Better Not To Look Your Age | Alphalad's Blog

I really wanted to do a good sports blog. I really did. I was going to fill it with statistics and player's names and even safe opinions of team's performances with a multitude of highlights. However something happened on the way to my trusty computer. I decide to go out to the old neighborhood to hang with the guys on the basketball court. Now, I look young for my age but my days of the human highlight reel are long gone. So I'm around my old friends who still go out every weekend to make spectacles of themselves by playing against guys much younger then them.
So why is it that the old guys always want to team up against the kids to teach them a lesson?
So it's five almost middle aged guys against basically the Dallas Mavericks of the pick-up games. Naturally I'm assigned to check a young Labron James type kid who immediately decides to posterize me by doing the famous alley-oop dunk play. This play was never called when I was young, mainly the pick and roll.
Smart ass kid! I can charge you and sell you on Ebay.
I automatically am placed in a predicament. I am forced to recall some of the defensive moves I used growing up in my days. My icons of the round ball court were Bill Lambeir, Charles Oakley and Kurt Rambis. Guys who didn't have athletic prowess but could give a good cheap foul. So naturally I hacked the kid. Thankfully the kid didn't have a large disrespect your elders' vocabulary, but did have a long range jump shot.
What's with this kid?
Think man! Think! What would Magic do when he was approaching the twilight of his career and no longer could muster up the strength or dignity to keep from being embarrassed? And especially being embarrassed by someone much younger and quicker. Then it came to me. An ingenious plan barking on the level of the great Homer Simpson, Acting!
Phantom injury!
I stopped short of lunging in an attempt to play defense and grab the back of my thigh. Ken Griffey does this all the time. Although no one ever knew of guys my age having hamstring pulls, this was my story and I'm sticking to it. Plus by then there were a number of younger replacement guys standing on the sidelines waiting to come in. I hobbled of the court reminiscent of Kevin Spacey in the Usual Suspects when he was leaving the police station. I bid farewell to my old friends and immediately limped away from the old neighborhood to my car to drive to the nearby Wendy's restaurant. Nothing does wonders for a bruised ego than a bacon cheeseburger. So my moral is It is better not to look your age than not act your age.