Before the 2016 season, the Cubs signed pitcher John Lackey to a two-year-contract. Lackey was what sports page hacks call “a crafty veteran.” He was 37 years old, his arm had been rebuilt with Tommy John surgery, but he’d won two World Series, pitching the deciding games for the 2002 Angels and the 2013 Red Sox. The Cubs hoped Lackey had just enough left to win them a World Series. He did. Lackey went 11-8 to help the Cubs make the playoffs, although he lost his only start against the Cleveland Indians. A year later, he retired.

“Tonight was probably (Lackey’s) last regular-season start,” Jon Lester said at the end of the season. “Here’s to one hell of a career.”

In 2020, Joe Biden was the John Lackey of presidential politics, a veteran with one last mission: evicting Donald Trump from the White House. Biden was the only Democrat who could do the job. Trump is such a grand wizard at employing racism, sexism, and xenophobia that only a bland white dude could beat him. Not Kamala Harris (Black, Indian, female). Not Elizabeth Warren (female, Harvard prof). Not Bernie Sanders (Jewish, socialist). Biden’s white male privilege made him immune to Trump’s othering. Unlike with Obama, though, America was not inspired by Biden’s win. America was just relieved to see Trump go.

Like Lackey, Biden’s had one hell of a career. Elected to the Senate at 29. Served 36 years. Presided over the Clarence Thomas confirmation. (Greg Kinnear played him in the movie.) Pioneering hair transplant recipient. Vice president. President. But now it’s time for him to retire. Unlike baseball, politics is an old man’s game, but even Biden is too old for another campaign against Trump. He was born closer to the end of the Civil War than to his own election as president. The presidency accelerates the aging process, and Biden is mummifying before the nation’s eyes, appearing paler and frailer every time he steps before a camera.

 According to a New York Times/Siena poll, Biden’s 80 years are a big reason he’s trailing Trump in five of the six states he flipped in 2020: Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Voters are unhappy about inflation, immigration, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and don’t think Biden has enough steam left to solve any of those problems.

“For Mr. Biden, who turns 81 later this month, being the oldest president in American history stands out as a glaring liability,” the Times reported. “An overwhelming 71 percent said he was ‘too old’ to be an effective president — an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54 percent of Mr. Biden’s own supporters. Concerns about the president’s advancing age and mental acuity — 62 percent also said Mr. Biden does not have the ‘mental sharpness’ to be effective — are just the start of a sweeping set of Biden weaknesses in the survey results.”

Chicago’s own David Axelrod read the poll and tweeted (X’ed?) that it “will send tremors of doubt thru the party.” If Biden runs, he’ll win the nomination. “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?” 

It’s in the country’s best interests to keep the presidency away from Trump, who is “refining the recipe for an authoritarian regime should he win the 2024 presidential election.” He plans to use the Insurrection Act to crack down on protests against his administration and “turbo-politicize the Department of Justice and order prosecutions of his former aides and officials who have criticized him.” Don’t think Trump can win in 2024? If not, you probably didn’t think he could win in 2016, either.

In 2020, Biden called himself “a transition candidate,” meant to prepare the way for a new generation of leaders once Trump was vanquished. He never promised not to run for re-election, but his monochrome presidency has one term written all over it. Biden will have a place in history among such middling predecessors as John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Calvin Coolidge and George H.W. Bush.

“You got to get more people on the bench that are ready to go in — ‘Put me in coach, I’m ready to play,’” Biden said, returning us to the baseball metaphor which began this column. “Well, there’s a lot of people that are ready to play, women and men.”

Their time is 2024, not 2028. The election is less than a year away. A Washington Post poll found a “generic Democrat” beats Trump 48-40, so the party needs to find one. There’s no more generic Democrat than California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose slicked-back hair and shiny blue suits make him look like a presidential action figure. Newsom just donated $1,000 to a candidate for mayor of Charleston, S.C. 

So did our own Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who’s pretty generic in his own right. According to Axios, the donations “signal White House ambitions for both governors, as South Carolina recently moved to the front of the Democratic presidential primary calendar.”

“No one gets to play forever,” a retiring ballplayer said this year. Biden needs to get out of the game before Trump gets him out, and undoes the most important achievement of his life.