Toronto Blue Jays' Max Scherzer is older than all these modern innovations

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer has racked up an impressive career with eight All-Star appearances and four trips to the World Series, but with his 42nd birthday just around the corner, Mad Max isn't quite the intimidating force of nature on the mound that he earned a career-long reputation for.

Born on July 27, 1984, Max Scherzer may not have cracked the top 3 ranking of the oldest players to suit up for the Blue Jays, but at 41 years and 9 months, he's no spring chicken — evidenced by a rocky start to his 2026 season — his 20th in the bigs.

But to just get a sense of how old 41 is in baseball terms (I'm 38 and am running an above-zero chance of grievously injuring myself getting out of bed on any given morning), why not turn to the ever-evolving science and technology landscape to get a sense of just how much the world has changed since Mad Max entered it?

Here's a list of every major innovation between Max Scherzer's birth and the birth of the current youngest player in the MLB:

• First portable CD player (Discman) - Nov. 1984
• Flash memory - Dec. 1984 
• Microsoft Excel - 1985
• Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) - 1985
• Blockbuster Video - 1985
• Microsoft Windows 1.0 - 1985
• Mir Space Station - 1986
• First household bread-making machine - 1986
• Airbus A320 - 1987
• HP ScanJet (first mass-produced commercial image scanner) - 1987
• Canon EOS (flagship camera line to present day) - 1987
• Photoshop - 1987
• Prozac (antidepressant) - 1988
• Morris worm (first widespread computer virus) - 1988
• Sega Genesis - 1988
• Game Boy - 1989
• Super Soaker - 1990
• Hubble Space Telescope - 1990
• First functional World Wide Web browser and server - 1990
• First webcam - 1991
• The first text message (SMS) ever sent - 1992
• PDF format  - 1993
• QR Code - 1994
• Sony PlayStation - 1994
• First online food ordering system (Pizza Hut) - 1994
• JavaScript - 1995
• Amazon - 1995
• GPS - 1995
• Cloned sheep - 1996
• PalmPilot (early smartphone) - 1996
• Nintendo 64 - 1996
• DVD - 1996
• PNG image format - 1996
• Toyota Prius (first mass-produced hybrid car) - 1997
• Google - 1998
• Bluetooth - 1998
• MP3 players - 1998
• Blackberry - 1999
• Emojis - 1999
• USB flash drive - 2000
• Camera Phones - 2000
• iTunes - 2000
• iPod - 2001
• Skype - 2003
• Facebook - 2004

The youngest current MLB player, 20-year-old Didier Fuentes of the Atlanta Braves, was born in 2005. Which seems like a perfectly reasonable place to cut off this list, but I will close out with a few honourable mentions from the months leading up to Scherzer's birth in 1984.

Honourable mentions:

• Apple Macintosh computer - released Jan. 1984, six months before Scherzer's birth
• First human embryo transfer - Feb. 1984, less than six months before Scherzer's birth
• Tetris - first released June 1984, seven weeks before Scherzer's birth

Despite living through immense changes in science and technology, Scherzer isn't even close to the oldest player to ever suit up for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro played his final game for the Jays in 1987 at the tender age of 48 years and just shy of 5 months. Shortstop Omar Vizquel wasn't too far behind, last suiting up for the Jays in 2012 at 45 years and 5 months old.