Category Archives: health

Morbid Bracketology

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A lot of office employees have filled out basketball tournament brackets this year but I’ll bet you’ve never seen one such as the staff at the Missouri State Archives has each year.

Instead of “March Madness,” these folks have a “tournament” called Morbid Madness. It started six years ago when staffers were talking about some of the “weird, interesting or amusing causes of death while researching, processing or indexing records,” as archivist Christina Miller explained it to me a few days ago. “We come across death certificates, mortality schedules (1850-1880), probate records, coroners inquests and court records during the course of our work,” although the brackets are not limited to those years. Since it was about March when this came up, the staff decided to create a bracket to determine a “winning” unusual cause of death. Before long, people from other divisions of the archives joined in and before long the bracket became a “team building” activity.

One example from a previous bracket was a death certificate that listed “drowned while washing car.” That set the staff off on a search of newspaper accounts which showd the car apparently was partiallyi driven into a lake for washing (strange enough right there!) and the driver got his foot stuck under water and drowned.

These are folks that are keying thousands of old records into databases that the public can access. Among those records are death certificates and the supporting documents, usually coroner’s inquest reports.  These folks discover all kinds of funny (in a grisly sort of way) causes of death.

Here is this year’s Morbid Madness Bracket;

Some of these are pretty prosaic—smoking in bed, for example.  Others are just—–Well, we don’t know that to say they are.

We don’t have room to include coroner’s reports but the case of the death of William Nabe who died of a knife wound in an argument about pies at the Coker School House in Cape Girardeau County, 1916—which reached the final round—happened this way:

A deposition from witness Louis Schatte recalled there was an “entertainment” at the school that featured a pie sale. One Jim Thompson bid to buy all of the pies, prompting Nabe to ask in a friendly way, “What are you going to do with all those pies?”  To which Thompson replied, “It’s none of your damn business.”   A short time later, Nabe told Thompson he’d be better off saving his money because the next day he wish he hadn’t spent all of it and had let the other guys a chance and “if he was going to invite the boys to eat pie with him.”  Schatte said, “All Nabe’s remarks were seemingly in fun and Thompson replied in a very short plain manner that it was none of his God Damn business.” (The involvement of the Deity indicates things are much more serious now.)

In a follow-up conversation, Nabe said he wasn’t looking for a fight inside the school but if Thompson was looking for trouble “to come outside and he would get it.”  Outside, Thompson was ready to go but Nabe didn’t want to fight on school property. There were some other words exchanged and the two wound up wrestling in the road in the process of which Thompson stabbed Nabe while Nabe was on top of him.  We don’t know what happened to Thompson or to all the pies he bought.

“Died during a fight over pies” prevailed over such causes as dragging dead hogs, burned by a kettle of ketchup or by really hot hotcakes, being shot “slyly,” and just plain old smoking in bed, or in a drunken brawl.

Reaching the championship round on the other side was the death of William Diez (as nearly as we can decipher the old handwriting) from “Drinking Almond Oil”  in February, 1848.  It seems a man named Magnus Gross (perhaps) was making a liquer called Maraschino, the recipe for which called for the oil of bitter almonds. Diez argued with Gross about the properties of the oil. Although Gross said it was among the most dangerous of poisons, Diez disagreed and said that while he was a student in Europe he drank the stuff after a night’s spree. The dispute continued until Diez suddenly grabbed the glass containing the oil and chugged it down.  Not long afterward he complained of feeling ill, vomited material strongly smelling of almonds, and lost consciousness. He died within a half-hour.

A doctor later testified that eight drops of the oil would often kill a man.

Drinking almond oil defeated whiskey of questionable quality, thought bug killer was wine, a watermelon seed in the lungs, drowned in a keg, and used a railroad tie as a pillow.

Drinking the oil of bitter almonds was this year’s Morbid Madness champion.

Last year these jolly archivists had an all-star bracket that featured winners of past brackets. The winner in 2018 was suicide with booze and women as the contributing cause. In 2019 it was about a man hit by a cow on a public highway. In 2020 it was a guy whowas attached to a chain on his wife’s car—which was ruled a justifiable homicide.

