Essay: The Boys of Late Autumn

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Douglass Wallop's 1954 novel, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, reflects that innocent era before AstroTurf, designated hitters and utility infielders with multimillion-dollar contracts. But every middle-aged baseball fan can still appreciate the Faustian temptation at the core of both the novel and the hit Broadway musical it inspired, Damn Yankees. Joe Boyd is a paunchy real estate salesman condemned to root for his hapless hometown team, the now defunct Washington Senators. The devil, who prefers the moniker Applegate, offers to transform Joe into the greatest slugger in the history of the game. Applegate's price is the usual recompense: a paltry -- albeit eternal -- shift in allegiance. Since this is fiction, Joe resists more than most. But ultimately, how can an immortal soul compete with the gifts of youth, grace, coordination and tape-measure home runs?

At 41, I too have reached the Applegate of my years. Metaphorically, my bat speed has slowed, my reflexes have begun to dim and more than a stride has been lost going down the line to first. That may help explain why I follow with such fascination and dread the fortunes of the last four big league ballplayers who are older than I am. By daring to stop time for at least one more summer, these final four have become my personal antidotes to middle age, even as I chart their downward slide in the arithmetic of the box scores and the formulaic prose of the sporting pages.

There remains among them one cereal-box hero, one shining exception to the inevitability of decay: Nolan Ryan, the greatest strikeout pitcher in history, 16 days my senior and still blessed with the fearsome fast ball that brought him to the cusp of yet another no-hitter this spring. Ryan, I reckon, will be the last survivor in this private tontine, but that honor could also go to Tommy John, baseball's Old Man River. Lured out of retirement like a veteran CIA agent asked to perform a final mission, John, 45, has miraculously emerged as the anchor of the Yankee pitching staff. My other two survivors are probably in the final months -- or even days -- of their curtain calls. Don Sutton, 43, his blond curls flecked with gray, languishes on the disabled list as the Dodgers wonder what to do with a pitcher who needs a retinue of relievers to get him beyond the sixth inning. And Graig Nettles, 43, once a majestic third baseman, hangs on a major league roster by a thread as an occasional pinch hitter for the Montreal Expos.

These are the boys of late autumn, the last leaves on the tree of my youth. Not too many innings ago, there were others: Reggie Jackson; the knuckle-ball brothers, Phil and Joe Niekro; the great lefthanded pitcher Steve Carlton; and journeyman Outfielder Tom Paciorek, kept around last year by a manager who was an old teammate. A few like Paciorek glided gracefully and gratefully into a broadcasting booth. But most went out cursing the darkening of the light. At 43, Carlton, dropped by five different teams in the past two years, defiantly repeats the old ballplayer's mantra, "I know I can still pitch. I know I still have the ability to win."