MLB

Jamie Moyer Made A Starting Rotation At Age 49 And That’s Awesome

There will be no AARP membership cards or condos in Boca Raton for Jamie Moyer this year — at 49, Moyer will take the mound for the Colorado Rockies, having beat out a 22-year old and a 28-year-old for the team’s final spot in the rotation.

Jamie Moyer made his MLB debut back in 1986. That was before I was even born. By making a return this year after sitting out 2011 for Tommy John surgery, Moyer reasserts himself as the active leader in wins, innings pitched, and starts. By those accounts, you could say that Moyer is one of the most accomplished pitchers in the game right now, if not “historically speaking, the best.” I put that in quotes because he’s clearly not the best, but numbers are numbers.

Moyer has been lauded during spring training as an absolute professional who can still carve up the strike zone. This isn’t a publicity stunt by the Rockies to sell tickets (and if it is, “Oldest Man In Baseball” isn’t the sexiest promo, so they may want to rethink that): Moyer earned the spot.

Why is this so important? Besides the fact that it’s a fantastic story of one man beating the odds and still competing at the highest level despite his advanced age, that is? Well, just this morning, there was talk of a certain former first-round NFL draft pick who went bust and now gets busted. He retired at 26 due to “injury.” And there are countless other stories, told and untold, of athletes who were too old, too slow, too injured, too tired, who never had enough in the tank in the first place.

Moyer is the antithesis of that. You can’t fake good pitching at 49, nor can you fake endurance, knowledge and skill. So for Moyer to legitimately have the stuff to make it in the majors, it’s an inspiration to athletes, pro and amateur, everywhere. If you have the will, there’s a way.

That’s not to say that Ryan Leaf, or Tiki Barber, or Allen Iverson should be making comebacks (or even could. Those guys have problems besides being old: they’re crazy). This is about the people who feel too lazy to go to the gym even though they have high blood pressure, or who want to join their office softball team but are afraid they’ll just embarrass themselves. There’s no such thing as nothing left. If Moyer can do it, so can you.

Now get out there and join the Colorado Rockies! They’ll take anybody, even fossils.

Photo from Getty, by Christian Petersen