Shall we play a game?

Computers and games have enjoyed a wildly successful partnership for decades, and now comes word of a new collaboration: A field sport that combines elements of soccer, basketball, and Ultimate Frisbee. A game with built-in ethical rules from a curious source. A game invented by a computer.

Earlier this year, a team of designers in Portland, Oregon, tasked their artificial intelligence system with building a new team sport for us humans. The result of that pet project, Speedgate, is being heralded as the first viable AI-created field game. Speedgate has since become an indie sports phenomenon, with proposed leagues in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Speedgate got big fast, but its creators didn’t start with serious ambitions. It began when a small group of designers at AKQA, a creative agency office in Portland, were trying to come up with a project for a local design festival.

“We all love sports; one of our big clients is Nike,” says AKQA creative director Whitney Jenkins. “We thought: What if we built an AI model and tried to create a new sport?”

The designers wanted a game that was fun, easy to learn, and accessible for a broad range of players. So they turned to a commercially available AI system called a recurrent neural network, or RNN. This is the same kind of AI that programs robot control systems and speech recognition programs, AI that quite literally teaches itself through repetition and trial-and-error decisions. The programmers trained the system by feeding it information on more than 400 games, from basketball to biathlon, cricket to cornhole.

The AI mixed and matched elements and made suggestions, spitting out concepts and phrases in basic descriptive terms. Team members then translated the suggestions into natural language and fed the ideas back into the machine. With each round of translation and processing, more details took shape.

“For instance, the AI might say: ‘Game where for to hand ball throw two players jump and kick,’” Jenkins says. “You take the output and tell the computer: ‘Say it like this: A game where two players kick and push a ball.’ You give that back, and the computer starts thinking that way. Eventually, the AI starts making suggestions like: ‘A game where anyone can pass and kick.’”

Eventually the AI started to generate “sport-like ideas,” Jenkins says with a chuckle. “One of my favorites could be described as a version of tennis: Two players hitting a ball back and forth, but they are balancing on a tightrope that’s being elevated into the air by two hot air balloons.”

The system also suggested an exploding Frisbee game and a kind of underwater parkour. After weeks of data-crunching and translation, the designers narrowed the field to 10 games, test-played them at a local park, then narrowed them down to three. Finally they arrived at the best version of the best idea: Speedgate.

Played by two teams of six, Speedgate is a fast-moving game in which players throw or kick a rugby training ball to teammates, but can’t run with or carry the ball. The objective is to move the ball through a gate in the center of the playing field, which then opens up that side of the field for a scoring opportunity. The team then aims to kick or throw the ball through another gate at the end of the playing field, which can be of variable size, depending on space.

Here come the twists: The gates at each end work like soccer goals, except that there is no net. So teams can score from either side of the gate. A team wins bonus points if it scores a goal, then immediately passes the ball back through the gate — a play called a ricochet.

Somehow, the AI seemed interested in fair play.

AKQA has set up an interactive online tutorial that highlights other unique qualities of the game, each generated by the AI. For instance, if a team claims to have scored a goal or rebound, but actually didn’t, then the points are awarded to the opposing team. It’s one of several elements the AI introduced that appears to promote ethical play.

“We haven’t really been able to dig out where it got these sportsmanship elements,” Jenkins said. “But somehow, it seemed interested in fair play.”

Andrew Wilson, a 22-year-old electrical engineer in Phoenix, read about Speedgate earlier this year and started a weekly game at a local park with friends from college. He said the game’s seemingly random assortment of rules and gameplay features actually clicks together nicely.

“The very first time that I actually played the sport, I was honestly surprised at how fun it was,” says Wilson, who was initially just curious about the AI aspect. “I thought that it would have all kinds of weird rules, but, surprisingly, it was really well-thought-out. It’s all about teamwork. You have to play the game as a team. Otherwise, you’re going to lose.”

That need for teamwork may be the most popular element of Speedgate, says Jenkins, who has received calls and emails from teachers who want to teach it to their elementary school students.

“Because of the central gate and the omnidirectional movement, it helps kids think about problem-solving in new ways,” Jenkins says. “And it’s not a contact sport, so kids aren’t going to get hurt.”

Since Speedgate’s debut in April, people have started active leagues in several countries, including Canada, Australia, France, Iceland and the U.K. In addition, AKQA has received requests for official rules from more than 50 countries total. Jenkins says his design agency is now in the unexpected position of promoting an alarmingly popular new game that’s generating its own momentum. Is AKQA going to get into the professional sports business?

“We’re working on it,” he says. “We did not intend to create a new global sport, but we’re thrilled that it’s worked out the way it has.”

Jenkins says it’s important to note that, while the game was technically “invented” by artificial intelligence, it’s really more of a human-machine collaboration.

“AI never could have, on its own, come up with a fun, practical, playable version of Speedgate,” he says. “But on the other hand, I don’t think we could have ever come up with this without the AI.”

Jenkins says his experience with Speedgate, and its remarkable viral success, has convinced him to keep working with non-carbon-based talent on future projects.

“In a way, AI became a member of our creative team,” Jenkins says. “It was a valuable thing because it thinks fearlessly. It presents a million ideas — some great, some ridiculous — but there’s no fear attached; there’s no self-editing. It provided us with options we just would never have thought of.”

Published on August 14, 2019

It was a hot, humid late-summer day, and Julie DiNardo was preparing for a road race like many runners do, stretching and adjusting her laces. But unlike many runners, she had something else to prepare. She strapped her three toddlers into the triple stroller she would push throughout the 10-kilometer run.

She pushed them fast. That day, August 26, 2016, Julie earned a spot in Guinness World Records, setting the record for — as Guinness puts it — “Fastest 10km pushing a triple pram (female).” She ran it in 49 minutes in North Kingston, Rhode Island.

DiNardo, now 33, has been a runner since age five. She earned 12 varsity letters in high school for cross country, indoor, and outdoor track. When she was in her 20s, she ran a race or triathlon almost every weekend. But she didn’t know stroller racing was a thing until she ran across an article three years ago in Runner’s World, featuring a woman who did just that.

“Once I read that article and knew her time, I felt that I could surpass it, and I went for it,” Julie says.

Stroller running — also called pram or buggy running, depending on the country — has been around since at least the last century; you can find footage of a British “pram marathon” from 1923. Organizers of the Pagham Pram Race in West Sussex, England, date their own Monty Pythonesque event back to 1946: servicemen back from World War II having some fun, with beer stops along the way and a fruitcake for the winner. (It’s still held every Boxing Day.)

But in recent years, participation has spread, with women often taking the lead, and taking things seriously. In 2006, pram races of at least one mile took place simultaneously in seven European countries, an event organized by Mother Centres International Network for Empowerment. (The event, which drew 2,015 prams, set a Guinness World Record for “largest pram/stroller walk in multiple locations.”)

The sport is the natural extension of several trends, from a surge in interest in running to a craze in postpartum fitness. And for some runners like DiNardo, stroller racing is a way to merge the immersive experience of motherhood with the thrill of competition. For a driven athlete, stroller running can seem like a best-of-both-worlds situation: rather than change your routine when the kids arrive, why not just bring them along?

“Every race that I’ve run with my kids, there is always one of them or all of them cheering at the top of their lungs, ‘Go mama! Go mama, go!’”

DiNardo is half of a rather athletic couple. Her husband, Lenny DiNardo, played major-league baseball for parts of six years — pitching for the Boston Red Sox during the 2004 championship season — and today is an analyst at New England Sports Network, the cable channel that broadcasts most Red Sox games. Lenny, 39, is still in tip-top shape, but says Julie is the better athlete. “Oh, she is by far,” he said. “I’m not joking at all when I say that.”

Julie ran eight races in 2018, six of them with a stroller. She has set other Guinness records, too — fastest half marathon pushing a double stroller, fastest half marathon pushing a triple stroller — though her records have since been broken.

She says her kids — Abby, 6; Lenny, Jr., 4; and Audrey, 2 — love being part of the racing, and she loves “knowing that when they grow up, they’ll be able to understand they were part of the record.”

Already, they’re aware of what’s happening. “Every race that I’ve run with my kids, there is always one of them or all of them cheering at the top of their lungs, ‘Go mama! Go mama, go!’” she says. “Which can be both inspiring and exhausting to hear for 13.1 miles, but I think they feel all of the positive race energy, too. They enjoy it as much as I do.”

But with records at stake, the races are also serious business. On the days Lenny pitched in the major leagues, Julie gave him time to be solitary, quiet, introspective, or ornery. Now, Lenny says, it’s his job to support her on race days. “The morning of the race can be hectic, especially with kids,” he says. “I know that there’s a point prior to the race where she needs to be by herself. She has this routine where she applies [anti-chafing] rubs on her knees, her legs, and her hips, and she’ll go in a corner. I try to stay out of her way, and realize she’s getting mentally prepared.”

Though people have been running with strollers for years, organized events began to take hold about eight years ago, after manufacturers began building sturdier, more efficient, running-friendly strollers, says Jennifer Flanigan, who founded a group called The Stroller Run in Boise, Idaho, in 2013.

The technological developments came at a time when Flanigan needed them.

“I was a runner before,” she says. But having kids complicated her running routine. “You wanted to go out for a run, but you don’t want to leave your children behind. There’s that guilt. As soon as we got strollers that were able to run long distances, a lot of us were able to regain our freedom. The kids came along and then the whole ‘race’ aspect of it fell in line.”

She and her brother, John Malfatto, have organized 5Ks exclusively for stroller moms — and dads and partners — in Boise; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Bay area; Chicago and elsewhere. (The group’s slogan is “Run Like a Mom.” About three-fourths of the runners are women.) They hope to stage six to eight events over the next two years.

Meanwhile, strollers are still improving. In April, the London Telegraph noted the development of a specially designed new pram called the Bugaboo Runner, which has state-of-the-art suspension and huge tires. Katie Samuel, a trainer for Buggy Fit, which runs exercise classes for mothers across Britain, touted the particular benefits of exercising while pushing your children along. “Running with a buggy works your hamstrings, quads, and glutes,” she told the Telegraph. “Steering challenges and tones your biceps and triceps. And your abdominals will need to be engaged to run with good posture.”

The Stroller Run works in collaboration with various “mommy groups,” mostly on the U.S. West Coast, Flanigan says. The Stroller Run events, which draw between 400 and 800 participants, are not highly competitive. “It’s more the ‘fun run’ side of things,” says Malfatto. “We make it laid-back and spread out. The camaraderie of the community is something to celebrate. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some people who take it seriously and want to run fast.”

The most serious stroller racers, like DiNardo, tend to gravitate toward general races. In the northeastern U.S., any given half marathon or 5K may have 10 to 20 moms-with-strollers in the mix, DiNardo says.

Dianna Chivakos, who holds the Guinness World Record for fastest marathon pushing a pram, ran the Bay State Marathon in Lowell, Mass. with her then three-year-old son, Evan, in October 2017. (Her time: 3:10:26.)

“I had been running a ton before hearing about the record, and was already signed up for the marathon,” Chivakos says, “but as it got closer, I realized that I might be capable of breaking the record, which was when I decided to push the stroller. And happily, it all worked out.”

Gary Minissian, who organizes races in Rhode Island for Ocean State Multisport, has welcomed DiNardo’s participation in several of his races — and has allowed strollers in his races for eight years. “Most of the time, I tell runners that Julie is trying to break a record,” he says, “and they actually cheer her on.”

But competitive adult races are not always welcoming of strollers, due to safety and insurance concerns. DiNardo says some race directors have turned down her request to run with a stroller. Chivakos, too, says she can find it hard to enter a race with her kids. “I’ve had some race directors give me a flat-out no when I’ve asked,” she says.

Even Minissian throws up a caution flag. “I don’t advertise it and try to keep it low-key,” he says. “I tell them that they have to start in the back of the pack, as I’d rather not have the strollers mix in with the runners, so no one gets hurt. After the first half mile, it becomes more single file and makes things easier.”

Jonathan Beverly, editor-in-chief of the website PodiumRunner and author of the books “Your Best Stride” and “Run Strong, Stay Hungry,” warns that chasing records with kids on wheels is risky. “I don’t have any problem with people pushing strollers in races,” he says. “But I think chasing records can impair good judgment when it comes to safety choices. It’s a tricky thing, as no one wants to endanger a child with reckless stroller running.”

Still, interest in stroller running shows no sign of waning. Race organizers in Italy have contacted The Stroller Run for advice, says Flanigan. “Europe is not as auto-centered [as the U.S.],” Flanigan says, “so they are most used to using strollers in all aspects of life, and that’s included with their races. Some races have specific stroller divisions.”

As for DiNardo, she expects to be back on the road, with the strollers, on August 25. The DiNardos welcomed their fourth child, Max, into the family in April. If her postpartum recovery and training progress as she hopes, she plans to break either the half marathon record or her own 10K record.

And, this time, she’ll be pushing a quad stroller, as Max joins his siblings for his first race.

Published on July 10, 2019

It’s a beautiful spring evening in Selma, North Carolina, a small town about 20 minutes southeast of Raleigh. Inside the local Moose Lodge — technically, the Loyal Order of Moose Lodge #1796 — a crowd of locals has gathered for a longstanding, informal, twice-weekly cornhole tournament. Five-dollar entry fee. Double elimination format. Beer is encouraged.

