Snarky headline aside, the New York Times and Associated Press really has been on a roll lately with their sports coverage of the elderly. Two recent articles celebrating people whose unique perspective on sports is only partially due to their long experience on our planet. My suspicion is that these two characters would have been interesting subjects for profiles twenty years ago, forty years ago, even seventy five years ago!
A Hole in One for a 103-Year-Old Golfer
by The Associated Press in the New York Times
Gus Andreone, an 103 year-old resident of Sarasota, Florida, recently became the oldest person to hit a hole in one. Two things popped out to me in this short profile. First, in hitting a hole in one, Andreone took the record away from its previous owner, an 102 year old woman. I’d like to know what her story was! Second, I love that Andreone claims to have hit eight holes in one since 1939 and that he seems to fully expect to hit another in his life. Let’s hope he does!
He said he used a driver on the 113-yard 14th hole of the Lakes Course, like he normally does, but then noticed something different. The ball hit the ground about 30 yards from the green and then rolled into the hole, he said.
His golf partners jumped up and down, but Andreone kept his cool.
“I can’t say that I felt any different about one or the other,” he said of his most recent ace. “I just felt another hole in one.”
At 107, a Buffalo Bills Fan Who Sees It All
by Andrea Elliott for the New York Times
There’s so much to love about this profile of Evelyn Elliott, a 107 year old Buffalo Bills fan. It was written by her granddaughter, Andrea Elliott, and Elliott’s love and familiar granddaughterly bemusement come through brilliantly in her writing. Evelyn Elliott, the subject of the piece, is an inspiring woman. Although her first date with the man who eventually became her husband was to a football game, it wasn’t until after he became sick, six months before his death, (and 65 years after their first football date,) that she got into football. Since then, she has been a true fan of the Buffalo Bills and nothing in this article suggests that will change any time soon. The Bills were eliminated from the playoffs last weekend, after this article came out, and I’m sure Elliott is disappointed but I’m equally sure that she will be in her living room to watch them finish out the year against the New England Patriots this coming Sunday. She’s a true fan!
I kept trying to discern what it was about the game that captivated Grandma’s mind. I knew she paid close attention to strategy.
“What do you think happens in the huddle?” I tried.
“They decide what to do,” she sniffed (in the tone of “Are you an idiot or what?”).
I have interviewed militant jihadists, prosecutors, drug dealers and counterterrorism specialists at the Central Intelligence Agency. None of them prepared me for the challenge of extracting personal information from my grandmother.
At the beginning of the third quarter last Sunday, with the score tied, 10-10, I started up with my questions again. She frowned.
“I can’t concentrate when people talk,” she snapped.
Grandma’s spectator style might best be described as Zen. She watches the game closely and calmly, getting neither flustered nor excited. This disposition mirrors her general approach to life.
“I just go with it,” she likes to say. “I take it as it comes. Let the best man win.”
, is an insightful, challenging book about America, one that has incisive insight into this fall’s cultural issues.
, 
, and 
by Jonah Winter.
