THE YEAR OF THE OLD SPORT : OLDER IS BECOMING BETTER : Advancements in Conditioning and Surgery--and More Money--Allow Athletes to Last Longer

A ging has always been an athlete’s most feared oppo nent. It is the invisible tackler that catches you from behind, the wicked curve ball that leaves you standing flat-footed, the unreachable passing shot that makes you realize your sport is zipping by you by.

It may sound obvious, but advancing age simply is the reason most athletes retire from competitive sports.

Unlike most professions, though, athletes are handed a gold stop watch and sent packing to retirement villas--or the real-life job market--much earlier than the rest of us.

For above average major league baseball players, it comes in their mid-30s. Most National Football League players don’t make it much past 30, and both the National Basketball Assn. and National Hockey League report that the average career-span for their players is about four years. Women gymnasts and swimmers find that their careers are over about the time of their senior proms, but competitors in other sports such as golf and auto racing can still be productive well into mid-life crisis.

But it seems there always have been athletes who have successfully, if temporarily, reversed the aging process.

Those who think Jim Plunkett, a 16-year veteran, is unique because he was a starting NFL quarterback at 39 might not recall that Y.A. Tittle played 17 years and led the league in passing at 37 in 1963, his second-to-last season. Or they don’t remember that Earl Morrall also played 17 years and led the AFC in passing at 38 in 1972, his final season.

Phil Niekro, current master of the knuckleball, may be special because he is still pitching in the major leagues at 47. But Hoyt Wilhelm, the knuckleball precursor to Niekro, was 50 when he finally retired in 1973.

But 1986 seemed to produce more than its share of successful older athletes, all born when records by Glenn Miller sold as fast as those by Bruce Springsteen today.

Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at 46, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar kept making sky hooks with regularity at 39, Bill Shoemaker won the Kentucky Derby at 54, Don Sutton proved that longevity can translated into 300 wins at 41. And Sutton’s team, the Angels, showed that a club with nine players 35 or older can win the American League West.

There are, basically, three reasons why athletes retire: 1) debilitating injury; 2) burnout; or 3) a loss of ability through age or lack of conditioning.

That’s been the same from Jim Thorpe’s era to Jim McMahon’s.

But today, athletes in all sports seem to be competing longer, and there also appear to be three basic reasons for that: 1) the lure of big money; 2) improvements in training and conditioning; and 3) advances in sports medicine.

Because the study of aging athletes still is in its infancy, experts in sports medicine, exercise physiology and sports psychology are not yet ready to say there is a trend toward longer careers. But they, too, have noticed changes in the last decade.

“I don’t think it is so surprising,” said Dr. Michael Pollack, director of the center for exercise science at the University of Florida. “We don’t have all the answers, but we do know the body can take the wear and tear of a long career if you take care of yourself. Physiologically, we don’t know the limits yet.”

Dr. Tony Daly, chief medical officer of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and team doctor for the Clippers, said: “It turns out now that a lot of the limits and parameters we put on age are just artificial. Who would think that a baseball pitcher could still throw at 50? Or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar still playing at that level near 40? A lot of athletes used to come into my office and say, ‘Hey, I’m 35. I shouldn’t be playing this game anymore.’ I don’t hear that as much now.”

Ken Ravizza, a Cal State Fullerton sports psychologist who has worked with the Angels and the University of Nebraska football team, said: “What it really comes down to with most older athletes is that the pain of where their careers have dropped is more than the pain of the changes that come from quitting. These people used to be the best, then they find themselves, at 38, and nothing to do.

“Or you get the players like Reggie (Jackson, age 40) who hang on primarily for the moments of glory that touch their lives. They know damn well that they won’t have that exhilaration of turning on a crowd once they quit.”

These days, what doctors and coaches hear most from athletes is something to the extent of this: How can I extend my career? The key, athletes are told, is to maintain physical conditioning during the offseason, implement a weight training regimen, somehow avoid serious injuries (or find a good orthopedic surgeon if you do get hurt) and keep convincing yourself that you are not too old to play.

“One simple reason is that they are taking better care of themselves now than 25 years ago,” Daly said. “They used to get out of shape in the offseason, go on the (lecture/free-meal) circuit and then try to get back into shape. That has a been cumulative effect on the body. As muscles go, they tend to get more fatty deposits and then the athletes try to burn it off. As you get older, it gets harder and harder to do that. It’s easier to stay in shape than to get out of shape and then back into shape for years. More guys are doing that now and playing into their 40s and 50s.

“Weight training programs have really only come into use in the last 10 to 15 years. I remember back in 1974 or ‘75, I was the doctor for the U.S. women’s swim team when the East German women came in for a meet. It was their big women against our little women, and we got our butts kicked. That’s when they started realizing there was something to this weight training, which they had done in Europe for years.”

Even if athletes maintain optimum fitness, there still is a limit to how long the human body can perform at the high level necessary for competitive sports.

“Up until age 60, the loss in strength and endurance is relatively small--less than 1% per year,” said Dr. David Costill, director of Ball State University’s human performance laboratory. “We find that people can continue to train at near the same level at age 50 and 60, but very few people continue to do that.”

By the time athletes are 40, however, the accumulative loss of strength and endurance might make a difference, be it slight or major, in performance. Also, exercise physiologists contend that people gradually lose flexibility, reaction time and the ability to quickly repair connective tissue.

In other words, they age .

But a study by Pollack showed that athletes do not significantly lose fitness, at least aerobicly. In the soon-to-be-published study, Pollack tested the strength and aerobic capacity of masters (50 and over) distance runners in 1974 and again in 1983.

