It wasn’t just my entire heritage spread on the living room floor over the past three months. My whole career was at hand and accounted for.
The problem is that I’m a writer, I started writing early, and my mommy loved me. Regular electronic saving didn’t start until I was in late grade school, and even then the general practice was to turn in assignments as hard copies. Unfortunately, I also had grandparents who loved me. And all of their items were absorbed into my mother’s collection after they passed.
So not only was the whole span of my writing life all the way from a badly-printed story about a duck from China who went horseback riding (don’t ask, it’s probably classifiable as a hate crime by now) was not only present, it was present in triplicate, with no three copies together.
Fresh-Faced Eagerness
The excruciating practice of examining at least the first few paragraphs of every single thing I ever set on paper came together as a gradual timeline of sucking less than the work that came prior. My high school work sucked more than college and my college work sucked more than my grad school work. Which still sucked.
In fact I was beginning to think that grad school was well and truly blown on me until I uncovered an entry from my first column job after graduation. Here at last was an item that didn’t make me want to rent a scooter for the sole purpose of using the Newport Levee as a direct on-ramp into the river.
However, what I was once lacking in experience I now lack in fresh-faced eagerness. I don’t write for fun anymore because I made my fun my job. Lower output, but perhaps the output I do make is becoming more worth reading.
I hope.
The Nexii
But where does that leave me now? Is mid-career me regressing or continuing the suck-less timeline? Where is the nexus between raw ability and the keen eye of experience?
It’s not exactly measurable, and in this, I have company in baseball players.
We all saw Joey Votto show up to GABP in the pre-season of 2019 in a “Decline Phase” shirt. He was simultaneously trolling his critics while acknowledging what he knew was coming for him: The Instagram post announcing his retirement.
But the undefeated Father Time doesn’t win all at once. Ballplayers do not report to the park one day entirely useless. It’s a slow game.
Advanced statistics reveal that just as the success of active players isn’t measurable simply via batting average, the decline and fall of the athlete isn’t neatly predictable. Baseball, as a sport demanding a specific set of skills and sub-skills, can cushion an oldster all the way back down to single-A for years after his peak performance.
This interesting post refines the theory that ball players hit this point in their late 20s– 27 according to the current measures of sabermetrics, but 29 according to this paper. However, how can we definitively declare, as our Votto did, that a player is “just not good anymore”?
The 40-Year-Old and the 29-Year-Old
There’s something to be said for an athlete knowing it and calling it a wrap. Perhaps Votto truly felt he had one last mighty walk to first in him and just wanted the opportunity to take it.
Or maybe he’d felt himself slide too far past the nexus and wanted to prove to everyone– including, perhaps, himself–that the 40-year old-still had enough of the 29-year-old in him to make a difference in a Major League Baseball game.
Well kids, Votto was probably able to make an argument to and for himself because that depends on the measure. Despite the sabermetrics average of 27, those same stats show that players are at their best as sluggers at the age of 28… but better able to hit bombs in their mid-30’s.
The first thing to go? Speed on the basepaths. The very sight of a blurry Elly De La Cruz probably did more to retire the always-alert Joey Votto than any stat at his disposal.
Pitchers, not surprisingly, burn out fast these days, right at 24. However, that’s only in strikeouts. Most pitchers don’t become truly effective at escaping walks until they’re in their mid-30’s.
The Average of the Averages
Is the nexus of the ultimate season the average of the averages, then– when a player is 28 years old? It’s another question that pretty much wasn’t even a question until the ocean of data in which baseball fans can swim became common parlance. As long as you can find a stat in which your longtime favorite player is holding steady or even improving, you have an argument– but then, there are always all kinds of measures to argue that a man just isn’t good anymore.
But for a chosen few, the good was some of the best that ever was. The rest of us get to sit back and argue about it.
