Hey there, fellow geezer jocks!

Editor’s note: Ray Glier is a professional journalist who publishes a website called Geezer Jock News. He responded graciously when we asked permission to reprint his story on our team member Ray Jansco (see the News page of this website). In this post he explains what his venture is all about.    
 
Geezer Jock is an inelegantly named newsletter about unstoppable older athletes and what makes them….run, swim, bike, throw, catch, walk, jump.
 
When it was a glossy magazine in 2006, Geezer Jock had 100,000 subscribers and led the way in celebrating older jocks. My friend Sean Callahan was one of the co-founders, and their creation had incredible success. Then the recession ruined the advertising base and the magazine folded.
 
I have reheated Geezer Jock as a newsletter and aim to make it the best storytelling on the internet for older athletes.
 
This is how you join the crusade of people not just growing older, but growing bolder. There is an art to growing older and the paintbrush is our arms, legs, hands…and minds.
 
I am a 65-year old journalist, one of 11 children, who has played sports since forever, and has covered sports professionally since 1974. My background is as a reporter covering all sports, but I was also an Executive Sports Editor of a daily newspaper for three years.
 
The Knoxville Journal won two national awards for Best Daily Section from Associated Press Sports Editors because of a terrific staff. And now I run my own “sports section” again.
 
Since 1992 I have lived in Atlanta and have freelanced in sports for The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, The Boston Globe, The Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and many others.
 
Geezer Jock is my best work. This is what I trained for all these years. My own thing.
 
I am writing about the people who I grew up with in the ’60s playing tackle football without pads, jumping off bridges into unknown waters below, kick the can on the corner, slingshots full of acorns, dirt balls, basketball until dark, wood bats that splintered but were put back together again with a nail.
 
I have run across just one person who didn’t like the name Geezer Jock. One. That’s it. I got over it pretty quickly.
 
Everyone else understands the slap back at ageism and how we can make fun of ourselves. We are crashing through the ceiling society tries to flatten us with….one step at a time.
 
--Ray Glier
 
(If you would like to support Geezer Jock, please do. I do not do much journalism for major media because I want to do this full-time. Newspapers and web sites have pushed us out because we “make too much money” and that’s fine by me.)
www.geezerjocknews.com