The winner of last year’s All Star contest was the winner from the 2017 bracket—a guy more than fifty years ago who tried to throw a beer can to a neighboring house. There was a little more to the incident than that, though:

Moral of the stories for 2022: If you’re going to have a pie fight, throw them and in the other case sometimes (I can hear Shirley Bassey singing this) “Almonds are forever.”

Heal Thyself

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(Six centuries, or so, before the Gospel of Luke was written, the sentiment, “Physician, heal thyself” was part of literature.  Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist, in Prometheus Bound has a chorus tell the title character, “Like and unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease.” Whether it is a twelve-step program, or through various self-help gurus, the thought continues that the solution of many of our problems lies, as Dr. Crane puts it, in—-)

SELF-CURE

“How,” writes a lady to me, “can I remove the following difficulties from my path?

“How can I overcome the lazy habit of oversleeping in the morning—laziness in general, in fact?

“How can I overcome the fear and worry habit?

“How can I ‘let go’ of the thoughts of past disappointments, mistakes, etc.? I have tried all manner of ways to divert my mind by work and study.

“Do you believe in confession, in the case of a non-Catholic, for the purpose of relieving the mind?

“How can I overcome prejudice? I find I am prejudiced against certain sects and races.”

Rather a stiff task, to answer all these questions. Of course, I cannot “answer” them fully. All I or anyone can do is to give a few hints which may be useful.

Oversleeping is not necessarily laziness. Go to bed earlier, if you have to rise at a certain hour. It’s a safe rule to take all the sleep you can get. The rule in my own family is, “Let the sleepy sleep.”

Laziness is not a bad quality always. A lazy body often houses a most energetic mind. The real cure for physical laziness is fun; find some form of exercise that lures you. Mental laziness is a more difficult disease, and you can only cure it by taking yourself severely in hand. Usually, I should say, it is hopeless.

Fear can generally be mitigated, if not altogether removed, by intelligence. It is a by-product of ignorance, as a rule. We are afraid of what we don’t know. Science (knowledge) has done much to alleviate superstition (ignorance).

Worry can only be remedied by adopting some rational theory of life, some common-sense philosophy. Maeterlinck and Emerson have done me more good, as worry-antidotes, than any other masters.

How to “let go” of bedeviling thoughts is a hard problem. Thoughts that burn, stew, ferment, and torment—who has not suffered from them? About all I can do is to let them run their course. I say, “This too shall pass!” and try to bear up against the pestiferous imaginings and memories until they wear themselves out.

It is also a good idea to have some attractive, interesting, fascinating vision, of a pleasant nature, to which we can turn our minds when annoying suggestions persist. The author of “Alice in Wonderland” (who was a great mathematician) used to work out geometrical tasks, which he called “pillow problems” (and wrote a book of that name), to get himself to sleep. Can’t you find some alluring things to think of when wooing slumber? Call for them, and by and by they will come.

Do I believe in confession? Nothing can so purge the soul. Still, it must be exercised with the extremest care, judgment, and discretion, else you may harm others in pacifying yourself.

“How can I overcome prejudices against such and such sects or races?” Just repeat over and over to yourself that all prejudice is stupid and ignorant. By and by you will, by auto-suggestion, get it into your subconsciousness that prejudice shall have no place in you.

Prejudice means “judging before” you have the facts. Never judge till after you have the facts.

Nothing is so utterly devoid of reason as a passionate hatred of any race or class. All men are much the same when you come to know them. Class or race faults are superficial. The human qualities strike deep.

 

Just try being happy

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(There are plenty of reasons to be down in the dumps.  Politics. Health. Lousy football results. Masks. The ongoing hassles of the pandemic. Dr. Frank Crane suggests your problem might be the result of just not trying hard enough to be happy.  He calls it —)

THE MIRTH CURE

There are all manner of cures, from mud baths and Perkins’s Patent Porous Plaster up to  Thought Vibrations, but the grandest of all is the Mirth Cure.

It keeps well in any climate, is guaranteed under the pure food and drug law, doesn’t cost a cent, and has helped others. Why not you?

The formula is found in the writings of the wisest man, who was a Jewish king and philosopher. He said: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

Note—he did not say a merry wife, though she certainly does good (perhaps he had too many wives and was afraid he would be asked which one). He did not say a merry husband, though he helps some. Nor did he say merry children, nor a merry house, nor a merry occupation, nor any such thing.

For his wise old eyes saw too deeply into life to make the mistake of supposing that circumstances are the root of joy. He knew that the real fountain of mirth is the heart.

If you have a merry heart it makes no difference what may be your position, whether you be a tramp on the road, a scrubwoman in an office building, a brakeman, a street car conductor, a merchant man, or even a college president. You are an electric light in the fog of human    despondency, sunshine breaking through earth sorrow clouds, water to parched souls.

Did you ever hear the story of “The Happy Man’s Shirt?” It is an old one, but one of those that ought constantly be re-told.

There was once a king who was smitten with sadness and disgust of life. He had gorged at all human pleasures, could no more be amused, and now was like to die.

They called in the soothsayers and medicine men, but none could suggest a remedy. At last they sent to an old hermit who lived in the wood, who said, “The case is simple. Let the king sleep all night in a happy man’s shirt, and he will be healed.”

Whereupon the king ordered that the palace be searched, a happy man be found and his shirt brought. But no happy man could be discovered in the palace.

Then they sought through the city and then throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom, but no man could they lay hands upon who would declare, without reservation or secret evasion of mind whatever, that he was entirely happy.

A little group of the king’s courtiers was returning home disconsolate, and as they rode along the highway they espied a beggar sitting under a tree, playing with the autumn leaves and smiling to himself.

“Hola!” they shouted. “Are you happy?”

“Surely!” replied the beggar.

“Why, you’re nothing but a beggar! You don’t know where you are going to get your dinner, do you?”

“Oh, no. But it isn’t dinner time yet. I had a good breakfast.”

Then they told him of the king’s plight and besought him to give them  his shirt forthwith, adding that it should be returned to him filled with gold pieces.

At that the ragged man lay back on the grass and laughed as if he  would expire.

“Come,” said the royal attendants, “We have no time for trifling. Off with your shirt, or we will jerk it off.”

“Hold hard, gentlemen,” said the beggar, striving to control his mirth.  “That is just what I am laughing at. I Ain’t Got No shirt!”

So they went and told the king that but one happy man could be  unearthed in all his realm, and that one was shirtless.

And the king had sense enough to perceive that happiness does not  depend on the shirt you sleep in, nor the bed on which you lie, nor the house that covers you— no, nor any external thing, but comes from the heart within you.

Thus was he cured, and arose and went about his business; and thus  also may you be cured, if so be that there is still left unparalyzed in you the power to think.

The Joy of Rest

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(I know of a top-rank executive who would close his office door each afternoon so nobody would see him taking a nap.  I took some ribbing from my news staff from time to time because along about 2 p.m., I would find a long sound file and play it back so my computer screen appeared as if I were listening to something while I slipped into a “personal screen saver mode” for a few minutes. I always thought those moments helped me cope with 70-hour work weeks.  Dr. Frank Crane, our former Presbyterian minister turned popular newspaper columnist a century ago knew the value of such things as part of his advice to—-)

KEEP FIT

Ford, the automobile man, stated in his testimony before the Industrial Commission that he gets more and better work out of men at eight hours a day than at ten.

It is a law that holds good everywhere. The first duty of a worker is to keep himself fit. And an hour’s labor when he is up to the mark, bright, keen, and enthusiastic, is worth three hours’ effort when he is fagged.

“Keeping everlastingly at it brings success” is a lying motto; it rather brings poor results, slipshod products, and paresis.

Rest and recreation are the best parts of labor. They are the height to which the hammer is lifted; and the force of the blow depends on that height. To go ahead without 107let-up is to deliver only a succession of feeble, ineffective blows.

Get all the sleep you can. Stay abed all day occasionally. Learn to be lazy, to dawdle, to enjoy an empty mind; then, when you are called to effort, you can hit with ten times the power.

The higher the quality of your work, the more necessary it is that you approach it only when you are at your best.

This is especially true of intellectual effort. You can tell, when you read a story or an article, whether it is tainted with exhaustion; it is dull, lifeless putty.

Those who court the quality of brightness, but do not keep their bodies in trim, often resort to artificial stimulants. Stephen Crane said that the best literature could be divided into two classes: whisky and opium.