“We saw a downward trend in aerobic capacity, about 9% to 10% per decade back in the 1970s,” Pollack said. “But in 1982, we found that the 11 people who trained in the same manner as before were still able to run the same distance, same intensity and for the same duration for the decade. But the 14 who reduced training over the decade, cutting back in intensity, followed the normal aging curve of 9% to 10% reduction in aerobic capacity.

“That suggests that lifestyle has a big effect. We’re not saying you can train the same way from 20 to 80, but they won’t lose it nearly as fast as people who don’t train. We did body composition, and the runners who kept training lost just an average of four pounds per person of muscle mass over 10 years. That, to me, is mind boggling.”

Dr. Philip B. Smith, of the San Diego Sports Medicine and Vision Center, was quoted in The Physician and Sports Medicine magazine as saying that age significantly affects vision and coordination. Smith tested members of the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins and found that eye-hand coordination and visual reaction speed dropped 8% to 10% every five years between 20 and 40.

But Smith said depth perception improved with age and training, meaning that the baseball players’ visual reaction times improved with age and experience.

One thing athletes can’t see coming is injuries, which can end the careers of even the fittest athletes at their prime. Such as Bobby Orr. Or Gale Sayers. Or Ruffian.

Although the recent advances in sports medicine could not have saved the career of Ruffian--the outstanding filly fractured a leg in a match race against Forego in 1975 and had to be destroyed--perhaps it could have extended that of Orr and Sayers, both of whom had bad knees.

Arthroscopic surgery to repair cartilage, ligaments and tendons in knees and other joints was not widely used until the late 1970s, too late to help Orr and Sayers. Before the arthroscope, any knee surgery was major or even career threatening. Now, for instance, doctors can repair a torn cartilage in an athlete’s knee and have him or her back in action in a month, sometimes sooner.

“The knee is the big thing in any sport,” Daly said. “That tends to go with athletes. It’s just not meant for that type of stress. I’d say the older athletes we see, especially older football players, along about 40 or 50, their knees are in trouble. They are out of the sport and they have arthritis the rest of their lives.”

Recovering from an injury, Daly said, is more difficult when an athlete is older.

“Without getting too technical, it has to do with loss of collagen (fibrous protein in tissue, bone and cartilage),” Daly said. “Age 18 versus 30 and 30 versus 45 is a big difference in the mechanics of healing.”

Baseball pitchers, by and large, now have longer careers, thanks in part to conditioning and science. Doctors can save careers of pitchers with torn tendons in the elbow or shoulder--Tommy John’s was the first--by grafting tendon from another part of the body and repairing the injured area.

There also use of biomechanics, a computer analysis of motions such as pitching and running developed by physicist Gideon Ariel.

“I remember when that started, many of the older coaches were against things like that,” Daly said. “Older coaches in track and field used to think no weight training would work. They thought that filming their athletes running didn’t work and that you couldn’t teach speed. If there is something wrong with a pitcher’s mechanics, they can now stop it and prevent shoulder and elbow problems.”

Said Costill: “If you look at activities where orthopedics is involved (football, basketball, etc.) the span of those careers are not as long as non-impact sports. But even swimming and cycling is limited because we’ve found they lose strength.”

Losing confidence in ability is another problem for older athletes.

“Being old is not really chronological, it’s mental,” said Thomas Tutko, a San Jose State sports psychologist who has worked with professional and Olympic athletes. “I’ve met athletes who have felt over-the-hill at 23. That’s because they have been at it since 7.”

Experts say there are no proven physiological reasons why swimmers, particularly women, should be washed up in their early 20s, or why women gymnasts rarely compete past their teens. It is a combination of burnout and a culture in which girls previously have not been encouraged to continue competing.

Costill said swimmers, who also start young, quit well before their bodies tell them it’s time.

“Men and women swimmers may quit at 20, but, physically, that’s 5 or 10 years short of their peak,” he said. “When the ’80 Olympics were canceled (at least for United States competitors), a lot of swimmers--such as Rowdy Gaines--hung around until the ’84 Games and they were still physically able to do it. They had the motivation.”

Ravizza, who has worked with teen-age gymnasts and figure skaters, said that early burnout often is inevitable.

“Girl figure skaters work 50 weeks a year, 6 hours a day for 6 days a week since age 9, and burnout appears often, especially when they hit a streak when there is no reward (major competition),” Ravizza said. “The sport loses its meaning to them. It starts manifesting itself in their performance . . . When the stresses have more impact on them than the enjoyment, that’s when you see burnout.”

Said Tutko: “I usually find burnout in sports where a lot of practice is necessary. All of a sudden, it’s not worth it.”

Tutko says that most of the cases he sees involves athletes trying to hold on past their primes.

“They worry about what they are going to do after sports,” he said. “A lot of denial goes on. Usually, they think it’s just temporary, that they’ll get it back.”

Perhaps one reason professional athletes want longer careers is that the money is so good that they take a severe pay cut once they retire. It wasn’t like that two or three decades ago.

“Of course, they look at the money as a motivation to keep playing,” Daly said. “But there also are guys who just do it out of pride, who have built up their body to do whatever they want it to do. They don’t think it can betray them.”

Eventually, of course, all athletes must retire. When that happens, it is no longer essential to an athlete’s livelihood that he stay in shape and their once hard bodies become as flabby as the rest of us.

In fact, sometimes former star athletes let themselves go to such an extent that the expression “larger than life” takes on more than one meaning.