At Age 40, McGee Tackles 18th Season by Rick Hummel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Jupiter, Fla - Forever-young Willie McGee is 40 years old now, and when he is asked what lies ahead, he simply says, "I don't know." After all, he says, he has never been 40 before. "I don't know how it's supposed to feel, " McGee said of his new age bracket. "I don't even think about it until somebody brings it up. "I don't kow what to expect. I might wake up tommorrow and say I've had enough, that I can't do this. I don't want to cheat anybody. "All this is just guesstimates. Maybe I am too old. This year is a big year. If I hit .250 this year, that probably will be it. "But I still think I can do what I'm capable of doing, if I can keep all the distractions down. I can still run with these guys, catch with these guys and throw with them. Whether I can do it everyday, I don't know. "But I don't think they're that much faster than me or throw that much harder or there bat is that much quicker. But again, I'm 40 years old. I'm a realist, too." McGee batted just .253 last season after hitting .307 and .300 with the Cardinals in his first two seasons back in St. Louis. "From spring training on, I couldn't get comfortable at the plate, " McGee said. "It could have been a lack of concentration. If I stay in the strike zone, I'm going to hit. "It just wasn't meant for me to hit .300 last year. It just wasn't meant for us to win." Manager Tony La Russa has said he hoped to play McGee less than he had in the past three seasons, preferring him to pinch-hit late and spot start when he needed some at-bats or if the matchup with the pitcher was good. "If he wanted to, he could play till he's 50," La Russa said. "He's in better shape than ever. "This guy's got the highest standards, and he's never going to embarrass himself." He will not be Mark McGwire's backup at first base, however. "I'm at the stage now where I can tell (La Russa) I don't want to do it," McGee said. "But if that's what he wants me to do, that's what I have to do. "I'm just a piece of the puzzle," McGee said. "I'm trying to get to the point where I can be as big a piece as I can. "I know I'm going to get some at-bats. How many I don't know. It might be five. It might be 10." McGee, who missed the last month of last season with a severe ankle spain, suggested near the end of last season that he would like to come back if the Cardinals gave him an opportunity. "You always want to play," he said. "This is where my heart is. "But one day it's going to happen where I'm not going to have an opportunity. I don't know what's going to happen. I think I'm just better off putting one foot in front of the other and taking it like that." McGee said that when he started playing professionally in 1977, he had no idea he would play this long - 18 seasons in the majors. "It seems like yesterday," he said, referring to his 1982 Cardinals debut. "You have questions if you're even going to make it to the big leagues when you start off. Then you make it to the big leagues, and you don't know what's going to happen. "You just work hard, put your head down and hope things work out. When I got to my third or fourth year and I was solid, I decided I wanted to play till I was 35. I started putting my money up so I could kick back when I was 35. "I didn't know how I was going to feel at 35. I didn't know it wasn't going to be that easy to just sail out into the sunset. I still enjoy the game. I enjoy the competition. And, I still have the opportunities. That makes it hard to leave. "If I didn't get any calls, then it would be easy. Then I would know." When he got to 35, McGee suffered a torn Achilles' tendon while playing for the San Francisco Giants in 1994. McGee was hurt in June and didn't play the rest of the season. He didn't have a job the next spring, either. "Nobody called," he said. "I guess everybody thought after I hurt my Achilles' and dislocated my ankle that that was it. The Giants were thinking about signing me for another year but, after I got hurt, they didn't say anything. "I had to call everybody. I sent letters to every team." San Diego manager Bruce Bochy called McGee about a possible job but before McGee acted on that, he was granted a tryout with Boston when the Red Sox went to the Oakland Coliseum near his home in Richmond, Calif. "The next thing I knew (the Red Sox) signed me, and then I called Bochy thanking him for the opportunity. To this day, I thank him. "If I didn't get a job, it wouldn't have been my fault. I think I've carried myself well in this game. I was kind of sad because I thought somebody would call and give me an opportunity. It kind of hurt. I felt I could have helped somebody, even if I had a limp." He finished the 1995 season in Boston before re-signing with the Cardinals in 1996. "I'm a proud man," McGee said. "Not neccessarily of my baseball career, but I thank my parents every day for installing a work ethic in me at a young age. I'm not scared to get my hands dirty. "I don't disrespect this game. I will not. I believe the way you treat anything is the way it's going to treat you. If you have a flower and you don't water it, it's going to die. Every day I come in here, I put something into the game. And as long as I've been doing it, I've got something back."