Intelligent people ought not need to be told that this is suicide. The best form of enthusiasm is the natural reaction of one’s system after a period of relaxation.

The pestiferous “work-while-you-rest” apostles are ever after us to “improve our spare time,” study French during lunch, geometry while going to sleep, and history during recess. But spare time ought to be wasted, not improved.

An hour or so at the ball-game, a contest at tennis, a long and aimless walk, a party at cards, a chess match, or a time spent in jolly talk with friends are not waste; they mean restored strength, upbuilt mental acumen, the doubling of efficiency when work is to do.

Learn to let go. Learn to relax utterly when you sit down. Learn to let every faculty lie down when you lie down, and rest whether you sleep or not.

The more thoroughly you do nothing when there is nothing to do, the better you can do something when there is something to do.

The very cream of life comes from rest. The blush, the aroma, the shine of your best work lie in the hours of idleness massed behind it. The secret of brilliant work is in throwing every atom of your reserve force into it. Perpetual exertion begets mediocrity.

“Keep fit.”

That is a better rule than “Keep at it.”

Notes from a Quiet Street  (Hot Summer Days & Nights Edition)

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We have officials from Missouri and many other states who are threatening to punish school districts and local health departments, in particular, if they institute mask mandates.  Our Attorney General, Eric Schmitt, is the chief guardian against local mask mandates and he now has a class action lawsuit forbidding school districts from having the mandates. He says parents and families should decide if children wear masks, not those who act in loco parentis when hundreds of children are together.  Parents and families, he says, should make decisions based on science and facts—-as if officials in charge of hundreds of children in close contact with one another can’t make decisions based on science and facts.  Or should not be allowed to make decisions based on science and facts.

The lawsuit also cites a low COVID death rate among school children.

Isn’t one child dying from this plague too high a death rate?

We find all of this energy by governors and attorneys general—almost unanimously Republicans—on this issue peculiar.

Remind us again which party is it that does the most griping about government over-reach, especially the federal government telling states (who know what’s best for their citizens) what should be done.

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One thing we’ve noticed about the pandemic, and now “the pandemic of the un-vaccinated,” is that no preacher has tried to capitalize on it as God’s punishment for this or that nation condoning this or that whatever.  Perhaps it is because all nations, whatever their faults, are fighting this thing—and deciding what human trait is being punished is impossible to determine, even by those who in the past have claimed exclusive knowledge of God’s intent.

But maybe God can’t get in a word edgewise amidst all of the conspiracy cacophony that has helped give the pandemic new vigor.

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There’s been a slew of book released revealing more about the more chaotic last chaotic days of the Trump administration. It is unlikely—we certainly hope it is unlikely!!—that we will ever again see so many books from so many insiders so critical of a president. But there’s one insider book we are waiting for although it might not come until the author determines that he will be more benefitted than damaged by his words.  Potential bombshell-author Mike Pence seems to think the success of his future is still too closely tied to his recent past to discuss it.

But, boy oh boy, the tales he could tell…….

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We notice, by the way, that the former VP is becoming more visible on the public speaking circuit.  He’s hitting some of the big venues—a few weeks ago he repeated his lamentable attack on Critical Race Theory at the inaugural Feenstra Family Picnic in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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Watching the drought envelop the West, we are reminded of some jokes that we heard back in the very hot summer of 1953 while growing up on our little Illinois farm.  That was the summer when the thermometers reached the 90s in late May and the heat wave ran well into September with several days in the triple digits.  In fact, the last 90-plus day was not until October.  Few homes or cars were air conditioned and I can recall my mother closing the curtains in the morning to keep out the sun during the day.

It was so hot that I saw three dogs chasing a tree.

We got a little rain one day and we sent what was in our rain gauge to the University to be analyzed. It came back only 35% moisture.

That was the winter is snowed a little bit but the snow was so dry we just shoved it into the ditch and burned it.

Not sure but those might have been told by Sam Cowling on Don MacNeill’s Breakfast Club that broadcast from Chicago for 35 years on the NBC Blue Network (which became ABC Radio) and is known as the program that created morning talk and variety as a viable radio format.

