81Michigan. Then, when he was 60 years old, Hill had his
first national release with I Don’t Care if I Never Come
Back, a book about baseball published by Simon and
Schuster. The book was a popular and critical success,
and his dedication page is something I treasure above
any possession I own:
“To Steve Chandler—who cared about writing, cared
about me, and one day said, ‘You should write a book
about baseball.’ ”
Nobody cares how old you are but you. People only
care about what you can do, and you can do anything
you want, at any age.
Dr. Monte Buchsbaum of the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine in New York has been one of many scientists
conducting research into the effects of aging on the brain.
He is finding that it isn’t aging that causes a brain to
become less sharp, it’s simply lack of use.
“The good news is that there isn’t much difference
between a 25-year-old brain and a 75-year-old brain,”
said Buchsbaum, who used his positron emission tomog-
raphy laboratory to scan the brains of more than 50 nor-
mal volunteers who ranged in age from 20 to 87.
The memory loss and mental passivity that we used
to believe was caused by aging has now been proven to
be caused by simple lack of use. The brain is like the
muscle in your arm: When you use it, it gets strong and
quick. When you don’t, it grows weak and slow.
Research at the UCLA Brain Research Institute
shows that the circuitry of the brain—the dendrites that
branch between cells—grows with mental activity.
“Anything that’s intellectually challenging,” said
Arnold Scheibel, head of the Institute, “can probably
serve as a kind of stimulus for dendritic growth, which
means it adds to the computational reserves in the
brain.”
Learn to come from behind