Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1912 — FRISKY ATHLETE AT SIXTY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FRISKY ATHLETE AT SIXTY

“Pop” Anson Says Its Mistake for Pro* fessionals to Go Back—Should Be Best at 45. There’s nothing to the general belief that the efficiency of professional athletes is necessarily short lived, declares “Pop” Anson, “the grand old man of baseball,” former captain of the Chicago National League team. Vigorous training is conducive to long life and rugged health, he contends,rather than to the quick decay of museular tissue and vitality. Athletes should be at their best at 45, he says. “Pop” himself is a robust testimonial to the truth of this theory. After 27 years of professional baseball, during which time he never was out of training, and at the age of 60 now, he is a rugged, hearty, agile athlete still, ready at any time to play a hard game of ball, roll a half dozen games of ten pins, do 18 holes at golf or tramp all day behind the dogs in the hunting field. His eye is clear, his step elastic and hiß carriage as erect as the day he first donned a uniform in a ball club. At the conclusion of a monologue he Is giving at the Garden theater this week he does a “buck and wing” dance with the agility of a boy. He rises at 6 o’clock every morning, and when the weather is fair and links accessible, he seldom misses a round at golf before lunch time. “Stars in all lines of sport life rise so suddenly and descend so quickly that the public has come to anticipate the decline of an athlete within a year or two or three after he gets in the championship class,” Captain Anson said. “As a matter of fact a young man, say 25 years old, who excels in any branch of athletics should continue to improve each year for 20 years. A prize fighter should be at his best at 45 and in condition for the battle of his life, rather than a fat, broken old has-been. • “It’s too strenuous relaxation, and not too strenuous training, that kills off athletes. They abuse themselves by dissipation, or permit themselves to get out of condition between occasions of supreme effort, and must go through an exhausting grind to get hack Into shape. By dissipation I don’t mean necessarily hard drinking or similar harmful practices. A man can dissipate in his eating as well as in drinking and injure himself just as much. Temperance and moderation in all things is essential to prolonged physical efficiency. “It makes me tired to hear that some grand performer in athletics who has dazzled the world with his superiority for a year or two is going back.’ I know what it means—that that champ has had his head turned by success and prosperity, drifted into speedy company and is going the ’joy riding’ route to oblivion. He is a victim of overtraining* aIT right—Overtraining with the happy water and the bright lights and all that goes with them. "Training to an athlete Is what oil is to a machine, and keeping him-

sell in fighting condition all the time should be harmful no more thah keeping a machine In the best working condition would be. The history ol the world proves that intellectual workers who travel at their best pace all the time last longer .than the spasmodic or hall-hearted, and I believe the Bame is true ol athletes. 01 course, there’s such a thing hs overdoing it, and overexertion either in training or contests works a permanent injury. But barring such mishaps, the only thing the temperate and intelligent athlete has to fear is old age.”

“Pop” Anson,