missing the twins

We'd see them if the screen was shifted down a little.

legit LOL

Yup. Four 14 win seasons age forty on.

I've always been a believer that Ryan was early getting in on the roid/high/PED game, and that nobody will ever know about it.

This is especially true today, and especially true of guys who play up the middle.

Your average major league shortstop is a top shelf athlete. Ditto for CF.

Also, it isn't as if any elite athlete can wander onto a baseball field and be an elite major league player. Bo Jackson played baseball continuously from the time he was a small child. No serious person doubts that he was an elite athlete.

But he topped out as a good but not great baseball player.

David Ortiz and Nelson Cruz deserve recognition for how good they were/are at age 40.

I was just a kid when I saw Mets play Dodgers late 1969. Mets were just getting hot, but they lost this game and were 5 or 6 games behind the Cubs IIRC.

So after the game my brother and I go to the right field exit where the visiting team would board their bus. It was the best place for us to get autographs of the visiting team's players. Before the game my brother got a BP home run ball in left field pavilion, and used that for autographs instead of his book. So he proceeds to get basically all the starting players, including Ryan, Seaver, Koosman, Hodges, Grote, Swoboda, etc. I still remember how young the Mets players looked, it seemed nobody was over 25. My brother still has the ball 50+ years later.

It's like with dog years. 15 baseball years is like 3 football years (either sort of football).

162 game season vs 16? Game season makes up for most of that.

Baseball also has 2 positions that are extremely high workload, with the rest of the positions being a complete joke in comparison.

Nolan Ryan's workload definitely as high as any baseball player.

Also lol at soccer.

Baseball requires far less athleticism than cricket

Lol nice evidence you have. I don't know anything about cricket though. But your obviously just some lol non north american that hates on American sports.

There's so many facets to athleticism. Michael Jordan was an incredible athlete. Couldn't make it as a baseball player though. Couldn't hit, and even if he dedicated his 30's to it, his chances of ever being a decent hitter would've been very slim. Sure, theres absolutely no cardio in baseball, but the hand eye coordination in baseball probably trumps any other mainstream sport by miles.

Amongst mainstream sports, I'd rank tennis (singles) as the toughest combination of skill/ fitness.

Jan-Ove Waldner was a table tennis player that retired at age 46, having a career at the highest of levels for over 30 years. Table tennis tennis players usually peak in their early 20s. Pretty crazy that someone could last that long in a game that requires such quick reactions and speed.

that's awesome

Nolan Ryan, the bad arse Texan ... the only guy in the following club: 7 no-hitters, 50 3-hitters or less, 100,000 pitches thrown, 12,000 strikeouts, and a 14 punch unanswered combination on a player less than 1/2 his age.

1. Ryan
2. Brady
3. Kareem

Surprised no mention of Pete Rose. Played 500 games at 5 different positions. Hit king. Started on the winning team 1972 games. To beat that record you would have to play 20 seasons on a 100 win team and play almost every day

Problem is Pete rose had his last good season at age 38 (that's still solid).

He was a net negative player cumulatively for the 7 years that followed.

Johnny Bower
Nhl debut at 29 (1953). Then off to Ahl.
11 years with Toronto Maple Leafs (1958-69). 4 cups, 2 vezinas. Hof

Doc Ellis threw a no-hitter on acid.

Shortstops and centerfielders are definitely elite athletes. There are some freak athletes in MLB like Mookie Betts (listed at 5'9" can dunk a basketball).

Hitting only requires strength and hand-eye coordination though, you can have 40-year-old fat guys still dominating (see David Ortiz final seasons, current Nelson Cruz).

Those are fairly large outliers - the aging curve for hitters isn't really that different from aging curves for other skill sports. George Foreman was a heavyweight champion at age 46 I believe - this doesn't mean boxing isn't athletically demanding. With that said, I think those outliers may be more likely in baseball because the total amount of physical exertion is low (on a cumulative basis) and what chases out would-be-outliers in their late 30's and early 40's from other sports isn't so much their absolute inability to complete, but the age-related slowdown in the body's ability to heal/recover. This probably helps older boxers too - boxing is extremely demanding physically, but they get a lot of time to recover.

Not sure how Rickey Henderson hasn't been mentioned yet. Guy stole 66 bases at age 39.

37sb at 40
36sb at 41
26sb at 42