The Day Father Time Caught Up to Me
How do you know when you’re old? For me, it happened shortly after turning 70, at the Scarsdale, N.Y., recreation field where a group of us play a weekly Sunday pickup softball game. I oiled my glove, threaded new laces into my cleats. I couldn’t wait to take the field. Though the National Institute on Aging maintains that “exercise has proven benefits for older people,” the 2019 season had been rough on me.
May: broken right thumb. June: concussion. August: strained right hamstring.
“Not my fault,” I insisted to my wife, each time I returned home cradling one appendage or another. My explanation to her was always the same: A freakish injury. No matter that they were occurring with increasing frequency. I was determined that 2020 would be different.
“Don’t get hurt,” my wife called, as I banged out the door.
An hour later I re-broke my thumb.
Driving home, staring at my swollen, throbbing finger, I wondered how to explain this latest mishap to her. After the last one I’d reminded her, “Real athletes get injured.”
“Real athletes make $20 million,” she’d replied.
So I hesitated to confess the truth: Time had caught up to me. All last summer, during the brief periods I’d been healthy enough to play, balls I’d once readily handled had bounded off me. Without telling my wife, I’d begun to wear a protective shin guard. One day, mid-game, I begged off of third after fighting off a succession of hard-hit balls that seemed to come at me like sniper fire.
And then, that Sunday, I misjudged another ball. It tipped off the webbing of my glove smack into my exposed right thumb. I walked off the field cupping my hand, knowing the damage I’d done. My orthopedist confirmed this from x-rays he took the following day.
“Your thumb looks like a shattered windshield,” he said, providing more imagery than perhaps necessary.
Fortunately, he added, the pieces had remained more or less in place, meaning I wouldn’t need surgery. Two weeks immobilized in a soft cast, another four weeks in a removable cast, followed by six weeks of physical therapy, he predicted, and I’d be readt to play. In Scarsdale, where the coronavirus has retreated, our pickup game has resumed.
But I had already decided. The game had gotten too fast for me. It was time to retire.
Driving back from the doctor’s office that day I wondered: What will I do with my Sundays? I’d played sports all my life. I’d given up touch football in my 30s, paddle tennis in my 60s. Softball was my last team activity.
For me, leaving the game meant more than simply departing the field. I’d been playing with the same core group for more than 20 years. Major Leaguers speak of the intimate, insular camaraderie of the clubhouse. Well, that’s what we had on the aluminum bench that served as our dugout. These were my Sunday friends. And now I wouldn’t have reason to see some of them anymore. What piece of me, I wondered, would I be forced to surrender next?
Around then I had an appointment with a Medicare nurse, who assessed my general health. She checked my vitals, asked a lot of questions, tested my memory skills. “Are you taking any medications?” she inquired.
“No,” I replied.
She looked up from her sheaf of medical forms. “I don’t see many people your age who can say that.”
Lately, I’ve thought quite a lot about her words. She’s right. An aspect of me is old. But my thumb will heal. Nothing really bad has happened to me.
My younger stepson dropped by the other day. He brought with him my bicycle, which he had meticulously tuned. I’ve decided to resume long-distance cycling, which I’d enjoyed through middle age but had abandoned for reasons I can’t now recall. An old biking buddy has suggested a week-long trip along New York’s Empire State Trail, from Buffalo to Albany, via the Erie Canal, and then south to his Connecticut home. I’m pretty sure my thumb will be safe — provided I don’t fall.
This article originally appeared in the New York Daily News.