My guide to this evening’s competition is 23-year-old Tyler Poythress, a FedEx employee from nearby Wilson, North Carolina. Poythress is a friendly and unfailingly polite young man with the lean build of a high school baseball pitcher, which he was. He’s also one of the few people in the country who can call himself a professional cornhole player.

“You gotta have the right bags — it’s just like bringing your own bowling ball or golf clubs,” he says of the sport, eyeing his first shot.

You have almost certainly seen cornhole, an increasingly ubiquitous summer activity in which people toss bean bags into an angled platform with a hole drilled into the far end. Most of the guys at the Selma tournament — and it’s all guys — have been playing cornhole at the Moose for years, in a more or less casual way. The vibe is loose and, just down the hall, the Moose bar is open for after-tournament activities.

But within the lodge and far beyond, this casual game is becoming more competitive, more organized, and more potentially lucrative. For about six years now, Poythress has been taking his game on the road, playing in regional and national tournaments. Just a few weeks back, he and his professional playing partner, Jay Corley, won $3,000 at a major cornhole tournament in St. Louis.

And that’s just the start, for Poythress and other ambitious players. In the past 16 years, cornhole has spread quickly out of the American Midwest, catching on across the United States and beyond. It has spawned no fewer than three official organizations competing to serve the growing U.S. market: The American Cornhole Association (ACA), the American Cornhole Organization (ACO) and the American Cornhole League (ACL).

In 2016, the sport took a giant leap forward in terms of visibility when ESPN3 televised the ACL Championship of Bags in Cherokee, North Carolina. In July 2017, the ACL moved up to ESPN2, in a July 4 event. This August, the sport will return to ESPN2 for a daylong broadcast of the faux channel “ESPN8 The Ocho,” in a lineup that also includes dodgeball, ping pong, and chessboxing.

The ACL is setting its sights outside of America, too, which introduces a whole new set of challenges. 

“We recently expanded into Germany and found out that the boards they’ve been using are a foot shorter than regulation boards in the U.S.,” says Trey Ryder, the organization’s media director. “We asked them, how did you get the specs on these boards? Well, it turns out a player had come to the U.S. and saw a tournament that was using plastic lawn game boards. He thought that was the official size, and he modeled his after those boards.

“So now we’re trying to get Germany back to the correct equipment size,” Ryder says with a sigh. Such are the headaches of recreational cultural hegemony.

“Our ultimate goal,” Ryder says, “is to make cornhole an Olympic sport.”

How does a game so casual become so official, so aspirational? With cornhole, the evolution has been gradual. No one knows for sure who invented the game or where it began, though in its essentials, cornhole is similar to older tossing games like horseshoes, washer toss, or the British lawn game quoits, which features pegs and metal rings.

The bean bag element appears to have come into play in the 1800s, when quoits evolved into a more indoor-friendly parlor game in Europe. An American version of that game, called Faba Baga, used a vertical slanting board and multiple holes worth different points. But the modern incarnation of the game, as it’s played today, is an enduring mystery.Amateur historian Peter Jensen Brown has put together a persuasive history of the game over at his delightful Early Sports blog.

“There are so many theories, so many rumors,” Ryder says. “Some people think it ultimately came from China in the 1700s. Some say it started in the Midwest, some say Kentucky, some say Cincinnati.”

Whatever its origins, modern proponents of the game agree that cornhole has a fundamental marketing problem: its name. As an American idiom, “cornhole” has several unfortunate connotations — check the crowdsourced word warehouse Urban Dictionary for a half-dozen evocative, not-safe-for-work definitions. It’s ironic, Ryder says, because the actual etymology of the word is quite boring.

“Back in the old days, the bag used to be filled with corn,” he says. “You can still go to tournaments that use corn, and people that make their own bags often use corn. The problem is that when corn gets wet, it puffs up, then breaks down. Now we use plastic resin.”  

“I think they like cornhole because it’s something they can play and still have a drink in their hand.”

Cornhole matches are generally played with two sets of bags, four bags to a frame. A bag that lands on the platform — and stays there until the end of the frame — is worth one point. A bag that goes through the hole is worth three points. Winners are determined using a system called cancellation scoring: If Team A scores nine points and Team B scores four, then Team A is awarded five points for that frame. The first team to 21 points wins.

The simplicity is surely part of the game’s broad appeal, says Trent Henkaline, president of the American Cornhole Association. “Older people can play it, kids can play it, men or women,” he says. “I’ve played against 80-year-olds who’ve beat me, I’ve played against 12-year-olds who’ve beat me.”

