Conventional wisdom says that ballplayers typically get better throughout their twenties while they add knowledge and experience to their physical gifts. Some in the baseball community think that the peak age is around 27, while Baseball Prospectus says it’s around 29. Regardless, it’s fairly well agreed that players beyond 30 are decidedly post-peak. For athletic mortals like you and me, this may be a sobering thought. I’ve still got years of peak….something left!
Author Daniel Alarcón probably wasn’t thinking about baseball when he wrote in “At Night We Walk in Circles“:
“That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which had nothing to do with the number of years since your birth.