How Old Are You?

My wife often is dismayed by my love for sports and its celebrities. I enjoy watching the games, reviewing the statistics, and most of all, learning the stories and lessons from its stars.

Did you ever stop to think how old you would be if you didn’t know how old you are? That question was more than hypothetical for Hall of Fame pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige. In 1948, Satchel joined the Cleveland Indians and helped lead them to the American League pennant that year. It was his first year in the majors. He had spent the past 20 years in the Negro Leagues — and he was the oldest major league rookie that year, by a lot. 

We have learned that he was 42 when he joined the Indians, but at that time, he didn’t know. He’d never seen his birth certificate, but it never really seemed to bother him. Today it’s hard to find baseball players playing past the age of 40. But Satchel Paige was different, in more ways than one. 

Constantly reporters would ask him, “How can you play at your age? What keeps you going?” Satchel would simply say that because he didn’t know how old he was, he was never held back from performing the way he knew he could.

Well, for better or worse, most of us know how old we are. And unlike Satchel Paige, we do allow our age to influence how we behave. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we never knew our actual age? Then age would never hold us back — how freeing that would be!

Another one of my sports heroes, Muhammed Ali, once said that people who see life the same way at 50 as they did at 20 have wasted 30 years of their lives. We might add that people who see life at 80 the same way they did at 50 have also wasted 30 years.

I won’t pretend that the aging process doesn’t affect us. It does. But it’s time we put aging in the proper perspective. We can’t go back or stay where we are even if we wanted to — and most of us don’t want to. But we can’t allow society to delude us into thinking we can or should want to stay young.

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids?

If you are less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions. “How old are you?” “Five… and a half!” You never say “Thirty-eight and a half.” I know one lady who couldn’t tell others she was 80. She said she was “40 plus 40!”

I believe that age and experience can expand the possibilities in life for every member of society. We can take a lot from Satchel Paige’s attitude: “Age is a question of mind over matter,” he would say. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

By Bob Mueller – Bob Mueller is a Bishop of the United Catholic Church You can reach him at bobmueller.org
Featured Photo by Diliara Garifullina
P.S. You may also be interested in this article by Bob: Keep Pitching!