Many of my personal icons are placing a tremendous amount of pressure on me to excel at a young age. My three favorite professional athletes are all marginally older than me already the toast of Gotham. David Wright and Jose Reyes of the Mets, born in 1982 and 1983 respectively, are among the league’s most talented infielders and have been for a year. Mr. Wright batted .309, among the highest for third basemen in the National League. Jose Reyes stole 60 bases and hit 19 triples, both atop the major leagues.

For anyone not familiar with the process involved in becoming a professional baseball player, it usually involves being aged well past the teenage years. Players jump from AA to the pros, with intense training in summer and fall development leagues, and spend years toiling in the minors before being given even a chance during September to prove themselves worthy of a trade to a full-time job with another team.

Zach Gordon, a sophomore management major, and huge Mets fan, often ponders: “Jose Reyes was starting in the major leagues when he was 19, what were you are I doing today?”

Eli Manning, the stallion quarterback of the first-place New York Giants, is one of football’s greatest prodigies. He displays a precocious understanding for the game and wisdom well beyond his years. He got the nod for the starting job in arguably the most demanding position in football — New York Giants quarterback.

Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners is in fact a year younger than me. He also throws a baseball with a reasonable degree of control at 100-miles-per-hour and has secured a starting spot on the rotation. This is the equivalent of being accepted to MIT at the age of thirteen.

In the professional realm, and as an economics major, I would have to be appointed CEO of General Electric or a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute to live up to this type of expectation. It is simply unfair; I can’t take myself seriously watching people my age perform at this level and with such brilliant composure and poise along the way.

The best I can hope for is that girls remain fairly unimpressed with the accomplishments of these few select studs, because if they don’t, my relatively meek existence simply will not make the “bar-chat” cut. In that case, I should stop buying the jerseys of my favorite players, it’s become demoralizing.

Joseph C. Galante-Eisenberg is a junior economics and environmental studies major.