New York Yankees public address announcer Paul Olden has witnessed all kinds of baseball streaks. But, did you know he’s in the middle of one all his own?
According to Runner’s World, the 64-year-old has been running at least one mile a day for more than 600 consecutive days. And, it’s a streak he won’t be breaking as long as he can help it.
Olden, who took over for the PA booth in 2009 after legendary announcer Bob Sheppard retired at the age of 99, says that with his daily mileage, he hopes to take a page out of Sheppard’s book, and thanks to being in good health, work long after most people retire. As for whether he’s on the right track? He hasn’t missed a day of calling out the starting lineup since taking the gig almost a decade ago.
It would be one thing to fit his run in before games, but Olden doesn’t like logging miles in the heat or when the streets are crowded. So, during baseball season, the Brooklyn resident pounds the pavement after Yankees games. And sometimes that means getting his miles in at 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m. if they go extra innings.
“When I started running the other night, someone was coming home from work and said, ‘You’re running now?’” he told Runner’s World. “She thought it was great, but you hardly ever get support this time at night.”
Olden ran track and cross country at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles while he was growing up, but he was never fast enough to settle in with the front of the pack. So, he ditched the sport, and worked his way up in broadcasting. He previously held a job in television, covering the Yankees in the mid-90s, and then moved to the booth to announce for the Tampa Bay Rays and the Los Angeles Dodgers. But, as Sheppard’s time in the Bronx was coming to an end, the Yankees gave Olden the call up.
Knowing that if he wanted to keep the job for a long time, he had to be healthy enough to keep up with the daily grind. So, at the age of 60, he took up running again. He entered races and in 2015, he started his first streak — a 326-day effort that was derailed by an injury.
With a new game plan to dial back his mileage and a refocused energy, he started this current run streak in November of 2016. This year, he even added 100 pushups a day and a jump rope to his training regimen.
With a hard-hitting approach like that, 700 days seems feasible.
You can follow Olden on Instagram as he continues his streak and chronicles his life as the Yankees PA announcer.
Or, you can go for a nighttime run in Brooklyn and perhaps catch a glimpse.
