Writer tracks down a bunch of old ballplayers and asks then the meaning of life

[WrongVerb]

When baseball players retire, they turn into accidental Buddhists

The loss of fans is a harbinger of every athlete's ultimate destiny, that day when their career ends. Five years ago, I set out to track down all the players in a never-opened pack of 1986 baseball cards (the first year I collected as a kid), wondering what happened to my childhood heroes once the game was done with them. Baseball is a cruel master, requiring unflinching devotion but abandoning players just as they start to reap the rewards of experience. Biology is a stubborn thing.

What ensued was an 11,341-mile odyssey across the country over 49 breakneck-paced days. I found most, but not all, of the ex-players; most, but not all, were happy to talk to me. I had no idea how useful their advice would be for our current times.

While I covered lots of ground with my quarry, the one question I asked all of them was this: What did you do when you woke up in your 30s and realized you could never again do the one thing you had spent every waking second thinking about?

For some reason, while reading this article, this came to mind:

“We're all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children's game, we just don't... don't know when that's gonna be. Some of us are told at eighteen, some of us are told at forty, but we're all told.”
— Aaron Sorkin, Steven Zaillian, Stan Chervin, Moneyball

[corkedbat]

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[Bourgeois Zee]

42

Surely it's a coincidence that Jackie Robinson and the meaning of life have the same number.

[Kingspoint]

Good Friends

Here's a photo of my classmates with our old High School Vice Principal, Vince Paveskovich (pes-ko-vich), brother of Red Sox Johnny Paveskovich (Pesky). Vince played and coached his share of baseball. Here he was celebrating his 99th birthday. He had to move from his family home a few years ago that they had owned since 1939, in the neighborhood of the original Portland Beavers baseball stadium on Vaughn Street.

Vince tells this story of his brother:

"When Johnny joined the Navy with Ted Williams, Papa said, ‘Why you change the name to Johnny Pesky?'" Pesky said. "Johnny told him, 'Papa, the name fits better into a box score.' Papa asked, 'What's a box score?' Johnny told him it was a baseball statistic, and my dad said, 'Go get a good job.'"

Vince was not just my V.P. in High School. He went to the same Catholic grade school I did, but 38 years earlier. Shared a love of hockey, too, as he was a timekeeper for the Buckaroos Ice Hockey Club for a long time. (all teachers had second jobs back then). After I graduated, I spent many an afternoon over the years with him in the stands behind homeplate listening to old baseball stories as we'd catch a minor league game in the background. Calling in sick to work to catch a baseball game on a sunny afternoon was a glorious pasttime. Those days are gone, for the most part.

Attachment 16245

Vince stated that he wishes he could go out and mingle (he was always a great advisor for students, always a friend to everyone), that the mind is willing, but the back can't get it done.

[Kingspoint]

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