Is Joe Biden too old for the game? (Biden campaign photo)

Lots of people are fretting over the possibility of electing Joe Biden president because he’s 77. Not me.

I’m a White Sox fan. For us, age is relative.

My team picked up Steve Carlton when he was 41, Ken Griffey Jr., when he was 38, Omar Vizquel when he was 43 and Tom Seaver and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez when they were 39.

So much interest in over-the-hill players drives some fans batty. What good are great players when they’re no longer great?

Actually, most of those guys were assets. Seaver won 31 games over two years, Griffey threw a runner out at the plate to save a one-game playoff, and Hernandez was a key to the team’s only championship in anybody’s lifetime.

All those players had comparatively diminished athletic capacity by the time they got to Chicago. But they all made their teams better, with the exception of Carlton. He was a big jerk.

Biden is not a big jerk. Not everyone is a fan, but compared to most people who aspire to the presidency, he’s your favorite uncle.

He hasn’t homered in every at-bat. Nobody does. But he doesn’t have to. The presidency is a team game that has usually not depended on individual executive performance.

Remember JFK’s inspiring speeches? Ted Sorensen wrote them. FDR’s New Deal was assembled by Tom Corcoran and Benjamin Cohen. Without Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon never goes to China.

You know that if elected, Biden is not going to hire a coal lobbyist to run the EPA, an oil man to run the energy department, and a secretary of education who dislikes public schools. If Mitt Romney or John McCain had been elected president, they wouldn’t have done that, either. That kind of behavior is the province of our most special executive.

If Biden gets in, we’re going to see familiar faces. John Kerry, Barack Obama’s best secretary of state, will be doing that again, or something else for the new president. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is likely to be back. Half of Biden’s primary opponents will probably be offered a position in the administration.

Biden’s most significant strength has not diminished with age. His agility in the halls of Congress is unmatched by any president since Lyndon Johnson picked up beagles by their ears on the White House lawn.

Biden frequently says goofy things, but that’s nothing new. He said goofy things when he was young, too.

And he’s skilled at saying the wrong thing at the right time. I think a lot of people enjoyed the heck out of him telling that gent in Detroit what he was full of.

Biden talks slower than some other politicians, but that’s not entirely due to age. He beat stuttering in his 20s, but it keeps trying to come back and take over.

As for the possibility of Biden dropping dead in his first term: Not likely as it may seem, considering the typical life spans of our pampered national politicians. If we all had the health care that congresscreatures have, there wouldn’t be enough room on the sidewalks for the throngs of us to walk around.

American presidents have a top doctor assigned just to them. We haven’t had a single president sicken and die in office since FDR, and that was only because he served so many terms that it was impossible for him to die anywhere else.

It can’t be denied that Biden would be the oldest president ever elected. So, of course, it’s important to pick a good person to run with him on the ticket. You never know.

If I were Biden and the Democratic power elite, I would give strong consideration to Cory Booker, the young Senator from New Jersey. He is one of the kindest and humblest national politicians I have ever seen. They could use the slogan, “Nice Guys Finish First.”

Worried about the potential for dementia? It could happen, and problems could ensue. But then again, it didn’t seem to slow down the Reagan Revolution.

One of the best things about running an old guy for president is that by the time he’s, say, 77, he must know how to do something. Biden was a U.S. Senator for 36 years before he was sworn in as vice president. He got a lot done in the Senate, but most people largely ignored him when he wasn’t running for president.

That’s what it’s like to be from Delaware.

Biden is a few months older than a ballplayer I remember well from my youth, when he was pitching for the White Sox in relative obscurity. But Tommy John would move on to the Dodgers and the Yankees, and play in the Major Leagues for 26 seasons, the third-longest stretch in history.

John was considered by many to be washed up when he capped off a terrific 11th season by blowing out his arm. But, famously, a surgeon named Frank Jobe cut a chunk out of his forearm and sewed it into his elbow, and his wing worked again. He was good for about 2,500 more innings and three 20-win seasons.

Ever since, Tommy John surgery has been making banged-up pitchers whole again.

Nowadays, you can repair politicians, too. They’ve got stents and bypasses and pacemakers, just for their hearts alone. There are few politicians who couldn’t use a little improvement in the heart department.

At some time in the past, Biden appears to have gotten his teeth done. They’re way too shiny to be real. So we know he’s not afraid to get help from somebody with letters after their name when he sees something isn’t quite right.

That’s good to know. But his heart appears to be OK.

Biden lost a wife and daughter in a car accident just before he took his Senate seat. His two sons were hurt, but they recovered. The new Senator learned a lot from that experience. Among the lessons: Family trumps politics. Family trumps everything.

That was one of the reasons why, even though he worried about the fate of the Democratic Party in 2016, he didn’t jump into the race. His son Beau had died. He felt he needed to make things right at home before he could take to the road promising to make things right for a whole country.

There are literally millions of Democrats who say Biden isn’t progressive enough for them. There are more millions of independents and Republicans who say he’s too liberal.

Those are reasonable complaints.

But you can’t be all things to all people. You are what you are.

When Tommy John ruined the ligament in his left elbow, he couldn’t just shrug and throw with his other hand.