There's a sports personality named Bill Simmons. He's on the television now, but I loved it when he was just a writer. He's coined a few phrases, like "The Tyson Zone," which describes celebrities who could do literally anything and you wouldn't be surprised.

So Simmons ca me up with a concept that basically covers a lot of biblical ground, though I can't guarantee he's aware of his influences. It's called "Christian years" for athletes, and here's how it works. Think about Mariano Rivera, who recently retired from the New York Yankees at age forty-three as the best closing pitcher in baseball history and was still pitching like a player half his age. And on the other hand, you've got a guy like Dennis Rodman, the former basketball player, who hasn't honored Jesus with his body, and when he was forty-three he looked freakishly aged already. So you compare these two elite athletes, at similar points in life, and you want to know why they're so different. The answer is Christian years. Bill Simmons would remind people that sure, Rivera was technically post-forty, but he's post-forty in Christian years. As opposed to party years, drug years, sleeping-three-hoursa-night years.

If a secular sports writer gets it, we can get it. The way we walk matters.