A Gray Day (One Sixty-Two: Day 135)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Thirty-Five: Brian Bannister, Kansas City Royals

I was just washing my hands in a museum bathroom. I didn’t expect anything special out of that. But when I glanced in the mirror, I got a glimpse of what I’d been dreading.

There they were, clear as day: Two gray hairs.

White, to be more precise. Both to the right of my forehead, where the hairline meets the temple. Even for a guy taking a quick glance at himself in the bathroom, this was unmistakable.

I stepped away from the mirror, left the room, and walked over to our friend Elizabeth, whose family was at the museum with us. I asked her if she’d ever found any gray in her own hair. Elizabeth, who is younger than me, said indeed, she had many. She explained that her husband had specifically asked that she not dye her hair and leave those gray hairs just as they are. Elizabeth and her husband, Brent, are two of the most compassionate individuals you’ll find on the face of the earth. So the fact that Brent found beauty in Elizabeth’s gray hair and that she seemed so accepting of her grayness was of no surprise to me.

And then Elizabeth showed us her gray hair, and as Amy and I looked, it was shocking to me how beautiful it really was. Her brown hair dominated, but the occasional strands of gray blended in with the expressionistic splash of a Jackson Pollock painting. I told her that I couldn’t imagine straight brown hair looking better than that. Amy agreed.

So as I welcome these flecks of white to my own brown hair, I think of Elizabeth and the promise that can come with this “crown of splendor,” as the Bible calls gray hair. It’s true that I’m not a kid anymore – heck, I have watched Brian Bannister pitch for the Kansas City Royals, and I’ve also watched Brian’s father, Floyd, pitch for the Seattle Mariners. So I’ve been around for a while.”Let’s face it, Daddy,” my 8-year-old said to me on the way home. “You are getting old.” Thanks, kid. Much appreciated.

Getting older has a lot of benefits, patience with your oh-too-honest children being one of them. Right now, though, I’d like to think about the ways in which age equals beauty. I don’t have long hair like Elizabeth, so I’ll look to embrace more of the George Clooney gray-hair look.

I checked the mirror again when I got home. Still there. Deep breath. Exhale. You can do this, kid. Old kid. Old guy. You can do it just fine. Gray is the new black.