The SPORTS PHILOSOPHER says: “So what if Jamie is a silly name for a guy….?”

     This column is for everybody out there over 40.

     Heck, why stop there….it’s for everybody out there over 50.

     Okay.   It’s for anybody out there who feels old.   Period.

     I feel old.   All the time.   Everything I do reminds me of just how old I am.   I pee about twenty times a day, for one thing.   It’s very upsetting.   And that’s not all.   My back hurts.   My joints dispute me hourly.   Getting up off the couch takes clever planning.   Boxboys at supermarkets call me sir and routinely ask me “do you need any help?” transporting my bags to my car.   Do I look that old?   I say no thank you, of course, but when I get to the car I can’t put any weight on my right leg as I’m getting my bags and my body into it and so then I feel stupid for refusing their help!   My right knee not only doesn’t work, it makes a clicking noise.   I go to the gym day after day but I don’t get more and more fit, I just get more and more tired and worn down.   When I read the Obituaries I’m always a little relieved when I don’t see my name there.   And when I drive by a cemetery I sometimes glance over and experience a strange tingling sensation, sort of like I’m, I don’t know….apartment hunting?

     So when an old guy—as in a very old guy—does something exceptional in the Sports world, my antennae twitch, my joints loosen up, and blood starts to percolate in my loins.

     It happened just last week.   Today’s hero is a short, skinny, unassuming little fellow named Jamie Moyer, a guy who looks more like a CPA than a pitcher.   But in happy fact, a baseball pitcher he is.   A major league pitcher.   A lefty.   Plays for the Colorado Rockies.   He’s what they call a “junk ball” pitcher.   ‘Throws lots of curve balls and change-ups.   His fastball couldn’t break a window pane.  

     But he did something spectacular the other day, and I think it deserves to be celebrated.

     They have been playing major league baseball in America for 143 years.   Since before the light bulb or the telephone.   Ever since 1869.   And last week, on Tuesday, April 17^th, 2012, Jamie Moyer became the oldest pitcher to ever win a major league game.   Ever.

     He was exactly 49 years and 151 days old.

     Are you kidding me???

     Moyer, who had managed to win 267 other games before last week’s triumph, and who pitched in his first big-league game not only long before Lindsay Lohan had quaffed her first drink but sixteen days before she was even born, is not new to such quirky milestones.   I remember when he became the oldest pitcher to ever throw a 9-inning shutout.   But that was a couple years ago.   He was just a spring chicken of 47 back then.

     But now he’s almost fifty!

     I don’t even know what to compare this to.   What would be the equivalent?   Betty White thrashing Serena Williams in straight sets at Wimbledon?   Larry King pass-blocking for Tom Brady in the Super Bowl?   Barbara Bush in Bermuda shorts and a tank top climbing Mt. Everest???

     I mean how can a guy almost as old as me get major league hitters out?   The mere idea of 49-year-old Jamie Moyer striking out, say, our own local 27-year-old superstar Matt Kemp, sort of reminds me of an old adventure of “Family Guy” I was watching the other day with my son.   You know, the one where 85-year-old Carol Channing challenges Mike Tyson to a celebrity boxing match?  (Funny thing….tough old Carol took a lot of punishment from Tyson in that fight, but she wound up winning on a TKO….check it out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq6XaF1qVcM  )

     The last time I felt this good about an old guy beating the boys was three years ago, when 59-year-old Tom Watson came within one swing of winning the Open Championship of golf, a.k.a. the British Open, against a host of world-class players younger than his own children.   That would have been a feat even greater than Moyer’s.   But alas Tom choked it all away on the 18^th hole, made bogey, and broke the diseased hearts of wistful geriatrics everywhere….like me.    http://www.laverneonline.com/2009/07/19/mr-president-mr-watson-are-you-guys-kidding-me/  .   Yeah, that was a bad day….

     Sure, I realize that winning a solitary baseball game at age 49, with 24 other guys on your team helping you do it, is easier than winning the biggest tournament in golf all by yourself.   I get it.   But as a symbol of hope and a living breath of inspiration for men my age, Jamie’s gem isn’t half bad.

     The cool thing about Moyer’s record is that he’s gonna get about 25 more opportunities this year to beat it.   Every day he gets one day older, right?   So every time he wins a game he’ll break his own amazing record!   And thus the record gets even more amazing.   How cool is that???   When he’s not pitching, I wonder if Moyer sits around his house all day long thinking about that stuff….

     Anyway, for 49-year-old Jamie Moyer, life is good.   He is now officially one of my new heroes.   I only wish he were here right now, to help me up off the couch.

meet….The Sports Philosopher!