If it is true that a sports career prolongs adolescence, it is also true that when that career ends, it deposits a player into premature middle age. For, while he was always older than he seemed, he is suddenly younger than he feels. He feels old. His illusions about himself, fuelled by a public life, sent soaring then crashing, have disappeared just as those of contemporaries have come to full bloom. He is left bitter, or jealous; or perhaps he just knows too much. It is a life that is lived in one-quarter time. “Boy wonder,” “emerging star,” “middle-age problem,” “aging veteran,” all in ten
...more
