Sports stars spend their youth lauded for their grace and strength. How do we stop ourselves from becoming ‘a tattered coat upon a stick’ when glory fades?
Professional athletes are shooting stars: they burn bright as they flame across the sky, then suddenly fade into quiet darkness. Movie stars, best-selling authors, and platinum musicians can stay affixed in the firmament of celebrity for decades, twinkling on our Twitter feeds and Entertainment Weekly covers. But years of physical abuse of our bodies through training and competing wears down athletes – and our importance – to stiff, aching, Advil-popping appendages. The useless appendix of the entertainment business. How are we to stay relevant in society beyond yakking endlessly about our glory days?
Those glory days for most pro athletes are short. The average career in the NFL is a little over three years. In the NBA, the average it is 4.8 years, and in MLB, it’s 5.6. Most of these athletes have trained for 10 or more years to get to the pros – and for most it’s over quickly. They’ve had a quick taste and are out the door before they become addicted. But for athletes who have managed to beat the odds and stay in the sports spotlight for many years, our final bow can feel a little too final. Kobe Bryant (20 years), Derek Jeter (19 years), John Stockton (19 years), Jack Nicklaus (25 years), Mark Messier (26 years), Nolan Ryan (27 years), Gordie Howe (34 years), Pele (22 years), me (20 years) and many others with double-digit years in the gladiatorial arena are relatively young when we retire, usually in our 30s or 40s. Which is when we ask ourselves the existential question: who am I now?
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2xdhqjr
