Sports and Me

by Alan Wallach

I'm a jock and have always been one. Yes, even at 91, I play ball. They jokingly say that you can keep going forever if you do today what you did yesterday. Usually the joke is about sex but it applies more realistically about ball playing. When covid hit, our basketball game broke up and at the gym they closed the racquetball courts for over a year. To keep fit now, I swim. It's something I started when I had a partial hip replacement about ten years ago. It was the only thing the doctor permitted. During covid, I set a goal for myself – 10 laps which in the 25 meter pool is 500 meters. It was going well when a locker room friend, who was an “iron man” fifty years my junior, said. “Ten laps? You can do better than that. Try a half mile, 16 laps.” At first, I thought he was crazy. But one day, I tried it and found it was no trouble at all. In fact just to see how much I could take, I swam a mile - 32 laps – naturally non-stop. I was surprised that except for the boredom, even with my under water headphones spitting out music, it wasn't that difficult physically. The boredom was too much. So now as a compromise, I do the half mile ( 800 meters) six mornings a week.

The basketball game restarted outdoors on the weekend but it's too much for me because my knees hurt. I can hold my own in a half-court game but they play full court and I can't handle it. I miss basketball. My regular racquetball game has become a pickleball game and I just don't get any enjoyment out of it. Like tennis, which I never liked, you spend half your time collecting balls. Racquetball, the ball goes nowhere so the game dominates.
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In the winter, I love to ski, and go as often as I can. My wife loves to walk and I try to accommodate her. I can walk more than usual using hiking sticks, poles that look like ski poles but aren't. This past weekend, I was able to walk a 1.2 mile trail and I am surprised my legs didn't hurt the next day. Today is Labor Day, and I have made up my mind that the only exercise I will get today is screaming at the Mets on TV for not hitting enough.