Bartolo Colón, One of the Last of His Kind
As baseball grows younger and faster, there’s less opportunity for the type of late-stage reinvention that salvaged the Texas Rangers pitcher’s career.
Much of the attention paid to this Major League Baseball season has centered on the promise of youth and the intrigue of the future. The Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, who despite his half-decade reign as the sport’s top player is still only 26, is having the best season of his career. And he’s joined, for good measure, by the 23-year-old rookie sensation Shohei Ohtani, the first viable pitcher/hitter . The Yankees–Red Sox rivalry, that old favorite of TV executives, has been enlivened by a on each side. More broadly, the changing shape of the game—its ever-increasing affinity, borne up by the analytics revolution, for home runs and strikeouts—is a matter of daily conversation. To a
