Thoughts on Mays' Catch

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Willie Mays' famous catch in game one of the 1954 World Series. The anniversary is producing a great amount of nostalgia and list-making (that great modern pastime): SportsCenter just did a list of top ten World Series catches. (Guess which was #1.)

My only thought on the subject is: I can't believe it was fifty years ago. I know I'm showing my youth, but that's so long. Think of the fact that Willie Mays' greatest career accomplishment took place half a century ago. I think it speaks to the quiet tragedy of the lives of professional athletes - their careers are so defined by their athleticism, by their bodies, that they necessarily end when they're, objectively speaking, quite young. Most pro athletes, even good ones, are retirees when they're in their 30s. Roger Clemens is ancient by baseball standards. He's 42! And while 30-50 years of (quite lavish) retirement might seem nice to you (it does to me) it's an awfully long time to spend looking back on your increasingly distant glory days. And I'm sure that our constant habit of celebrating the 50th anniversary of this or that, and of thinking of these men only in terms of our nostalgia for the halcyon days of Sports-Past, can't aid that.

Willie Mays is 75. When I'm that age, how will I feel if all people want to talk about is something I did just after I graduated from Yale Law?