David Wooderson is a character in "Dazed and Confused". He talks about aging relative to high school girls.
Here, his thoughts are adapted for baseball by Will Leitch:
The Five Stages of Baseball Woodersonism:
• Youth. All baseball players are older than you. They are immortal.
• Peerism. Rookies are your age; you watch up-and-coming prospects while you're busy gaining your freshman 15. You might have had a class with a couple of these guys.
• Peak years. This is when you are the same age as the superstars, mid-to-late 20s, when players are at their absolute best and you begin to wonder, "Hey, I better start making some life decisions pretty soon. That woman I went to high school with, she's a big shot lawyer now, and I've been tending bar here for five years."
• Established veteran. This is when the players who were rookies when you were in college start getting called "grizzled." (Lance Berkman, who had a fully grey beard and looked like your grandfather by the time he retired, is a year younger than me. The last few years of his career were … difficult for me.)
• Retirement. Baseball players your age start to hang 'em up while you're still figuring out when to start tackling that student loan.
• Manager. "Wait, how in the world is Dave Roberts -- that Dave Roberts? -- old enough to be a baseball manager? Oh, and you're telling me that Raul Mondesi's son is in the Majors now?"
• Death. Don't worry, baseball players never die, and neither will you.