Why do we feel sad when some one retires?
Picture: Fred Savage in The Wonder Years
Many years ago, I got my first cricket bat - a yellow plastic bat. As time went by, I got my cheap quality wood bat and then the Kashmir Willow which was every kid’s dream. However, I kept that plastic bat with me for a number of years. I still feel a rush of blood when I see a photograph of me holding that plastic cricket bat. Some how, I never felt the same with the cricket bats I got later although, without doubt, they were of a much higher quality.
The same goes for sports persons we idolise. We might see many over our life time – some of who will be unquestionably better. However, the newer sportspersons will never leave the same impression on our minds. You forge a bond with the player you see on the television set and the bond inspires you in many multifarious ways in those impressionable years. The sports person becomes a part of you sooner than you can realise.
It is obvious that we will feel sad when the group of sports persons we grew up idolising start retiring one after the other. Nanda Kishore, a sports blogger I love reading whenever he does write, after reading an interview of Sandip Patil says this:
The interview is a routine one, but it is so easy to forget people like Sandip Patil. One of my great regrets is not having watched him at his peak, when he famously took on the likes of Len Pascoe and Bob Willis. Like most Indians who grew up in the eighties, I have watched clips of the 1983 World Cup semis and finals over and over again, and Patil remains a dashing, enigmatic hero, a Jim Morrison kind of figure. Watching that disdainful hoick off Bob Willis that sails over deep square leg gives me the goosebumps everytime…
… So Sandy (Sandip Patil) is 50. Steve Waugh has retired. Boris Becker is in the commentary box or on the Laureus foundation panel. In a couple of weeks or so, Andre Agassi will be just another suburban Dad. I feel old. Actually, I feel fucking ancient.
Why does Nanda Kishore feel old, ancient and disgusted? One by one, he has seen the sports persons he grew up with hang up their boots. So, he is all familiar with this horrid feeling. With the realisation that with Agassi, the last of the pack would have gone, the feeling is painful. Agassi played a large part of his tennis when I grew up as well and with him, the last of the tennis players from my era is gone. I won’t see Sampras, Monica Seles or Andre Agassi play professional tennis live again. I might feel sadder even when Kumble, Lara and Tendulkar finally call it quits because I would have no one from my wonder years playing.
Why do feel so sad? A part of us dies with the retirement of these heroes. That’s why.
On a related note, my remembrances of Agassi and a take on Sampras and the greats can be read here and here respectively.
