SPORTS CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

Every year, in its last issue, Sports Illustrated says farewell to the famous athletes who have died during the year, As I was browsing through this year's "The Farewells" in the Dec. 26th issue, I was struck by the following realization: They're too young to die!

People are supposed to die when they're old, not when they're still in their prime. Yet in 2011 so many of these athletes seem to have been snuffed out prematurely. Or were they?

Was I unduly influenced by reading the obituaries of five famous athletes who died in their 40s, four in their 30s, and four in their 20s? When they were born, they had life expectancies of just over 70 years. Today, life expectancy for newborns is 78. They shouldn't die so young.

Moreover, when I read the news obituaries every day in The New York Times, as is my wont, I immediately focus on the headlines, which disclose the ages of the deceased. Those ages seem to be to me more "normal," that is, they are the ages of "old" people, not those in their 20s or 30s or 40s. Indeed, today's online Times notes the deaths of a 94-year-old judge and an 86-year-old singer. I can live with those, so to speak. (Though for some of us, 86 doesn't seem that old anymore.)

So, in the spirit of one who has too much time on his hands, I set to work to test a hypothesis based on my reaction to the Sports Illustrated article: Athletes die younger than non-athletes.

This, of course, is a heretical notion. We all know that exercise and sports are good for soul and body. Well, testing benefits to the soul is a more difficult experiment than I can devise. But perhaps I can discern, through an elementary data analysis, whether famous athletes' bodies are at greater risk than those of us more sedentary types.

So I went through the Sports Illustrated list of farewells and eliminated the several non-athletes -- agents, writers and such. I did include coaches, because most coaches were active athletes in their previous lives. I was left with 60 famous athletes who died in 2011. And their ages. Their average age was calculated to be 62.5 years (median age: 65.0).

As I suspected, they were young. But how young? Well, for starters, much younger than life expectancy is now, and even much younger than their life expectancy was when they were born. But how much younger than, say, a similar-size cohort of other people? Say, famous non-athletes.

For this calculation, I went today to the online Times, which, had a list of just over 60 news obituaries -- those of people famous enough for the Times to have written an article about them when they died. The sample I used started with deaths on Dec. 13, 2011, and continued through this afternoon. After culling out several athletes on the list, I was left, coincidentally, with 60 people -- or, rather, former people.

The result? An average age at death for famous non-athletes of 81.3 years (median age: 82.0).

Not satisfied with just this one list, I found another compilation in the Times of famous people who died during the entire year 2011. After weeding out the athletes, I was left with 125 obituaries. The results: an identical average age of 81.3 years (median age: 84).

This is about 17 to 19 years longer than the athletes' age of death, depending on whether one uses average or median as the measure. Let's call it 18.

The conclusion?

Famous non-athletes live almost two decades longer than famous athletes. 

Almost two decades! That's mind-boggling. A small difference would be explainable as within the margin of error. But two decades? There must be some statistical significance.

The comparison is even more startling when comparing deaths by decades of their lives, as shown in the chart. In the four decades of their lives, from their 20s through their 50s, a total of 27 athletes died, compared with only two non-athletes. Or at the other end of the mortality spectrum, only two athletes survived until their 90s, compared with 17 non-athletes.

I titled this piece facetiously, or so I thought at the start. But maybe it isn't facetious. Perhaps sports at its highest level does come at a price. We now know the impact that contact sports have on hips, knees, shoulders, the back, and other parts of the body, and we also have recently been made aware of the surprisingly high rate of concussions in football and hockey. It's conceivable that there are yet further insults to the system that are the cost of becoming a world-class athlete. Years and years of extended practice and high-level competition may do damage to the body that diminish the famous athlete's lifespan.

In any event, my fingers are getting pretty exhausted from all this typing, so I've decided to stop now before I press my longevity luck.

