Craig Robinson of the fantabulous Flip Flop Fly Ball turns 40 today. Happy Birthday, Craig! In honor of that occasion, he does what he does best: creates a fun graphic. This one is a chart illustrating how he has aged compared to the roster of the New York Yankees. The first year in which a Yankee player was younger than him was 1992. Half the Yankees roster was younger than him as of 2001. Now only Mariano Rivera has him beat.
I’m guessing everyone has tracked this sort of thing on some level. The Playboy centerfolds -- whose ages are so helpfully included along with their pictorials I’m told -- are among the first adult public figures/celebrities (non child-star or college athlete edition) who guys encounter that are younger then them. Then the movie stars. Then the pro athletes. When the doctors and lawyers are all younger than you is when you really start to feel old. The first time we have a President born after 1973 is when I’ll let my ear hair grow out, hike my pants up and give up even the pretense of trying to feel young.
But back to baseball. The first Atlanta Brave younger than me was Jermaine Dye (and later Andruw Jones) in 1996. Now the only ones older than me are Chipper Jones, Takashi Saito and Derek Lowe (though Lowe only by a month and a half).
I don’t really have a problem with this. Aging has never really bothered me. Indeed, each year I get older I feel more comfortable with who and what I am. I was a basket case in my 20s and early 30s. 37 feels pretty good. I’m about the only person I know who looks forward to his 40th birthday. On some strange level I feel like I will finally be grown up then.