Guide me, O Babe Ruth

So today I turn 32 years old. It's not all that bad, but there are some key ways I know I'm getting older.

*Just about all of my favorite athletes are younger than me.
*My ten-year college reunion is this year.
*The players that signed college football letters of intent yesterday were born when I was in high school.
*I have been driving for half my life.

So it's easy to get down. Especially waking up with knee pain, needing to use the nose hair trimmer (and it subsequently sounding like a weed wacker upon insertion to my nose), contemplating wearing ear plugs to concerts, and yelling at the television - these are ways I know that I'm just flat out getting older.

Now that I'm having a baby - or at least being present while a baby I have fathered is born - that's one more step on the timeline. I'll be 37 when he/she is born starts school. I'll be 50 when he/she graduates from high school.

But someone made me feel better. And that person is Babe Ruth.

Why Babe Ruth? Because his birthday is four days after mine, and at Age 32, he did the following:

Played in 151 of 154 games. Led the American League with 158 runs. Led the AL with 137 walks. Led the AL with just 89 strikeouts. Led the AL with a .486 on-base percentage. Led the AL with a .772 slugging percentage. Led the AL with a 1.258 OPS. Let the AL with a 225 OPS+. Why was his slugging percentage (and as a result, his OPS and OPS+) so high? Because 1927 was the year that Babe Ruth - at age 32 - hit 60 home runs, a record that stood until Roger Maris hit 61 homers in 1961 (in more games) and subsequently Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds hit more.

Here's how it broke down:
April: .333/.507/.588 - 4HR
May: .349/.473/.774 - 12HR
June: .382/.510/.829 - 9HR
July: .423/.549/.793 - 9HR
August: .256/.407/.656 - 9HR (slacker)
September: .368/.468/.896 - 17HR

17 homers in a month! Five of those 17 homers came against the Red Sox in two days (Sept 6/7). And he hit seven homers in his final nine games of the season - when he was over halfway to 33 years old.

Am I Babe Ruth? I eat just about like he did, so I continue to honor his legacy. But keep in mind, at age 32, Babe Ruth turned in one of the best performances in baseball history.

Also happening on February 2:
The National League is founded (1876)
James Joyce is born (1882)
Ayn Rand is born (1905)
Grand Central Terminal - my absolute favorite place on earth - opens (1913)
Pretentious chef Ina Garten is born (1948)
Sid Vicious dies (1979)
White Stripes break up (2011)