Watching pro athletes get ravaged by time is one of the saddest things a sports fan can endure. It's the great unspoken sub-plot which counters the glory of sport at played at its highest level.
Sports fans bear witness to athletes who have based their entire lives on their ability to do something faster or stronger than ordinary men, but find themselves suddenly, tragically made mortal by the relentless turn of the calendar page. The mental adjustment is impossible for many athletes to make, and often sad to see.
Unless it's happening to Ratbird linebacker Ray Lewis.
In which case, of course, it's freakin' hilarious.
Lewis never really brought much of anything to the sport of professional football other than sheer physicality and desire to be seen as a less-crafty NFL equivalent of a spotted hyena.
Do you think the Ravens have employed Lewis because of his knowledge of the sport? His locker room presence? His canny ability to read plays?
Please. Lewis was tolerated because he was a beast who ran around, hit people, and sometimes hurt them. With that ability gone, he's as easily deleted as an old email from David Modell.
"You done with that roster spot yet, Gramps? We've got some other kids who want to play".
Yet, Lewis is still hanging around, yapping to the press with oblivious self-delusion about how he's reversed the aging process.
For example, Ray-Ray apparently doesn't run around with his posse all night anymore. He's started turning in after watching reruns of Matlock or Jag, and gets "10 hours of sleep a night, and some nights... like 12 or 14 hours".
WTF, Grandpa? Are you a hyena or a perpetually somnolent tree sloth? WE MUST PROTECT THIS... THIS... ZZZZZzzzzzz *snort*
SKM doesn't realize that sleeping more is something that old folks do. They put their teeth in a jar by their bed and turn in at 9PM.
I think we all have seen that guy who continues to hang with high school kids until he's in his mid-twenties, or the recently-divorced dude who decides that he's going to pretend that he's 21 again.
That's Ray Lewis, dancing like a pumped-up chicken after making a tackle ten yards downfield, prior to vanishing from the action during crunchtime.
Meanwhile, Terrell Suggs gently and slowly creeps a step at a time away from the wild-eyed senile bastard, hoping to make sure he's not in camera shot while Lewis jumps around shouting out catchphrases that got retired by their original teenage users after they got a real job after high school.
Welcome to retirement, you delusional asshat. You just don't know you're washed-up and useless now. No one cares about you anymore.
Seriously, 2000 was a long freaking time ago. STFU, Gramps.