And Not To Yield

SB Nation

Baseball is a young man’s game. And all who play it at the major league level are young; at least compared to the members of other professions. There are doctors in their seventies; there are no shortstops

at that age outside of Old Timer’s Day. But age is relative; while none of the boys of summer are actually boys, some are closer to their boyhood than others.

Most of the 2026 Phillies are not particularly close to theirs. The missed signing of Bo Bichette, youthful at 27, and the resigning of J.T. Realmuto for his age 35, 36, and 37 seasons have dragged this fact, never secret but not pleasant to discuss, into the circle of conversation. With Cody Bellinger returning to the Bronx, the last of the big free agent bats is off the board, and there isn’t much else to talk about beyond the Phillies’ aging. There’s discussion of whether or not it makes sense to run it back, (or whether or not what the Phillies are doing counts as running it back), and discussion of whether or not Bryce Harper can be elite again. But these are really all variations on the same theme. Namely, that the Phillies are getting older, and thus weaker and wearier. The fans, too, are getting older, at precisely the same pace, and there is a distinct threadbareness to the hopes that many of the Philadelphia faithful will be bringing to the Bank with them this season.

There are so very many movies in which a hero past his prime is dragged out of retirement for that one last job, with the inevitable accompanying cliché— he’s getting too old for this s**t. There is a special appeal to seeing the aged hero defy the odds, proving the value of his experience. There’s a weighty sense of nostalgia to watching the greying hero retrace his steps. Would John Wick be nearly as beloved if he were a fresh faced novice to assassination? The aging hero is often especially appealing to the audience. The athletic world is an exception.

That makes perfect sense: aging saps the skills needed to succeed as a professional athlete, and the accompanying increase in wisdom and experience does not come close to counterbalancing it. Add in the fact that the aging of our favorite players reminds us of our own senescence, and you have an ugly concoction. We are able to enjoy the aging of our favorites to some degree when they are close to a milestone, with the accumulation of their statistics adding a happy sense of history to the accumulation of the years. And we are able to enjoy it when the player takes their farewell tour, lending a gauzy cloak of nostalgia and sentiment to the passage of time. But those are brief blips on the aging curve, and the rest of the ride is not terribly enjoyable.

Some people find humor in it; an extremely human reaction to dread. The 1983 Phillies, an older bunch, were nicknamed the Wheeze Kids for their age, a play on the Whiz Kids from a generation prior. Mike Schmidt, a target of the joke at 33 (not young, but nearly a decade younger than Pete Rose was), didn’t find it very funny. “To call a team like this the Wheeze Kids, well, all I can say is it’s pathetic. A real lack of class”. ¹

The mean age of the 9 position players on that team who played the most was 31.77. Go for the median to remove the outliers (the ancient Pete Rose at 42, and the fresh-from-the-nursery Von Hayes at 24), and it’s 30.

If we do the same with the projected starting lineup for this year’s Phillies, it’s a mean of 30.44 . Younger than the Wheezers. But if we do it by median, it’s 33. The 2026 Phillies likely won’t have a nickname like their 1983 predecessors— we are many decades past the prime era of nicknames in the national pastime—, but will face a similar problem. They are not as old as they will be, and they are not decrepit. But they are getting older. It is hard to remember Bryce Harper as the brash youngster of “clown question, bro”, controversy. That is partially due to his emotional maturation, his hard-earned self-reinvention as a Philadelphia statesman. But it is also because 2012 was a long time ago.

There is some hope for youth from the farm system. Justin Crawford will likely break camp with the team. Andrew Painter will likely debut this season. Aidan Miller waits in the wings. But for the moment, the Phils are an older bunch. That need not be cause for despair. Advanced age, as the 1983 Phillies (for Schmidt’s sake, we’ll eschew the nom de guerre) proved, does not preclude success. It is a decided disadvantage. But it is not necessarily decisive.

Nearly two centuries ago, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote a poem imagining Odysseus in his old age. Long past his famed days of war and wandering, the aged hero declares his intent to journey again, despite knowing his peak is long behind him. It is not ideal. But the only alternative would be not to journey at all. The 2026 Phillies will be an aging bunch. That will hinder them. But it may not stop them from reaching the promised land. They are older, but still mighty. They have what it takes to win a World Series. They may fall short of that, but that will be decided on the field, and not on the calendar. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, the Phillies will choose to venture out once more.

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.