The Moment

So I read today that Roger Clemens is coming out of retirement at the age of 50 to show professional baseball hitters he can still get the best of them.  The last time Clemens made a comeback he was 45 and amply compensated – $28 million – for his subpar performance and half season with the New York Yankees.  He found little reward on the field, going 6-6 and was shelled off the field in the third inning of his final outing, a playoff game the Yankees lost.

This time around, Clemens’ return from retirement is on a much smaller scale and his new team is slightly lighter on tradition and history than the pinstriped squad from the Bronx.  Nonetheless he is still returning and for some reason refuses to fade quietly into the Texas sunset.  He takes the mound tonight for the Sugarland Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League to face the Bridgeport Bluefish.

Apparently this comeback is fueled solely for the love of the game.  He's seeking some satisfaction with little financial incentive.  And his return is a far cry from his glory days of climbing the hill for the Yanks to face the Boston Red Sox.  I mean the Skeeters and the Bluefish?  Come on, these are hardly names one associates with baseball.  Sounds more like games my seven year old daughter Shelby plays on her Nintendo DS.  And what is a Skeeter anyway?  I believe I know what a Bluefish is but a Skeeter?  I did some digging and lo and behold I learned a Skeeter is a southern moniker for a mosquito, a common fan pest at night games here in Texas.  So in reality, Clemens is pitching for the mosquitoes, but as they say aroun' these parts, he's pitchin' and throwin' heat for the Skeeters.  Who in their right mind would name a baseball team Skeeters?  Even more so, why would a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer want to pitch for mosquitoes, Skeeters, or any team named after an insect?  He's pursuing the The Moment.

Though my athletic prowess is not on the level and scale of Roger Clemens, I'm an athlete nonetheless.  My two best sports are tennis and basketball.  In my present environment I can't play tennis  – my favorite – so I focus solely on basketball, my first athletic love.  The problem is, at my age, basketball is extremely hard on my body.  I'm reaching the point in life where it's becoming more difficult to lace up my Nikes night in and night out.  But for some reason I can't quite quit the sport I love even though I've tried a dozen times.  Why?  The Moment.

I play in two basketball leagues a year, spring and fall.  Scattered in between are a few tournaments.  The seasons are rigorous and long.  We play 3 games a week and with playoffs included, it's not uncommon for each campaign to extend well beyond 30 games.  When you're 48 and running up and down the court with young twenties who are faster, stronger, and more athletic, it's quite extracting and demanding on the body.  Especially three nights a week in a prison basketball league, which is much more physical than any rec league in America.  As a result, I'm the pregame player who smells like I walked out of an Icy Hot factory and I'm the postgame player stretched out on a yoga mat with ice packs wrapped around knees and ankles taking up yoga positions.

For each of the last six seasons, I've told myself this is my last campaign.  Initially, other players believed me and understood why I wanted to hang it up.  I'm the oldest guy in the league and one of only a handful of white guys.  But now they just roll their eyes when I mention retirement because they know I'll be back.  And sure enough, when the next season arrives, I'm back on my team and training hard to get in cardio shape by our first game.  I don't want to miss The Moment.

I've retired at the end of every season even though my performance and numbers remain competitive.  I consistently score in double figures and for the most part can stay with my man defensively using stealthy old-school slight of hand tricks like grabbing my opponent’s jersey.  I still have the ability to pull up behind the arc and bury 3's and my jumper has not yet morphed into a decrepit set-shot.  And every blue moon, I score 20 plus points in a game and managed to hit 30 once. (The planets aligned) I retire because my body does not always cooperate with my mind.  My brain tells me, I can beat that guy off the dribble; I can cut hard off that pick and beat the young fool to the hole.  But my body sometimes refuses to cooperate and screams back, that was 20 years ago stupid.  The aftereffects of each game require my self-prescribed cocktail of Motrin, Tylenol, and Aleve.  And the day after is always the worst as I walk around cement like looking like some mannequin that escaped from a display window on Fifth Avenue.  So why do I continue?  For that matter, why does any athlete push his body and extend himself and attempt to defy Father Time?  The Moment.

Every sport offers a pinnacle of achievement and feeling known as The Moment.  It's why athletes compete and perform.  It's why they come out of retirement and return to the sports they love.  It's why you see boxers attempt comebacks in their forties.  It's why there are senior leagues for every major sport in this country.  It's why Michael Phelps WILL swim again in Rio.  It's why Sampras and McEnroe and Borg and Agassi are still slugging it out on the old man's Champions Tour and why there is a Senior PGA Tour, Senior Baseball League, and thousands of recreational leagues for just about every sport and age group imaginable.  It's exactly why Roger Clemens is taking the mound tonight for the Skeeters.

The Moment is not exclusive to professional athletes.  It's found and felt in every league in every sport in every nation.  It's not limited to age or ability or talent.  It's seen in pick-up games and flag football contests and on lonely tennis courts where it's you and your best friend banging it out for bragging rights.  It's felt on the fields, courts, tracks, diamonds, courses, ranges, roads, and in the rings, lanes, and rinks.  It's experienced in all weather conditions: rain, snow, sleet, wind, heat.  The Moment is why you see old people playing softball in your city parks and even older people carting around on golf courses.

The Moment.  It's in that millisecond when I get the ball and I lift off the ground and my shooting hand goes forward and nothing else is happening in the world as the world goes silent and I see the ball rise in the air and arc perfectly as it leaves my hand and floats through space and I just know; I just know it's perfect as I watch the round orange come back down through the iron hole suspended in time as it swishes the net.  Then there comes the immense joy I feel and the waves of adrenaline rushing through my veins and the adulation from my teammates as we race back down the court to defend our basket.  The Moment inspires you to believe you have one more in you.  It's why you never quit.  It grants an illusion of clarity to our complicated lives.  As Mark Twain once wrote, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sail.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.  Live."  Live your Moment(s).