Appendix

60 Famous-Athlete Deaths 2011 (Sports Illustrated, Dec. 26, 2011)

Greg Halman, 24, baseball

Rick Rypien, 27, hockey

Derek Boogaard, 28, hockey

Jeret Peterson, 29, skiing

Dan Wheldon, 33, racecar driver

Robert Traylor, 34, basketball

Wade Belak, 35, hockey

Margo Dydek, 37, basketball

Orlando Brown, 40, football

Chester McGlockton, 42, football

Hideki Irabu, 42, baseball

Lorenzo Charles, 47, basketball

Armen Gilliam, 47, basketball

Dave Duerson, 50, football

Kent Hull, 50, football

Ron Springs, 54, football

Seve Ballesteros, 54, golf

Drew Hill, 54, football

Charlie Lea, 54, baseball

Mike Mitchell, 55, basketball

Lee Roy Selmon, 56, football

Socrates, 57, soccer

Grete Waitz, 57, marathon

Randy Savage, 58, baseball

Nikolai Andrianov, 58, gymnastics

Mike Flanagan, 59, baseball

Rick Martin, 59, hockey

Larry Finch, 60, basketball

Bob Forsch, 61, baseball

Paul Splittorff, 64, baseball

Bubba Smith, 66, football

Joe Frazier, 67, boxing

Gale Gillingham, 67, football

John Mackey, 69, football

Walt Hazzard, 69, basketball

Vasili Alexeyev, 69, weightlifting

Peter Gent, 69, football

Woodie Fryman, 70, baseball

Jim Northrup, 71, baseball

Matty Alou, 72, baseball

Dave Gavitt, 73, basketball

Harmon Killebrew, 74, baseball

Dave Hill, 74, golf

Cookie Gilchrist, 75, football

Don Chandler, 76, football

Wes Covington, 79, baseball

Ollie Matson, 80, football

Ryne Duren, 81, baseball

John Henry Johnson, 81, football

Al Davis, 82, football

Dick Williams, 82, baseball

Chuck Tanner, 82, baseball

Ed Macauley, 83, basketball

Duke Snider, 84, baseball

Joe Perry, 84, football

Andy Robustelli, 85, football

Joe Steffy, 85, football

Pete Pihos, 87, football

Marty Marion, 93, baseball

Jack LaLanne, 96, bodybuilder 60 Famous-Non-Athlete Deaths (Dec. 13, 2011 to mid-afternoon, Jan. 2, 2012 from the New York times online, 1/2/12) James Ramseur, Wounded in ’84 Subway Shooting, Dies at 45 Sean Collins, Who Used Science to Help Surfers, Dies at 59 Yoshimitsu Morita, Filmmaker Acclaimed for Social Satires, Dies at 61 Christopher Hitchens, Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, Dies at 62 Kim Geun-tae, South Korean Democracy Activist, Dies at 64 Adrienne Cooper, Yiddish Singer, Dies at 65 Paula E. Hyman, Who Sought Rights for Women in Judaism, Dies at 65 Ralph MacDonald, Pop Percussionist, Dies at 67 John Lawrence, Plaintiff in Gay Rights Case, Dies at 68 Lynn Samuels, a Brash Radio Talker, Dies at 69 Kim Jong-il, 69, Dictator Who Turned North Korea Into a Nuclear State, Dies Cesária Évora, Singer From Cape Verde, Dies at 70 Sean Bonniwell, Singer in the Music Machine, Dies at 71 Pedro Armendáriz Jr., Mexican Character Actor, Dies at 71 Robert Morvillo, Legal Pioneer, Dies at 73 Billie Jo Spears, Country Singer, Dies at 73 Satyadev Dubey, Playwright Who Modernized Hindi Theater, Dies at 75 Vaclav Havel, Former Czech President, Dies at 75 Joseph Farrell, Who Used Market Research to Shape Films, Dies at 76 Warren Hellman, 77, Investor Who Loved Bluegrass, Dies Evelyn Handler Dies at 78; Led Two Universities Simms Taback, Author of Wry Children’s Books, Dies at 79 Robert Ader, Who Linked Stress and Illness, Dies at 79 Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff, Environmental Advocate, Dies at 81 Robert Easton, Hollywood’s Henry Higgins, Dies at 81 Wolfgang Oehme, a Free-Form Landscape Architect, Dies at 81 Henry E. Catto Jr., Who Served 4 Presidents, Dies at 81 Bob Brookmeyer, Jazz Musician and Educator, Dies at 81 Edie Stevenson Dies at 81; Wrote ‘Let’s Get Mikey’ Ad Barbara Lea, Cabaret Singer, Dies at 82 Howard Halpern, Therapist and Self-Help Author, Dies at 82 Helen Frankenthaler, Abstract Painter Who Shaped a Movement, Dies at 83 Gene Summers, Modernist Architect, Dies at 83 Erica Wilson Dies at 83; Led a Rebirth of Needleworking Kiro Gligorov, Ex-Leader of Macedonia, Dies at 94 John Chamberlain, Who Wrested Rough Magic From Scrap Metal, Dies at 84 Yaffa Yarkoni, Who Sang for Israeli Soldiers, Dies at 86 Paul-Emile Deiber, Actor Who Became an Opera Director, Dies at 86 Doe Avedon, Fashion Model and Actress, Dies at 86 Russell Hoban, ‘Frances’ Author, Dies at 86 Andrew Geller, Modernist Architect, Is Dead at 87 Sam Rivers, Jazz Artist of Loft Scene, Dies at 88 Don Sharp Dies at 89; Director Who Revived Hammer Horror Film Company Jacob Goldman, Founder of Xerox Lab, Dies at 90 Dan Frazer, Fretful Supervisor on ‘Kojak,’ Dies at 90 Stephen Schlossberg, Official of U.A.W. and Labor Dept., Dies at 90 Pupi Campo, Cuban Bandleader and ‘the Rumba Maestro,’ Dies at 91 Henry Lafont, Pilot, Dies at 91; Fought in Battle of Britain Patrick V. Murphy, Police Leader Who Reformed New York Force, Dies at 91 Anthony Amato, Founder of Amato Opera, Is Dead at 91 Emmett L. Bennett Jr., Expert on Ancient Script, Dies at 93 Robert L. Carter, an Architect of School Desegregation, Dies at 94 Holden Withington, Last Living B-52 Designer, Dies at 94 Bonnie Prudden, 97, Dies; Promoted Fitness for TV Generation Norman Krim, Who Championed the Transistor, Dies at 98 Joe Simon, a Creator of Captain America, Is Dead at 98 George Whitman, Paris Bookseller and Cultural Beacon, Is Dead at 98 Boris Chertok, Engineer With Russian Space Program, Dies at 99 Robert Lawrence Balzer, Wine Writer, Dies at 99 Eva Zeisel, Ceramic Artist and Designer, Dies at 105