NEVER TOO OLD
65-and-over coaching contingent keeping sense of humor — and competitive edge
Area sports scene is loaded with coaches age 65 or older who are still going strong.
Dusty Baker pulled his signature wristbands up his forearm, as he does, because he is cool like that.
Soon after, he would pop a toothpick in his mouth and saunter out onto the field for the beginning of the 2021 Major League Baseball season.
This wasn’t Opening Day at Minute Maid Park. It was the first day of workouts with pitchers and catchers in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Baker has relished this moment ever since he made his first trip to spring training with the Braves in 1968, as an 18-year-old.
Fifty-three years later, the enthusiasm hasn’t waned and the desire to win a World Series is as strong as ever for the Astros’ second-year manager.
As for Baker becoming the fourth-oldest manager in MLB history when the regular season begins …
“Who cares?” said Baker, who will turn 72 in June. “I mean, I don’t care.
“I think they make too much of age, period. Everybody is trying to push out the old, and they try to make ’em feel old before they get old.
“Some people at 65 are old, and other people at 65 aren’t old. It depends on their mindset, depends on their outlook on life, and depends if they’re set in their ways or depends how their health is.
“Everybody said Tom Brady is too old. You know what I mean?”
The Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the game’s MVP a couple weeks ago at the ripe old football age of 43, is an inspiration for the senior generation.
Texas A&M women’s basketball coach Gary Blair, 75, pointed to Brady as evidence that winners win, regardless of their date of birth. He also saluted Bruce Arians (68) and Andy Reid (62), head coaches of Tampa Bay and Kansas City, respectively, who were the oldest pair of coaches to appear in a Super Bowl.
“Don’t you want to be coached by somebody that is glib and funny and understands that 50 Cent is a rapper and not a coin?” Blair said. “I mean, this is a true story, when Eminem came out, I thought, ‘That’s my favorite candy — the plain kind, not the peanut.’
“I didn’t know he was a rapper. Then he was a white rapper at that? That was back in the day. I had to catch up a little bit.”
With Baker, Blair, new Texans head coach David Culley and University of Houston men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson, who are both 65, old school is leading the way in these parts.
Culley will be the oldest Texans coach by a wide margin (not counting last season’s interim coach Romeo Crennel, 73).
Gary Kubiak and Dom Capers were both 55 in their final year with the Texans. Bill O’Brien was just 51 when he was fired in October.
Some coaches who we tend to look at as grandfatherly were younger than you probably think.
Bum Phillips was only 57 when he was fired by Oilers owner Bud Adams and was last on an NFL sideline at just 62.
Bill Yeoman was only 58 when he stopped coaching at the University of Houston.
Guy V. Lewis was less than two weeks shy of his 66th birthday when he coached his final game
UH in 1986.
“Most of the guys my age that I went to high school with are retired,” Sampson said. “Whatever their given profession, schoolteachers or whatever.
“I got a Medicare card for the first time. I didn’t know much about all that stuff. I’d heard about it, but I always thought that was for the old guys. Then I looked around one day and said, ‘I am the old guy.’ ”
Sampson is a funny guy, not an old one.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the aforementioned senior coaches are entertaining interviewees. But these hard-driving coaches, who take their sports seriously, know how to laugh and enjoy life.
Don’t even try to get them to talk about slowing down.
“I enjoy coaching, I know how to coach,” Sampson said. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Sampson, who is in his 32nd season as a head coach and seventh at UH, says coaches such as Baker and Blair and him are in the “KMA” stage of their careers and more likely to tell critics what they can kiss. They are hardly concerned with what social media trolls say or some smart aleck columnist writes.
“Coaching is so much harder today for young coaches,” Sampson said. “I don’t think older coaches really care what people think about them anymore. We’re old enough to know better.”
Blair, who led the Aggies to a national championship in 2011 and was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame two years later, didn’t get a head coaching job until he was 40. Divorced for a few years, he got married in November and says he still has plenty of living and coaching to do.
“I’m not going to be Grandpa Blair,” he said. “I’m going to have fun with my players. I’m going to be as up to date as I can be. I learned my lesson on Eminem. I definitely know who Drake is.
“I’m crappy around the house. I can’t do anything there. If I was a scratch golfer, maybe then I would retire and be out there taking everybody’s money on the golf course. I learned to do what I do best.”
Don’t fall for it. Blair, who played baseball at Texas Tech, is a 10-handicapper. He’s winning on the basketball court and the golf course.
Baker will be behind only Connie Mack (87 years old with the Philadelphia A’s in 1950), Jack McKeon (80 with the Marlins in 2011), Casey Stengel (74 with the Mets in 1965).
While there is no such thing as a fountain of youth, Baker says he gains strength from a youthful outlook on life.
Age isn’t a number, it’s a mentality — a tip Baker said he picked up from Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco.
“He’s the coolest old dude that I know,” Baker said. “I said, ‘Man, how you stay so cool?’ He told me don’t let the old man in.
“Don’t shuffle your feet, don’t bend over at the waist, walk with your shoulders square and back. That was the greatest tip that I had. … I ain’t letting the old man in.”
Baker says he has to stay young to keep up with his 21-year-old son and a 1-year-old grandson.
“Plus, my dad died of dementia, (as did) a couple of uncles, so I’m very aware of staying sharp,” he said. “You have to keep your brain motivated. There’s no reason to listen to what other people are saying (about your age).”
Rival schools use his age against him in recruiting, but
Blair says he isn’t going anywhere. He has drawn inspiration from something Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who turned 74 last week, told him a few years ago.
“I asked him how he stays relevant to today’s players and today’s assistants, and he said, ‘They’re gonna get the best of me, because I’m a better coach now than I ever was back in the day,’” Blair said. “I’ve tried to use that.
“My players and coaches are gonna get the best of me.”
In that sense, age is a bonus.
Area sports scene loaded with coaches 65 and over who refuse to slow down