My opponent dribbled past half court with the fury of a crazed bull. He was about 6-foot-5, weighed 240 or so. His team was getting its ass kicked, and he was not happy about it. I positioned my 6-foot-1/2-inch, 195-pound frame just in front of the basket, directly in his path. I had two seconds to decide: OK, stand in there, let this guy bowl me over and draw the offensive foul or Don't be a fool, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE BULL'S WAY. I was six days shy of my 50th birthday, and we were winning by dozens of points. My teammates would not have objected had I chosen discretion over valor.
Like an idiot, I chose valor.
The bull never changed course. I turned slightly to absorb some of the blow, bounced off of him like a pinball and landed well out of bounds. I popped up quick-like, luckily no worse for the wear. The worst indignity? There was no foul call. The referee, as the cliché goes, swallowed his whistle. My valor had gone for naught. Guys on both benches laughed.
Such were the harrowing events of April 15 at my Thursday night over-30 basketball league on St. Pete Beach, where I'm a member of a 14-year team sponsored by the Sports Bar at Bay Pines.
It could've turned out not so funny. If I had landed wrong, my back might've gone out for, oh, the 237th time, and I would've walked stooped over for a week. I could've earned a fresh injury to go along with the plantar fasciitis in my right foot and tendinitis in my right knee.
But my lasting impression of the moment is not relief that I had escaped unharmed. It's that I had actually considered bailing out. Five years ago, it would never have entered my mind. You stand in there and take the charge, dammit, no questions asked. Truth be told, I've bailed out in similar situations over the last few years. My doctors and chiropractors and massage therapists say that's smart, that I need to "adapt my game" to my advanced age.
I say it sucks.
I'm over the hill, an old baller with a passion for the game that drastically outsizes my physical capabilities. I'd gladly play four times a week, but I've come to realize that my lower back condition (something that ends in "esis" that no one can seem to pronounce) allows me two at the most. I work out in the weight room three or four days out of seven and sometimes force myself onto the elliptical bike for some "cardio," but basically I do this to prolong my playing days.
If the end is not exactly near, it's at least imminent. I've never been a big fan of exercise. I like to play, and let the exercise part take care of itself. I'm dreading the time when I must resort strictly to a workout regimen to keep myself in decent shape.
There are other sports, yes. Tennis? I'd have to basically start from scratch. Golf? Too cerebral (oh, and I suck at it). Softball? With all due respect to you players out there, let's just say I wouldn't get the same juice from it. Triathlon? I can hear my back moan at the mention of the word. (Plus, I'm a lousy swimmer.) As a kid, with callous disregard for my later years, I got good at football, lacrosse and basketball. The first two are distant memories.
My plan is to keep hooping until pain trumps the fun. Hopefully that'll take awhile. In the meantime, I have to contend with my declining physical abilities, which bring their own set of problems.
Most of my teammates and opponents would tell you that I play very well — for 50. When I was 40, I played very well — period.
I used to be what old-schoolers call a "slasher," a guy quick with a dribble, who could get past his defender and take it to the rim. Now I tend to roam around the outside looking to catch a pass and shoot the 3-pointer. If the long jump-shots are clanking off the rim, though, it can make for a frustrating game. I was never what you'd call a defensive specialist, but I was competent. Now I generally match up with the worst player on the other team.
I would like to tell you that I have made these adjustments with quiet grace. Instead, they have caused me considerable angst and occasional torment. I've probably incurred more injuries in the last few years by being stubborn about it. I've been known to complain.
But lately I've been thinking … enough, already. It's time to put my waning abilities into perspective, time to discover ways to enjoy the game in the context of being a half-century old.
My editor gets intrigued by the damnedest things. After listening to me muse about my fading basketball prowess, he green-lighted a story about it. He suggested I talk to some other aging athletes, and also get perspectives from sports psychologists and physiologists. "I'm sure a lot of our readers are going through this very same thing," he said. "And if not, a lot of them will be."
Hmm. Interview a bunch of other athletes. Get some gratis tips from doctors, trainers and the like. Heist free therapy from shrinks. Yeah, I thought, I can do that. Do I still get a paycheck?
I discovered that I'm definitely not alone on this over-the-hill issue. All those platitudes about how one can't defeat aging, that it's just a natural process, that I've had a better run than most, that I should look at every opportunity to play as a blessing — it so happens that other aging athletes don't take much solace in them either. The roads, courts, pools, tracks and fields of Tampa Bay are flush with stories about people dealing with athletic mortality. There's a handful in the sidebars to this story.
Most of us understand aging in very general ways, via wrinkles in the mirror, aches and pains when we get out of bed, a loss of the old get-up-and-go. But what are the physiological manifestations? What really happens beneath the skin that causes me to jump a whole lot lower than I used to?
Here are some factors, or — if you prefer — the grim details (the basic information comes from an article written by Dr. John E. Morley for the website thedoctorwillseeyounow.com):
* As we get older, our maximum heart rate decreases, as does the amount of blood the heart can pump. Both of these limit athletic performance. Aging causes a drop-off in overall lung capacity; and we can't move oxygen from the air into our bloodstream as efficiently. Result: Less strength and endurance.
