Look, I should state outright: I don’t actually know how old you personally are. Maybe you’re a sprightly 17-year-old with your entire future ahead of you. Maybe you’re a youthful 22, just setting out in the world. Maybe you’re in your fifties, but with that new diet and exercise regimen, you feel better than you ever have in your life.
Or maybe you saw that Juan Uribe Jr just signed a professional baseball contract, and your bones are turning to dust.
(Side note: fantastic Juan Uribe outfit there. Proud of him)
It’s not like we haven’t seen the sons of baseball players already. I mean, the Blue Jays alone have Cavan Biggio, Bo Bichette, and Vlad Jr. But Juan Uribe (Senior, and apparently I’ll have to call him that for this entire newsletter) is different from Craig Biggio, Dante Bichette, and Vladimir Guerrero.
Uribe was from this generation of baseball player. Biggio, Bichette, and Guerrero — BB&G, as I’ll call them, because that’s fun — were all from the last one. Biggio and Bichette were quintessential ‘90s players; Guerrero broke in a few years later, and lasted all the way until 2011, but he came up in that generation, playing through both the Ignoring Steroids Because They Make Money years and the Steroids Are Now Public Enemy Number One years.
Juan Uribe, who broke into the majors with the Rockies in 2001 and really established himself with the White Sox in 2004, only played through the latter. More importantly, he played until 2016, lasting into the social media age, when Facebook and Twitter were not just signing up boatloads of users, but also ruining the world.
I mean, the man even inspired a great tweet as a player! In real time!
Juan Uribe played after financial flexibility had become a buzzword. He played after the launch of The Athletic1. He played after the cracks had started to show in Theranos. He played after the release of Captain America: Civil War. His playing career ended a few years ago, but it’s certainly the recent past, during years any non-child would remember.
Now he has a 16 year old son who is a professional baseball player.
It’s entirely possible that Juan Uribe Jr will not end up in the major leagues. He is now a prospect, after all, and any given prospect who gets a $200,000 signing bonus is a longshot to make the majors, no matter his bloodline. It’s not like we need to panic about this.
On the other hand, it means we’re all old. All of us who remember the 2010 World Series? Old. We’re old, and there’s no magic beach to blame it on.
Because when Juan Uribe Senior was a Giant, I was in my mid-20s. When he hit that homer in Game 6 of the 2010 NLCS, I was physically capable of drinking multiple alcoholic beverages without feeling sleepy. When he went to the Dodgers, I was able to keep up with most of the TV shows that critics liked.
Now I’m different, and the world is too. I have a mortgage, and that’s a lucky thing. I have several dozen non-fiction books about history that I have yet to read. When people talk about whatever’s going on in Marvel or Star Wars now — two topics that I used to know reasonably well — I am lucky to understand them a quarter of the time.
The world has simply kept turning, and I was here the whole time, and now, suddenly2 Juan Uribe has a 16-year-old son, and the world is not going to stop turning. Baseball players will retire and their children will show up and start playing, and I will tell uninterested youths that I remember Mickey Ohtani's dad, and he was a hell of a player.
This is the circle of life, and like everyone, like you and your parents and your friends and that guy who pissed you off that time, I’m caught in it with no way out but through. I will only get older, feel older, become more out-of-touch, seem like more of a relic, forget that The Dark Knight Rises is 10 years old, and convince myself that Johan Santana still has a couple good years left in him.
Our formative memories of baseball, and the most memorable experiences we had, were a long time ago. The last of those three World Series is almost hitting its 10-year anniversary. The only paths left are to deny it or embrace it. You can either try to become a genderfluid influencer on Insta, or you can write a newsletter on Substack that you promote on Twitter — like an old — and give up on being cool.
I think my choice, for one, is clear. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a book about the Ottoman Empire to finish.
Technically, after the launch of The Athletic Chicago, the only part of the site that was up during his playing career. But still! It counts!
Actually, this likely happened at the normal pace