Thank you, Adam Ottavino
Appreciating a Major Leaguer who’s older than I am.
A while back, maybe when I was about 12, my dad introduced me to the idea of the various stages of baseball fandom. At first, you are younger than every Major Leaguer. Then one day, there is a player younger than you. Eventually, they’re all younger than you.
I’m in the middle stage, but like many of the players around my age, I’m barely holding on.
There is only one player my senior who I root for or even regularly witness in action: 38-year-old Adam Ottavino, a relief pitcher on my favorite team, the New York Mets. Ottavino struck out three batters in the ninth inning of the Mets’ 7-0 win on Thursday.
Granted, even if Ottavino were to retire tomorrow, there’d still be a dozen MLB players older than I am. The best known of that group are a pair of pitchers: 41-year-old Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, who will turn 40 this month. (Those two and Ottavino pitched together on the Mets last season, making me feel quite young.)
Using a Baseball-Reference tool you can play around with if so inclined, I learned there are 17 active players older than me, though four of them have not appeared in a Major League game this season. I used a different B-R tool to try to determine the player who pushed me into my current stage of age-based fandom. I’m not certain, but it’s possible that player was Justin Upton, a four-time All-Star outfielder who debuted on Aug. 2, 2007, three weeks shy of his 20th birthday.
Since then, I’ve gained seniority on more and more players. Now, I’m older than almost all of them, including all but one player on the team I watch.
Adam Ottavino’s earned run average is nearly 5 this season, but he’s out there -- in uniform, taking the field, being older than me. And for that alone I appreciate him.
My latest content
This is typically a quiet time of year for me, and I was also on vacation for a week, so I haven’t written much lately. The Michigan women’s basketball team added a 6-foot-5 transfer, while the men’s team announced a few matchups for the upcoming season.
What I’m reading
I came across this fascinating Washington Post Magazine story from 1994 about a family who watches as much as 16 hours of television in a day. It is remarkably well reported and written. It was fun to revisit the technology from that time — tiny TVs, commercials — and relevant for me even now, since I think about how much my young kids should be watching.