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Several months ago we told the story of a Cole County man who got married into a family situation that sounded like the story told in the song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

Well, we’ve found another one.  From the Sedalia Capital, a newspaper founded when Sedalia was making an ill-fated run at taking the seat of government away from Jefferson City, February 21, 1925 issue.  Page 5 has a picture of a nice-looking lady captioned, “Miss Ruth Davis’ marriage to her stepbrother, Andrew Jean Stormfeltz at Kansas City, Mo., made her mother also her stepmother and her mother-in-law, and her stepfather her father-in-law. She’s her own stepsister-in-law.  Figure it out.”

We’re not genealogist enough to know, but would that make their children their own cousins, or their own aunts and uncles, step or otherwise?

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I’m sorry, but—–

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This is going to sound cruel.

Awful.

I’m going to say it anyway—because what others are saying by their actions or inactions is just as bad or worse.

I almost lost a friend to the Delta Variant a few weeks ago.

She’s making a slow recovery, finally off the ventilator that saved her life.

She is a vaccine-denier.

I’m glad she didn’t die.  I’m glad she’s getting well.  I’m glad none of her immediate friends or family have been stricken as badly as she was.

But I’m not sorry she got sick.

No, that’s not quite right.  I am sorry she got sick.

But she asked for it.

She gambled that she could go without vaccination and not get hit by the virus.

She lost.

She lost a lot, although fortunately she did not lose it all.

She had the usual excuses—no full FDA approval; it’s only for emergency use; fear of side-effects; stories of people who got sick anyway; the need for more research first; don’t want to be a guinea pig; it will affect my DNA; I’m healthy and my immune system works just fine, etc.

The CDC says that, as of August 2, more than 164 million people have been fully inoculated. That means that every day, 164-million Americans have been willing guinea pigs and are proof these vaccines work.  That should carry some weight. A lot of weight, in fact but some people are so fixated on the inflated anti-vax rhetoric that won’t believe this reality.

The CDC says less than 0.01% of vaccinated people develop breakthrough infections that produce serious complications or death. Deaf ears listen to such figures.

DNA is not affected.  This virus doesn’t attack the cell nucleus and that’s where DNA resides.

I suppose it is as hard for me to understand why somebody decides to roll the dice on their health instead of getting a shot or two that is proven effective as it is for anti-vaxers to understand why they shouldn’t get shots.

I bet I’m not the only person who is troubled by what we should feel under these circumstances.

Conversations with medical personnel have not been uncommon for me lately, and I’m hearing irritation, frustration, anger and resentment in their voices because they have worked themselves to the bone for the last year and a half, have watched people decline and die before there was a vaccine and now they’re inundated by people who don’t need to be sick or dying who are demanding medical care. And the medical profession is duty-bound to provide it.

It is hard not to look at people such as my friend and think, “Well, you got what you deserved.”  Or to want to ask, “If you worry about the side-effects of getting a shot, why don’t you worry about the possible side effect of NOT getting a shot?  Is death not a side effect that should motivate you?”

I’d much rather attend a funeral WITH somebody who has a sore arm than attend a funeral FOR somebody who died without one. I came close to attending such a funeral a few weeks ago. So did my friend, although she would have been beyond knowing whose funeral it was.

There is a certain guilt that comes with being callous enough to say that those who refuse to protect themselves get what they deserve.  Nobody deserves to get sick with this thing.  Nobody deserves to die.

But I can’t bring myself to be particularly sympathetic.

I don’t want to go to someone’s funeral angry that they are dead. I’d rather go to a funeral being sad.  But I’m afraid anger would be the predominant emotion.

So a few questions for the people who don’t want to get shots:

Why should I send you a get-well card? How should I feel if you gamble and get very sick?  How should I feel if you gamble and you lose everything?

How should I mourn friends who threw away their lives because irrational politics overrode rational thoughts of self-preservation?

What should I say to the grieving spouse you leave behind? The comment, “Well, at least they died doing what they loved to do” becomes even more ludicrous when what they loved to do was LIVE!

I probably won’t go to your funeral at all. It’s your fault that I have to make that choice. I don’t want to be your pallbearer.

It’s awful to feel these conflicting emotions.

It’s cruel.

I’m sorry, but—–

The Future of Water (update)

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We seldom update one of these posts, and even less often do we do it immediately.  Had we posted on this topic today instead of yesterday we would have changed some information. But here’s an important update that underlines the point we made.

The Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it was implementing drought conservation measures on the Missouri River.  June runoff from rain (very little) and snowmelt (much reduced) was just 52% of the average amount. The Corps has updated its forecast for upper basin runoff to finally be 60% of average.

It says this will be the tenth driest year in the upper basin since 1898.  Water storage in upstream reservoirs is expected to decline further.  That means less water coming downstream for all of the purposes defined by federal river law.

This doesn’t mean we who live in cities that rely on the river for our water will have to stop watering lawns, wash dishes once a week and clothes once a month and ourselves only on Saturday nights using the same water for everybody in the family (as many of our pioneer ancestors did).  But it adds further weight to yesterday’s discussion.

There isn’t “water, water everywhere” in more and more places.

The Daily Gift

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(We were reminded this week by the death of a former colleague at the age of 44 that life and death are not predictable, not even for those imprisoned and facing capital punishment.  And what if it were?  Dr. Frank Crane ponders—–)

THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE

“There goes a man,” said the physician, “who is under sentence of death.”

“What to you mean?’

“He is in the secondary stages of a disease for which there is no known cure.  He is as sure to be dead or to lose his mind, which amounts to the same thing, as far as the victim himself is concerned, and one of these calamities is bound to occur within six months as the sun is certain to rise tomorrow.”

“Yet he seems cheerful. Why?”

“Because he does not know it.”

There you have the secret of contentment. For you and I, and every man, is under the sentence of death, as well as those marked by a mortal malady or sentenced by court-criminal our court-martial…

Every sunset, every clock-stroke brings us mechanically near the drop. And we know it. And we are cheerful. Why?

Simply because we do not know the date!

IF we knew that it would deaden our days and darken our minds. Just one fact of the future, if its time of happening were to be revealed to us, would paralyze life.

And so you see the falseness of another common notion, that the uncertainty of life is a bad thing. On the contrary, the uncertainty of life is its chiefest charm.

Heaven, which prescribes death, gives us death’s antidote, which is ignorance of death’s time. The sentenced world laughs and plays, drinks deep of dear human love, is busy with business—in fact the whole human comedy is interesting, amusing, and worthwhile just because the time of the certain fall is concealed.

 

It’s about time

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The capitol started to cool at 6 p.m. last Friday, the official adjournment time of the 2021 regular session of the legislature.

Actually, as we understand it, the heat and the hard pulse of the building began to diminish at mid-afternoon when the Senate adjourned, deadlocked in an intra-party fight about the most notorious bill-killer issue for the last twenty or thirty years—abortion.

Tack some language on a bill that forbids any funding for any program that involved anyone who might say or think “birth control” and that bill goes to the grave’s edge with one foot on a banana peel.

That’s what took whatever wind was left in the sails of this session out of those sails.  Unfortunately, the effort this time was tied to a bill that continues a tax on hospitals—that are willing to be taxed—so more federal money is available to provide healthcare to poor people. Democrats let it be known the birth control amendment wouldn’t fly, especially after the Republicans refused to find funding for the expanded Medicaid program voters put into the Missouri Constitution last year. The Democrat leader moved to adjourn early and although the R’s had more than enough votes to defeat the D’s motion, it passed, leaving the House the only chamber still in business. The House, to its credit, slogged on despite expressions of urinary agitation toward the Senate.

It’s about time—-too little time to iron out problems assuming anybody wanted to do any ironing.

This isn’t the first time, by the way, that one chamber or another has quit early for one reason or another.

On the other hand, “it’s about time” has another and more positive meaning.

It’s about time the legislature approved a fuel tax increase that does not require a public vote.  The refusal of voter twice to support increases has left our transportation system in desperate straits and this observer thinks our lawmakers deserve a friendly pat for doing what had to be done—-although it should have been done years ago.

But discussing what should have been done has little value. What has been done is what’s important today.  Now.  My car is grateful and so am I.

It’s also about time the legislature finally decided state sales taxes should be collected on internet sales.  Again, it’s something that should have been done years ago but this year, it got done. Will it keep local stores trying to compete with internet super-super-super stores from closing?  In reality, not many probably.  But it’s nice to see the legislature get past the idea that having people pay sales taxes they should be paying is some kind of an onerous tax increase.