Cost of entry is low, too. Casual players can buy a backyard kit for $30 right now at Target. Many dedicated players make their boards and their bags themselves. Charity tournaments are increasingly popular because they’re inexpensive, easy to organize, and open to everyone who can toss a 16-ounce bag.

“My nephew and his wife had a monogrammed cornhole game at their wedding,” says Kathy Thomas, chief strategy officer with the retail chain Half Price Books. “I thought it was crazy, but people actually were playing. I think they like it because it is something they can play and still have a drink in their hand.”

In massive stadium parking lots, kids’ birthday parties, and backyard barbecues, the rules can be loose. Kids might throw from the halfway point. Grownups might have to drink when they miss. But as the game moves toward officialdom, the standards are getting stricter.

The emerging rules for competitive play, generally agreed upon by the three major governing bodies, require each board to be two by four feet with a six-inch circular hole nine inches from the top. Regulation play — so egregiously flouted in Germany — sets the boards precisely 33 feet apart. Players must toss from behind a foul line in the “pitcher’s box,” the rectangular area directly to the left or right of the platform.

Ad hoc and casual contests merge those official rules with the chance to win nominal amounts of money. Poythress says a venue like the Moose Lodge can draw 17 or 18 teams, for an entry fee of $5 or $10 per player, with the first-place team winning half of the pot or more. If the tournament is held at a commercial establishment, the money goes up: a bar might match the pot.

As the potential payoffs of cornhole increase, it’s natural that professionalism will follow, says Eric Kurlander, a sports historian at Stetson University. Indeed, he says, cornhole appears to be moving along the traditional trajectory of sports in America.

“If you look at any of our professional sports, there’s always a tipping point,” Kurlander says. “What you’re seeing right now is this game that’s been around — at parties and state fairs or whatever — it’s becoming more of a spectator sport. There’s a little money involved and that provides incentive, so those with the skill set are getting better.”

Early professional baseball started much the same way, he says, with players making money in tournaments. “It’s the same with basketball, with football. It’s not a salaried job yet, it’s not full-time money, but you can bet these guys are hoping that the sport will get big enough that they can become true professionals.”

Given the potential stakes, the vibe at the Moose Lodge ranges from casual to rather serious. Poythress points around the room, which now has around 20 players standing in pairs at cornhole platforms set exactly 33 feet apart. “That guy there, he throws it lower and harder. This guy here, watch this guy. You see how fast that bag slides up there?”

As the first round proceeds, it’s clear that all these guys are good at this game. Virtually every bag tossed hits the platform. Most stay there. An astonishing percentage go straight through the hole on the fly. If you’ve ever played the game, you know it’s not supposed to look this easy.

Then it’s Poythress’ turn, and — swear to god — he throws his first bag directly into the hole. That’s called an “airmail.” He does the same with his second shot. And his third. And his fourth.

“That’s called a ‘four-bagger,’” I’m told by the guy sitting next to me, who seems strangely unfazed by this goddamn miracle that just occurred. “That last shot, some call it a ‘Drano.’”

Cornhole’s accelerating popularity in recent years has generated a whole vocabulary of evocative terminology for specific shots or game-state scenarios. You’ve got your hangers, your hookers, your dirty rollups. Your skunks, your sliders, your woodies.

Poythress hopes that mastering the subtleties of the sport will help him make the jump to full-time player sometime in the next two or three years. In fact, he and his playing partner just picked up corporate sponsorship, from an outfit called Tailgate Nation.

Ryder says the ACL now organizes hundreds of tournaments around the country. The bulk of these events are small gatherings, like the Moose Lodge tourney. If players are registered with the ACL, they can earn points toward qualifying for the larger regional and national competitions. An in-house tech platform keeps track of rankings and statistics. In March, around 750 players traveled to compete in the national tournament in St. Louis.

Ryder says the league has about 120 pro-level players. Is there enough money in the ecosystem yet for them to make a full-time living?

“We’re not there yet, but we’re close,” Ryder says. “Our top-level players right now, across an entire season, are taking in about $20,000 a year.”

Meanwhile, just a couple clicks down the cornhole ladder, old-timers like Dickie Adams — a regular at the Moose Lodge game — can pick up enough money to at least make the traveling worthwhile.

“I’ve played competitively six or seven years, 12 years if you count backyard barbecues,” Adams says. “I’ve played in Tuscaloosa, I’ve played in Cleveland, in California. This will be four years in a row in California. It depends on the tournament. If it’s a well-run tournament, you’ll go back to it.”

Poythress returns to try to help the poor Yankee reporter understand the fundamentals of the game. He notes that a disproportionate number of young cornhole pros are former baseball pitchers. That’s no coincidence.

“It’s muscle memory, it’s doing the same thing every time,” he says. “When you throw it you want it to spin, like a frisbee going through the air. You want to throw it flat and land flat and it’ll slide ride up the board. Now, see right here, this bag is actually a little bit faster….”

Poythress is an ideal ambassador for the sport. He’s patient. He’s friendly. And he understands that, like so many enduring games, cornhole is deceptively simple. It’s easy to learn but hard to master. If and when cornhole becomes America’s next big cultural sports export, Poythress hopes to be a paid pioneer.

“I’d like to go pro as soon as I can,” he says. “This really is a great game.”

Published on June 12, 2019

It happened on a February morning in Boston, when I was golfing a few miles outside the city. We’d had a snow storm and arctic temperatures the week before, but now it was an unseasonable 60 degrees — and, well, I’m a golf addict. When I asked the course pro for his take on conditions, he paused, then answered, “variable.”

He was right about that. On the 6th hole, I walked down a steep embankment, stepped onto invisible black ice, and took a wild, side-spinning spill. My partner was sure I had broken my leg; I ended up with a sprained left ankle and bruised left shoulder. To come: Pain, icing, ibuprofen, and a limp I’m only now shedding. And also, a curious feeling of satisfaction. It hurt, but it felt kind of…good.

This was the first sports-related injury I’ve had in two decades — since breaking my elbow playing softball in the ’90s. Never mind that I got hurt by slipping on ice, not launching a wedge toward the flag. I took perverse pride in playing through the pain. (I bogeyed the hole and finished the front nine with a respectable 44.) And my limp became the amateur athlete’s version of a red badge of courage. A 62-year-old’s reminder of youth and vigor. And risk.

“Yeah,” you’re saying, “but it’s golf!” I hear you, but stay with me. There are roughly 23.8 million golfers in the U.S., according to the National Golf Foundation. Of those, 51 percent are older than 40, and 20.5 percent are older than 60. Nearly 2 million golfers are still playing over 70. Some of these people are bound to get hurt.

And doctors report that it’s not just aging golfers that they see in the exam room. In a culture obsessed with sports and fitness — when 45-year-olds crow about Tough Mudders, 56-year-olds swim across the Atlantic, and 41-year-old superhuman Tom Brady stands as a symbol of longevity — it stands to reason that older athletes aren’t giving up, and often, are paying the price.

“We’re living longer and a lot of us are staying active,” says Scott Murberry, M.D., who practices sports medicine at St. John’s Medical Center for Health and Sports Medicine in Jacksonville, Florida. “While it’s fantastic for your health, injuries can occur.”

“I came down on my foot and sprained my ankle good…I remember thinking, ‘Damn! It was worth it.’”

Billy Cowan, 65

One big risk factor, Murberry says, is an overly optimistic attitude. Many of his patients seem stuck on reliving their high school glory days, he says. They “can remember that go-get- ’em mentality without realizing the body has more wear and tear — that muscles and tendons don’t respond as smoothly as they did when they were younger.”

He recalls one patient in his mid-60s, a military man and former high school football star, who came in with rotator cuff tendonitis and a partial tear in his shoulder.

“He was trying to pump these heavy weights,” Murberry says, “thinking, ‘By golly, I showed these 20-year-old guys in the gym the old guy can still do it.’”

I have friends, too, whose competitive spirit overcame any age-related wisdom. Take Billy Cowan, 65, a retired teacher in Maine. He quit playing competitive basketball in his 30s. Bad knees. But when he was in his mid-40s, a friend talked him into playing against a bunch of 20-somethings.

“I didn’t want the kids thinking I was an old man,” he recalls. “And I was a decent basketball player at one time.”

Thus came the moment he refers to as The Play. Cowan drove to the basket, leapt in the air, shifted the ball from right hand to left, did a half-twist and laid the ball in the bucket, besting the kid. Pretty balletic for a big guy. Except…“I came down on my foot and sprained my ankle good,” he says. As he hobbled off to the bleachers, “I remember thinking, ‘Damn! It was worth it.’”

Another friend, Bruce Fournier, 62, a retired tech executive who lives outside Portland, Ore., used to frequent his local skate park in the early morning hours — “you know, before the kids come out, because it’s so embarrassing” — until the morning he reached the top of the half-pipe, lost control on the turnaround, and landed on his hip.

“What I did was stupid,” Fournier says now. “Fifty-year-old-plus guys probably shouldn’t be on half-pipes.” He hasn’t hit the skate park since, he says, but “I did go out and buy hip pads like football players wear. So if I was to go back…”

It’s easy to think of this as a male phenomenon: a last gasp of machismo. But women athletes are susceptible, too, says Amy Baltzell, Ed.D., an Olympic rower and the coordinator of sports psychology specialization at Boston University’s Wheelock College.

“There are loads of women who do this,” Baltzell told me. “No one is out to hurt themselves on purpose. But many will continue to push their bodies too hard with the desire to optimize performance. Of course, they hope their bodies will hold up. And of course, often the body cannot tolerate the ongoing demand.”

“It’s like after you give birth: It’s really bad, and then an hour later, I can’t wait to do it again.”

Teddi-Jann Covell, 61

But the brain is another matter. After Teddi-Jann Covell, a 1970s college ice hockey player and retired air traffic controller, took a nasty spill at 61 on a ski slope — ending up with two broken ribs and a concussion — she briefly considered quitting skiing for good.

The injury, after all, was avoidable. “I was hot-dogging it,” she recalls. “I was like Lindsey Vonn with zero talent and I got hammered.”

But the feeling of euphoria was hard to give up.

“You think, ‘The pain, it wasn’t that bad. Shake it off. It’s part of the adrenaline rush of sport,’” Covell says. “It’s like after you give birth: It’s really bad, and then an hour later, I can’t wait to do it again.” 

When does an aging athlete decide to actually stop playing? Maybe when the injury goes beyond the sprain or the mundane. Steve Durant, Ed.D., a sports psychology specialist at a Boston teaching hospital, understands that feeling on a personal level. Durant played rugby from age 18 to 59 — right up until the day he lost his focus on the field, got hit with a stray thumb, and lost his eye.

“All gratitude here. I had a blast. My time was up,” he says. “Athletes die two deaths. I died my rugby death, but it enhanced my other life and I believe it will help me face that [other] death down the road.”

Had my own injury been worse, Durant told me, I might have given up the golf course, too. “It’s the fact that it was a near miss, that the bomb didn’t land on you,” that’s giving me something close to pleasure, he says. “I don’t think it’s the injury; it’s the overcoming of the injury.”

He’s right. When I think back on that day, I don’t focus on the pain. I think about the bogey and par afterward, the proof that I could play hurt and still play well. At age 62, I’m too young to pack it in.

But I will stick to frost-free months.

Published on April 3, 2019

The always-pumped sellout crowd at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome was even rowdier than it is on the usual Sunday. It was December 23, and the New Orleans Saints were hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers at the end of a charmed season. A win would give the Saints home advantage through the playoffs and, as lagniappe — Louisiana-speak for “a little something extra” — cripple the Steelers’ playoff hopes.

But the announcer calling plays over the stadium loudspeaker was calm, at least at first, to the untrained ear. After the Steelers won the coin toss and opted to receive, the first and second down announcements from Mark Romig were matter-of-fact accounts of which Steeler made the play, and which Saint made the stop.

On third down, though, Romig suddenly sounded like a man unleashed. “Iiiiiiiiit’s Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiird Doooooooooown,” he bellowed, taking an impossibly long time to pronounce three syllables, and triggering the sort of cacophony that can rattle a visiting offense.

It was a moment where the magic of in-stadium announcing happens — when the disembodied voice behind the microphone becomes a home team catalyst, unleashing the energy of 73,000 rabid football fans.

And it was carefully prescribed by a set of restrictions, guidelines, and rules of engagement. The NFL, after all, is a multi-billion dollar business that tightly controls its product. Game day announcers like Romig — who is in his sixth year of calling plays in the Superdome — operate in something of a gray area. They work for the home team and are not expected to be neutral, as journalists are. But they’re also tasked with keeping up a sense of decorum, and are supposed to avoid outright cheerleading.

On routine plays, their assignment is to call it mostly straight, even if Romig generally pronounces the names of Saints players a bit more loudly and enthusiastically than the opposition’s. But in certain situations they are permitted to “punch it,” as Romig puts it. Third down for the visiting team is one of those situations — to a point. Those epic calls can stretch 10 seconds or even longer, but must stop cold by the time the play clock countdown hits 20 seconds. That’s another league rule: No piped-in sound of any sort, whether it be words or music, from that point on. So Romig always keeps an eye on the clock.

One league rule: By the time the play clock countdown hits 20 seconds, no piped-in sound of any sort, whether it be words or music.

The choreographed dance of calling duties is something Mark inherited in 2013 from his ailing father Jerry Romig, a fan favorite who died three years to the day before the Pittsburgh game. Both Mark Romig and team officials say it was a natural succession. New Orleans loves familiarity, and Mark inherited not only his dad’s fandom and lung power, but — as Mark notes with a playful gesture towards his own nose — a deviated septum that give both voices the same slightly nasal quality.

Thus, Mark’s Sunday responsibilities are as much family tradition as a job. Over his shoulder every week stands his sister Mary Beth, who started spotting offensive plays for her dad in the early 1990s. Their brother Jay sits a row behind, punching downs and yardage into the stadium’s scoreboard. All three have big jobs during the work week; Mark is president of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, Mary Beth the public relations director for a large local hospital network, and Jay the administrative director for the Saints, and the team’s longest-serving employee.

Jay’s son Blake is in the building as well; he manages equipment for the Saints’ special teams. Mark, Mary Beth, and Jay’s mother, Janice, no longer attends games in person, but watches every moment from home while fingering rosary beads.

On game days, the announcing team’s work begins about four hours before kickoff, when Mark shows up to the cozy booth nestled among the stadium’s luxury suites. He goes over the day’s script and studies pronunciations of visiting team players’ names. Other booth regulars filter in: the director of game-day entertainment; a guy who cues up the music that goes out over the loudspeakers; a sound engineer; and a second announcer named Chuck Edwards, who handles player introductions and reads promotional scripts during game breaks. It all starts off pretty relaxed; the group catches up on the week, nibbles on snacks, and on this Christmas weekend, exchanges token gifts. Mary Beth Romig eats chicken fingers she picked up from a Dome vendor, her own pre-game ritual.

Once the game starts, things move as quickly as the action on the field. Mark stands in the booth’s first row, sometimes engaging with excited fans on the other side of the glass but mostly keeping his eyes glued to the game. An animated Mary Beth is just to his left, listening on earphones to the feed from the press box, noting which players are lining up in the backfield and often anticipating offensive plays, and repeatedly calling out names as key plays unfold — “Kamara, Kamara, Kamara,” for Saints running back Alvin Kamara, or a tongue-twisting “Smith-Schuster, Smith-Schuster” for Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster. Tony Melito, a friend from high school and a sports psychologist by day, stands to Romig’s right and keeps track of defensive plays. The three frequently watch through binoculars to sort out who made what carry or tackle and how many yards the team gained. They scan the field for flags and try anticipate who’s getting penalized, and why, before Romig issues his account.

Edwards, the booth co-announcer, also works the mic for New Orleans’ pro basketball team, the Pelicans, and says the NBA is more freewheeling with its rules. Announcers at basketball games can tell the crowd to get loud, for instance, while NFL announcers can’t.

They can imply it, though, and that’s where Romig’s stamina comes in, along with his sense of timing. First down for the home team is another moment when the NFL relaxes its neutrality rules, and Romig always follows that call with an exuberant “Move Dem Chains!” — a recognizable riff that he developed in recent years as part of a corporate sponsorship deal with Hancock Whitney Bank, which pays to have Romig attach its name to these calls several times per quarter. Making sure the team’s financial partners get what they pay for is also part of the gig. Sacks, for instance, are sponsored by Miller Lite. Official reviews are “brought to you by Microsoft Surface, the official tablet of the New Orleans Saints,” Romig will remind the crowd.

But for all the business that gets done, there’s also joy, and not just for the fans. That much is clear to anyone who hears Mark Romig roar “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s Gooooooooood” after a field goal, or attribute yet another touchdown pass to the franchise’s beloved 39-year-old quarterback, “Drew Breeeeeeeeeees.”

In the end, the Steelers game lived up to its billing. There were dramatic plays, controversial calls, and lead switches, the final one coming when the Saints inched ahead 31-28 with just 1:25 left. A last-minute fumble recovery sealed the deal, and by then, the Dome was so loud that nobody could really hear Romig anyway. No matter; the fans didn’t need any cues on how to react, and the folks in the booth were whooping it up along with everyone else.

If the day got off to a leisurely start, it ended with a bang. Almost as soon as time expired, Mark and Mary Beth Romig and Melito made a beeline for the exit ramp, high-fiving the fans who recognized them but keeping a quick pace. There was traffic to beat. And it was Sunday, so there was one more family ritual to check off: After the game, as usual, they piled into Mark’s car and called his mother.

Published on January 9, 2019