It appears that the Boston Red Sox have resigned third baseman and World Series MVP Mike Lowell to a three year deal.

Phew.

The big factor that some people cited in not signing him was that he's getting old. Okay, fair enough, I thought, until I realized that he's only two years older than I am.

A quick scan through the Red Sox roster really got me spooked.

I'm four years older than Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Jonathan Papelbon. Three years older than Kevin Youkilis. There's a whole raft of them born in 1983, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Moss, Hansen. Then there's Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester - who were both born in 1984!

Yikes.

Luckily I'm still younger than the core team - Manny and Varitek are both 35, and David Ortiz, whose birthday was Sunday, is 32. And of course there's Schilling and Wakefield, who are just about a decade older than I.

But overall? Not good. On the 32-man roster I'm older than 20 of them.

This is an odd phenomenon in a person's life, when one's sports heroes keep getting younger and younger. Are they even "heroes" anymore, or just ballplayers? Lucky kids?

I guess this means I can start comparing the current players to the players of my youth. Players like Wade Boggs, Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Mike Greenwell, Marty Barrett, Lefty Grove and Boo Ferriss.

(Okay, those last two are jokes, I'm not that old).

Anyway, we'll revisit this topic when the day comes that I'm older than all of the Boston Red Sox.

And for you A-Rod fans, here's a neat little Boston Globe tidbit on why your American League MVP is still not as good as Mike Lowell: 5 reasons why Mike Lowell is better than A-Rod.