There is a man close to my age who works at a grocery store in my neighborhood. Often, when the weather is nice, I\u2019ll see him sitting outside his SUV during his lunch break playing his guitar. He\u2019s not busking for tips; he\u2019s just enjoying the sunshine and playing because he loves to play. Every time I see him playing, it warms my heart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
There\u2019s something special about a person who continues to do something they love just because they love doing it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Sal Perez loves to play baseball. We all know that. He plays with a joie de vivre<\/em> that we rarely see, and I think that is one of the reasons we love him so much. Despite that, we\u2019re seeing the final chapter of Salvy\u2019s career. As of this writing, despite some signs of him warming up, Salvy is hitting .206, well below his weight, and many of his at-bats have been ugly. Sal\u2019s kryptonite has always been the slider down and away. He loves swinging at that pitch. But this year has been a different story. We\u2019re talking at-bats that are mud-flap ugly. Coyote ugly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sal\u2019s 36 years old and sometime this summer, he\u2019ll have played in more than 1,800 big league games, with over 1,400 of those coming at catcher. He\u2019s currently #43 all-time in games caught, and if you\u2019ve played any baseball in your life, at any level, you know how demanding the catcher position is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019re involved in every play, so there\u2019s no mental or physical break. You get nicked by foul balls and wild pitches. Every so often you get hit by a wayward bat. You wear a lot of protective gear in hot weather. It\u2019s a physically demanding position, and we haven\u2019t even talked about the wear and tear on your knees, shoulders, and hips yet. It\u2019s amazing that at age 36 he can still do it – and do it well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That said, Father Time comes for all of us. At 36, Sal is still a very young man, but in the cruel world of sports, except for maybe golf, he\u2019s an old-timer. When the end comes for baseball players, it\u2019s often ugly. I\u2019m old enough to remember seeing Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield for the New York Mets in 1973. Willie was 42 at the time and one of the all-time greats, but man, it was tough to watch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Same with Harmon Killebrew. The Killer spent the final 106 games of his career in Kansas City during the 1975 season, trying to squeeze out one last day in the sun. Killebrew, one of the game\u2019s all-time great power hitters, could only muster 14 home runs and a .199 average before realizing it was over. Even though he looked like he was 50, Killebrew was only 39 at the time. That\u2019s how misleading and disconnected sports are from real life. Ancient on the field, young man everywhere else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The great ones rarely walk away at the top. The confidence that drove them to become one of the very best is the same confidence that keeps telling them they\u2019ll right the ship and start hitting again. There comes a day when they\u2019re listening to a lie. Maybe they realize it, maybe they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In my lifetime I can recall only a handful of great ones who walked away before they cratered. Jim Brown did. So did John Elway and Barry Sanders. Of course, those are all football players. I can\u2019t think of any baseball players who walked away when they still had a little gas in the tank.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Henry Aaron, one of my favorites, and arguably one of the greatest ever, played until he was 42. Same with Stan Musial. Steve Carlton, as good a left-handed pitcher as ever lived, hung on until he was 43. His legendary stuff was long gone by then, but Lefty loved to play ball. Ted Williams, who has a legitimate claim to being the greatest hitter ever, played until he was 41. Ted still hit .316 at age 41, which is amazing. He probably could have squeezed another year or two out of his body, but even the greatest hitter ever knew when it was time to hang it up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019ll be a sad day when it\u2019s finally over for Salvy. He\u2019s been one of my favorite Royals ever, one of the greatest Royals ever, and I\u2019ll miss seeing him on the field. He\u2019s my wife\u2019s favorite baseball player of all time. He\u2019s a lot of Royals fans\u2019 favorite player of all time. Maybe Salvy finds a way to turn back the clock and squeeze a few more home runs out of that bat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Once it\u2019s over, he\u2019s got a statue and a sure-fire induction into the Royals Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I love to read, and most of this winter and spring, I\u2019ve been laboring through Life: The Autobiography of Keith Richards<\/em>. I like the Stones and have always been fascinated by Richards, but man, it\u2019s a tough read. Speaking of old, I saw the Stones in Boulder in October 1981, and I thought Keef was old then! The funny thing is, he was only 37, almost the same age Sal Perez is now. If you\u2019d offered to bet me $100 that he\u2019d still be alive in 2026, I\u2019d have taken that bet. I finally gave up on the book about halfway through, but I\u2019ll try again when the weather cools off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the meantime, I picked up Jeff Pearlman\u2019s book The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson<\/em>. Having much more interest in Bo than Keith, I sailed through it, polishing it off within a week. If you\u2019ve followed Bo\u2019s career, a lot of the book will be familiar. Despite that, there was still lots of new material I hadn\u2019t been aware of. Pearlman did an outstanding job covering Bo\u2019s early years, his Auburn years, the drama leading to his selection by the Royals, and his time in Kansas City, including his relationship with the front office and his teammates. He also did an excellent job detailing Bo\u2019s rehab and comeback.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you were fortunate enough to see Bo play baseball or football, you knew you were witnessing one of the greatest athletes ever. Jim Brown deserves a seat at that table, along with Jim Thorpe. Brian Jordan and Deion Sanders will have their backers. But there was something special about Bo. It was a magical time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The other cool thing about the book was on page 309: a quote from our very own Max Rieper!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you\u2019re looking for something light and entertaining for the beach, you can do a lot worse than The Last Folk Hero<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In worthless baseball trivia, did you know that in the last 65 years, only one team\u2014the 2014\u201315 Royals\u2014lost a World Series Game 7, then came back and won a ring the next season? I\u2019ve said many times before: from the 2013 All-Star break to the final out of the 2015 World Series, those Royals were the best team in baseball. They were a joy to watch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With so many pitchers going under the knife, I came across this wonderful quip from Tommy John:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPrior to my surgery, I asked the surgeon to put in a Koufax fastball. They did, but it was Mrs. Koufax\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n John won 124 games and made one All-Star team in the 12 years prior to the surgery that now bears his name. He came back as a different pitcher but still managed to win another 164 games, make three more All-Star appearances, and pitch for 14 additional seasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n His arm finally gave out after his age-46 season. With so many of today\u2019s fireballers blowing out their shoulders and elbows, there must be a lesson in the Tommy John story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a man close to my age who works at a grocery store in my neighborhood. Often, when the weather is nice, I\u2019ll see him sitting outside his SUV during his lunch break playing his guitar. He\u2019s not busking for tips; he\u2019s just enjoying the sunshine and playing because he loves to play. Every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1957971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[445712],"class_list":["post-2441365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-kansas-city-royals-analysis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Salvador-Perez-continues-to-defy-normal-baseball-aging-curves.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441366,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441365\/revisions\/2441366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1957971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}