Parenting & Family Quote by Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks is doing a neat two-step here: he turns a throwaway sports anecdote into a flattering little meditation on time, status, and the weird lag between how you feel and how the world tags you. The setup is almost comically modest. He’s not claiming immortality; he’s claiming a moment of disorientation. Last year with the Padres, roster churn made him feel like “a veteran” in the clubhouse sense, the guy who suddenly knows the routines because everyone else is new. Then Jason Kendall delivers the second punch: Kendall listened to Brooks’ records “since he was a kid,” and the joke lands because Brooks isn’t joking about Kendall. He’s joking about himself aging in real time.

The intent is self-deprecation with a soft brag tucked inside. Brooks keeps the focus on feeling rather than achievement, which is classic pop-star relatability: he’s just a guy working out, suddenly confronted with his own cultural footprint. The subtext is that fame isn’t only adoration; it’s an invasive timestamp. When someone tells you your work soundtracked their childhood, you inherit their nostalgia whether you want it or not.

Context matters: Brooks has long cultivated an everyman persona and an open love affair with baseball, including his later spring-training stints. This line knits those identities together, letting sports confer legitimacy on the musician and celebrity confer a surreal mirror on the athlete. It’s a humblebrag, but a human one: the shock of realizing your past has become someone else’s “since I was a kid.”