* Older jocks lose muscle strength and muscle mass, which can be offset by exercise but not conquered. Most of the decline occurs in Type II, or "fast twitch" muscles, which are associated with strength and power. Type I muscles, which contract slowly and are tied to endurance, do not deteriorate as fast. This would explain why aging basketball players have a tougher go of it than long distance runners or swimmers.
* A big issue for men is the decrease in testosterone production as the body gets older. "One of the primary functions of the hormone is to signal regeneration of muscle tissues," says Rob Wagner, head strength and conditioning coach at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "The loss of testosterone causes increased recovery time for men."
Not employing sufficient recovery time can increase the chance of injury, which is probably the main bugaboo of long-in-the-tooth athletes. "Your brain tells you and your ego tells you that you can still do it," Wagner says. "We tend to listen to that instead of listening to our bodies. They're not up to the optimal level, but we want to push to that level. That's a recipe for injury."
Wagner adds that it's not just big, or even noticeable, injuries that can slow us down. Over the years, we accumulate lots of "microtraumas" in our bodies, which cause scar tissue. "If the [scar tissue] is never manipulated out of the muscle, through massage or extensive stretching," he says, "it limits muscle function, impedes speed and flexibility."
Age in general hinders flexibility, largely because of degeneration in the connective tissue. Reduced flexibility means that joints bear more stress during exercise, which can create havoc on knees, hips, shoulders, ankles and the like.
The good news is that these factors usually occur more profoundly in people who are not active. While athletes still experience these physiological breakdowns, as a rule they experience more strength and vitality in their later years — even as their performance declines.
Two sports psychologists told me I have a "high athletic identity."
"You saw yourself as a basketball player, saw yourself as an athlete," says Dr. Robert Harmison, head of the Sports-Exercise Psychology department at Argosy University in Phoenix. "That just doesn't go away when you get older."
In the sports psychology matrix, there are several types of athletes. Harmison characterized me as "competitive/recreational," a pretty big group of jocks.
In my discussions with three shrinks, I came to realize that a good portion of my self-esteem is wrapped up in basketball. Even now, the idea seems a little absurd, or at least immature. I'm a grown man with family, job and friends, after all. But it's simply true that my status as an "old dude who's still got serious game" remains important to me. I get a visceral high out of winning and playing well that I really can't find anywhere else.
None of the psychologists said my high athletic identity was unhealthy, as long as it didn't become too lopsided an influence on my life.
The psychologists also agreed that my head trips about diminished performance did not make me a nut job. "I'd say it's perfectly normal," says Mike Sachs, a sports shrink at Temple University in Philadelphia. "You're dealing with a loss in something that's an important part of your life. I don't want to overdramatize it, but it's something that you've done for 20, 30 years and you're seeing that you can't do it as well as you did before. It's difficult to deal with that."
So what to do other than throw my kneepads into the garage and retire to the couch in disgust? Or join a softball league?
Sachs suggests that I dwell more on what I can do than what I can't. "There are some things you probably do better," he says.
Let's see, I don't run better or drive better or dribble better or rebound better or play defense better. My shooting is less consistent. My passing is about the same as a decade ago.
I had to think a bit about what I now do better on the basketball court. After exhausting a checklist of physical stuff, I turned to intangibles and came up with a couple. I'm craftier. Instead of regularly blowing by opponents, I tend to pull from a growing bag of tricks, little techniques that get me open for shots or set up teammates. (This stuff tends to work particularly well against young guys.)
And this: I think I'm a better team player.
I was a guy who needed to score points. I had to take shots to feel really involved. That's not the case anymore. Oh, I still like to shoot and score — my teammates will line up to tell you so — but it's no longer the key to my personal success on the floor. I've come to really thrive on how our Sports Bar club — easily the most unselfish and team-oriented in the league — usually dominates the opposition with crisp passing and well-orchestrated movements. We don't run set plays, but often we're flowing so smoothly that it looks like it. I thrive on being part of that, thrive on contributing to it.
This attitude would please Dr. Edward Schectmann, a Long Island, N.Y., psychologist with an interest in sports, business and peak performance. A 57-year-old black belt in aikido, a martial art that de-emphasizes combat, he has a Zen-like interest in process. "If you check out the popular [sports psychology] literature from 20 years ago, the attitude was often, 'I play as well as other guys, why can't I beat them? What can I do to beat them?'
"New books coming out have an Asian frame of mind. The idea is not the bottom line, but the process. Playing moment to moment, being present in the game, bringing your best effort to the game and let the winning and losing take care of itself."
I can hear John Hoffman, my freshman basketball coach, grumbling. But I kind of like Schectmann's take. I tried the approach out during my first post-50 league game on April 22. Physically, I felt great. I ran hard, moved in synch with my teammates and performed well. The winning did, in fact, take care of itself.
I was on a big high when I joined the guys at the Sports Bar for beers and our usual game postmortem. It's the kind of high I'm not yet ready to do without.
Contact Senior Writer Eric Snider at 813-739-4853, or snider@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2004.
