
The game Wainwright and Greinke are playing this year after their glory has fled and their laurels have withered is one that many fans will think is one game too many. And the Cardinals are running out of time to play with sentiment.
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Okay, now let’s get to the box scores. This is Tuesday, and it is sports day, after all.
(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals split two home games with the Cubs. But they had to go to London to play those games. The Cardinals are playing .500 ball in their last ten games, a noticeable improvement. They split four during the weekend and went 5-5 in their last ten games, a step up from earlier results. But the ‘Birds were still 32-45 as they returned from London, last in their division, third worst in the league behind the Rockies and the Padres.
(ROYALS)—The Royals have had a relatively successful 10 game run. Four of their 22 victories have come during that time and they finished the weekend by splitting four with Tampa Bay, the team with the best record in the league. The Royals have failed to win ll straight series.
On to Racing:
(NASCAR)—Ever get hit by a flying chunk of watermelon? Your correspondent has—a couple of weekends ago when NASCAR visited Worldwide Technology Raceway and driver Clay Chastain, with help from the irrepressible Kenny Wallace smashed a watermelon during a pre-race stage show and threw the pieces into the audience.
One of them hit my shin. I asked some nearby fans if they wanted to take it and get Chastain to autograph it but nobody was interested so I took it to the nearest trash container.
Chastain, a fourth-generation watermelon farmer, likes to climb on top of his car if he’s won a race and hurl a big green watermelon onto the track, smashing it t the finish line.
He didn’t get the chance at WWTR but he did get the chance Sunday at Nashville when he finished eight-tenths of a second ahead of Martin Truex Jr., who picked up his fourth straight top five finish of the year. It was a “perfect” race for Chastain, who got his third Cup win. He started from the pole for the first time and led the most laps (99 of the 300) on the 1.33-mile Nashville Fairgrounds track.
Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Kyle Larson filled the top five slots.
Elliott has to win to get into the chase for his second championship. A victory is his only way in to the playoffs because he has missed seven of the 17 races this year, six because of injury, and one more because of a one-race suspension for an in-race incident with Hamlin.
NASCAR takes to the streets of Chicago for the first time next weekend. It’s the first time the series has ever run a street race, which is more common in INDYCAR.
(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR competitors hope to chip away at Alex Palou’s 74-point huge championship points lead when they run at Mid-Ohio this weekend, starting the second half of the series season.
(FORMULA1)—The Grand Prix of Austria is next on the F1 schedule.