But there seems to be some kind of a tiny irony here.  Missouri will start collecting taxes on internet sales of things that lead to birth control.

We’re mulling what seems to be a logic disconnect in that but we haven’t figured it out yet.

To an Athlete Playing Old

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In my mind, I still think I could play third base, could field the one-hopper, hop-step and throw the bullet to first base to get the runner by a step.  In my mind, it’s me and the pitcher, one-on-one and I feel rather than hear the bat strike the ball and I hear the wind whip past my ears as I sprint to first base. I smell the dust.  I hear the voices from my dugout. I know my skin, by the end of the game, will have a light coating of mud—dust mixed with the sweat of sweet effort.

In my mind.

It has been fifteen years since I put the supple black glove in the green bag at the end of a game —I played third in a co-ed game and threw out a runner trying to score on one of those one-hoppers, the ball going over his shoulder perfectly to the catcher who forced him out at home in a bases-loaded situation.  My spiked shoes are in the bag, too, although the soles have pulled away from the tops because dozens of nights of game-sweat eventually rotted the stitching.

I say it was my “most recent game,” not my “last game.”

I know the love of playing the game, a changing game as skills eroded, from that first season of baseball as an 8-year old batter terrified of a 10-year old pitcher (I summoned the courage to swing at a pitch in my last game and singled past the undoubtedly stunned pitcher), to fast-pitch softball, and finally (when fast-pitch disappeared and too many young men found it easier to impress the girlfriends by mashing looper league pitches over fences) slow pitch softball.

It was, and is, the game.  Playing the game in whatever form talent and circumstance allowed.

Many of us now slow of foot, thick of waist, driven by delusions of adequacy, understand when a young—by our standards—major league star finds the game is beyond his competitive capabilities. Or is told the game is now beyond their once-awsome abilities.

NO, we cry.  No!  We can still play!  I can still do this!

But at 60 or 70 or 80, it is easier to admit that no, we really can’t.  Or shouldn’t.  But we will remember.  And we will wish.

It is much worse when you are but 40.

We look at players such as Albert Pujols, old at 41, hanging on or wanting to hang on because the game has a grip on him more than he still has a grip on the game.

It comes to all athletes in all sports.  But for those at the highest levels, the realization can be agonizingly hard to accept.  I can get one more home run. I can strike out one more batter. I can throw one more touchdown.  I can hit one more buzzer-beater.

But others can do more while I’m striving for my one-more. I can be pushed aside.

Most of us common folks who hold regular jobs have the luxury of deciding there are too many other things to do in life than go to the workplace every day. Stepping away is easier, sometimes just plain joyous.

We never have to face the idea that we are 40 and there no longer is a place for us in the world that has been the consuming passion of our lives—all our lives.

The passion is there.  The fire of competition still rages within. But in a world that relies on physical skills, recognizing that ours no longer match our passion enough to stay in the competitive arena is so hard to accept.

As fans of sport, we do not measure our heroes by their age and when we think they are done when they are “only” 40, we realize these heroes are not ageless but are as human as we are—although we don’t have to realize we are old until we are old.

Moments such as these recall for us English Edwardian poet A. E. Housman’s elegy for a young athlete who died before he joined the great mass of those who faded into obscurity as their skills waned. He called it “To An Athlete Dying Young.”

The time you won your town the race, We chaired you through the market place;  Man and boy stood cheering by And home we brought you shoulder high.

The poem later speaks of “the road all runners come,” and “fields where glory does not stay, and early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than the rose.”

Such is the life of our heroes of the playing field.

We who watch them might realize before they do that “glory does not stay.”  That time comes for all of us but usually not when we are just forty and have spent our lives among an elite few who can do what they have been doing. We sometimes say goodbye to them before they can bring themselves to say goodbye to the world that has consumed their lives.

It is much harder to step aside when you are 40 and a 25-year-old is doing what you only think you can still do, than it is when you are 65 and realize there is something liberating ahead.

Another English poet, from one generation earlier than Housman’s, wrote, “The last of life, for which the first was made…youth shows but half; Trust god: See all, nor be afraid.”

In time the resistance to Robert Browning’s sentiment will diminish.  But it is hard to accept when you are an athlete playing old.