I actually think there’s an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

Welcome to Getting Older

Welcome to getting older, it’s happening to each of us every minute. It sneaks up on you, and the cliche is really true it all goes by fast. Suddenly your sixty, or at least that’s where I’m at. So what inspired this post tonight was the Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing match that recently happened.

First some background. I’m a huge boxing fan, I love the sport and have been watching it steadily since I was a kid watching Muhammad Ali. My mom was a big Ali fan, personally I preferred Joe Frazier, but as a kid in the 70’s I got to watch a lot of classic heavy weight boxing matches. Then in the 80’s I got to watch the golden age of the welterweight division with fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard, and two of my favorites Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran. Then when I was in high school in the nearby town of Catskill a kid named Mike Tyson started training with Cus D’Amato. I got to meet Mike a few times, back then he was quiet, intense and honestly scary as hell. I even got to see a couple of his early fights, although they didn’t last past the first round.

I saw all of Mike’s heavyweight championship fights, made a little money off a local rumor that he would lose to Buster Douglas, a story only told over a drink or a slice of pizza. And even knowing who Mike was, watched in horror as he chomped down on Evander Holyfield’s ear. So it was with a bit of nostalgia that I sat down to watch the Tyson/Paul fight.

There was also something else at work and it relates to getting older. In thinking about the Tyson fight, I think every former athlete from any level was kind of pulling for him. We all want to believe that hey, although we haven’t played a sport seriously in decades, sometimes many decades, we all still believe we’ve got another game, another at bat, another round still in us at a decent level. We know that we’re likely deluding ourselves but it’s a thought you hang on to, it’s probably a guy thing, a piece of our ego we cling on to and probably should never act on.

I remember my father’s moment. I was about nineteen, I’d played baseball throughout high school and in college, even got paid to play for half a summer after I failed out of college, oh and I did that while I was a drunk. So I was a pretty good ball player. I’m at home and my father calls, some group he was affiliated with had a softball team and were short some players and had called him and asked him to play and he included me. So we show up and granted, I was overweight and never really looked like an athlete and so we get there and they put my forty something year-old dad in the lineup and me on the bench. I was pretty annoyed at the whole situation and looking around at who was in the lineup knew I was clearly a better player than at least half the team. So I sit on the bench as the team is in the field, they get through the first inning, come to bat, go back into the field and in the second inning my dad comes up to bat. He hits the ball out of the infield goes running down the first base line and immediately pulls a hamstring and hits the ground. I absolutely had a bit of schadenfreude at that moment and for an instant thought, cool, maybe I’ll get into the game now. Should have known better, my dad immediately says take me home, but I could see that moment of, shit I’m too old to be doing this in his eyes, along with the dirt all over his clothes.

My moment came about two years ago. I’ve stayed pretty active my adult life and even during the pandemic started running for the first time. But all of that is not playing a sport. So I was running at the track on campus where I work and sometimes the baseball team hits home runs in practice that land down on the track area. Eventually a player or two will come down and collect the balls. After my run one day I was walking back up from the track to my office and there was a ball that they had missed. I had played third base and right field when I played baseball. I didn’t have a cannon, but I had a pretty good arm, so throwing a baseball across the diamond or from deep right field to second base, a pretty good distance, was a pretty routine thing for me. So here was this ball, I picked it up and although practice was over I decided I would throw it over the bullpen onto the outfield so they’d get the ball the next day at practice. Basically about two-thirds of the distance from third base to first base. So I grabbed the ball, stepped forward and threw it, the ball dropped barely into the bullpen. In that moment I was beyond thrilled there were no witnesses, it was a tragic hammer to my manhood and my ego.

I saw the look that I know I had on my face in that moment on Mike Tyson’s face in the ring at the end of each round as he slowly walked back to the corner. He looked like a fifty-eight year old man, a grandpa in boxing shorts. Now a couple of things, first, good on him for taking that chance. Second, he also got paid about twenty million dollars to do that fight. But it just shows that we all get old, even the baddest man on Earth.

And you know what, it’s ok, it’s life, we’re all going through it and at times it certainly isn’t easy. This is really relevant to me right now having to really face my mortality after my recent discussions with my cardiologist. The trick is friends and I’ve tried like hell to do this, is to make the time you have worth something. Take some chances in life and get out of your comfort zone, make a positive impact on others, change somebody’s life for the good. Make strides in your life, overcome as many obstacles as you can that come up in front of you, take pride in doing that. As you age, take some of the wisdom you’ve gathered from overcoming those obstacles and sharing to help some other people overcome theirs. Make some people happy and most of all make sure you take time to make yourself happy and enjoy your life. And as best you can, have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane