Peak (てっぺん)

The word in Japanese for peak or summit is "Teppen" or てっぺん, and it's also one of my worst fears. It really keeps me up at night that I've reached a peak in life and dodgeball that I've already reached my highest potential, there's nothing better than I can do, that it's only downhill from here.

Dodgeball is definitely this way. Entering my 6th year of dodgeball now, I've played a lot of games, learned a lot of things, but now I think my skills have pretty as high as they can get. My performance has not gotten better for a while, and it's all I can do to stop it from deteriorating. I sometimes recall my glory days fondly and try to conjure up good thoughts. Different sports have different "peak years" for players where football is around 22-25, basketball is a little older, and baseball is around 26-27, so I've passed that golden age of sports performance that most people talk about (still holding onto 28!) and pretty soon I'm afraid I have to rely on veteran savvy and wily experience......not encouraging. I still want to get better, there's still a lot to work on, a lot of ways I CAN get better, but hopefully my body will cooperate and retain those reflexes and some of those skills. Cuz when one hits 30, it doesn't matter which sport, from bowling to tennis to skiing to (yes, even chess cuz your mind also has a peak) it all goes downhill from there.

I don't think peaks apply as much to life. Donald Trump (69) and Bernie Sanders (74) are kind of proving that this year......one gets wiser, older, and more experienced....There is a learning curve though for certain endeavors such as language: one's ability to learn language peaks during childhood (like 7 or 8, I'd gather) and only goes down from there. Music ability also has a peak somewhere, appearance (sexiness!) peaks differently for different people (and varies depending on gender, too, unfortunately) but kind of like sports, there's other ways to compensate for those peaks, one has to be more creative. Sports stars can retire from a game at age 35-40 and then have more prosperous careers doing other activities.


I'm also deathly afraid of peaks in fantasy baseball, but not that my skill is peaking......after all, what skill is there really? Other than guessing, doing research, and making educated guesses.... (the monkey with a dartboard analogy comes to mind), but investing in players and hoping they haven't peaked and are going downhill. This has happened a lot to me in fantasy baseball, as Carlos Quentin (after a 36 HR season and then completely tanking) comes to mind, or getting the downhill years of Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Derek Jeter, and Mark Teixeira ( there's a trend forming here of not getting Yankees). It's almost impossible to predict when exactly a player has "peaked," but common indicators are: 1.) he's on the wrong side of 30 (hits close to home), 2.) his statistics has crystallized for a few years and not gotten better, setting a "ceiling" which he can't theoretically get better than, and 3.) he's already started to show signs of injury, etc. And the slide from the peak doesn't go the same for each player, some are a gradual decline which is nice and won't frustrate someone too much, but some downhills are rather precipitous and aggravating, especially with injuries. Some players don't ever peak, I guess.....Mariano Rivera comes to mind, pitching continuously until he was 42 years at a high level until retirement, and it doesn't seem like David Ortiz will have peaked, hitting 37 home runs and 100+ RBI last season at the age of 39, and this season (age 40) will be his last. Some players peak much earlier than others, some players peak late......the common theme is that when we know they've peaked, it's sad.......We thought we knew them and got their glory years, but now they're a shell of their former selves (looking at you, David Wright, Evan Longoria, Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, etc., etc.)

Here's hoping that I and others haven't peaked and there's still plenty of awesomeness left to go!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan