The 40-year-old Version

IN ALMOST every culture, 40 is a mystical number. Forty is the length, in days, of Biblical floods and fasts. Forty is the only number, spelled out in English, whose letters appear in alphabetical order. To millions of Americans, 40 is a figure of almost divine significance, consecrated by Casey Kasem.

The same is true in sports, in which 40 was worn by Pat Tillman and Gale Sayers, whose football hopes hinged on a fast time in the 40. When repeated, the number gives you the hardest club to crash in baseball: 40-40.

So why doesn't anyone want to be 40? "At 40, you feel incredibly old as an athlete," says Mike Richter, the New York Rangers goalie who retired three years ago and now attends Yale. "You certainly feel old as a 40- year-old senior in college."

Forty years ago this Friday, on Sept. 22, 1966, Richter was born in suburban Philadelphia and I was born in suburban Chicago. We both went to college in Wisconsin, took jobs in New York City and then settled in Connecticut, where Richter studies philosophy, politics and economics at his third Ivy League institution and I watch TV in my underwear. Worse, he's funny, whip-smart and a doting father of three young boys. "My brother says I'm either reading Plato or playing with Play-Doh," says Richter, who has unwittingly dedicated his existence to making me look ridiculous by comparison.

Famous athletes who share your year of birth are a handy reference point for how you're doing in life. And so I've long consoled myself that I have fewer gambling debts than John Daly, fewer drug arrests than Michael Irvin, fewer Maori face tattoos than Mike Tyson.

But the only measure that has ever mattered to me is the Richter Scale. The guy who has walked the Earth exactly as long as I have played 15 seasons in the NHL, attended Columbia and Cornell in his summers off, competed in three Olympics, won the Stanley Cup, earned millions of dollars, saw his number 35 hoisted to the rafters at Madison Square Garden and now spends his days and nights reading. "Kierkegaard and Green Eggs and Ham," says the student-father, who commutes to New Haven from his home in coastal Guilford, one of MONEY magazine's 100 Best Places to Live in 2005. Sigh.

Forty years is forever ago. On the night Richter and I were born, the Yankees and the White Sox drew 413 spectators to Yankee Stadium, a figure that is inconceivable today. But Richter doesn't believe that four decades is an epoch, perhaps because he just emerged from his class on Greek antiquity. (When the girl in front of him wirelessly summoned a Google map of Macedonia on her laptop—now that made Richter feel old.)

Twice this semester, students have approached Richter in lecture halls and asked for a copy of the syllabus, mistaking him for a Yale professor. "I assure you, it has a hell of a lot more to do with my hairline than any air of intelligence," says Richter, who is less bald than I am but more self-deprecating.

For athletes, 40 might as well be 80. Stefan Edberg is 40, and he retired from tennis 10 years ago. Zola Budd is 40, and her greatest fame came 22 years ago, at the L.A. Olympics. " Athletics give you a skewed idea of what you are," says Richter, who retired at 36 after fracturing his skull. "At 35 you've had a long career as a hockey player. An Olympic gymnast might be 'too old' at 19. But 40 is still young for a normal working person. Hopefully, you've still got more ahead of you than behind you."

And yet he has no plans to celebrate himself with a gala on Friday. "We just had a pirate party for one of our boys," he says, "so that theme is taken."