George Blanda was 48 years old when he played in his last NFL game.

Baseball legend Satchel Paige was just shy of 60 when he threw his final pitch. 

Gary Player was 73 in his farewell pro golf tournament.

Stock car racer Hershel McGriff was 90 when he competed on a 3/8ths-mile Tucson Speedway in 2018.

Then there’s Chris Karamesines, the Top Fuel owner/driver who just hung up his helmet Nov. 1, 2020, at age …

We’re not divulging that number. Not yet.

For now, let’s just say that Karamesines is older than all of the aforementioned stars.

“They’ll figure it out one day,” said Karamesines, whose granddaughter, Krista Baldwin, will replace him behind the wheel of the 315-plus-mph dragster next year. 

Karamesines’ career as a nitromethane-burning competitor spans more than 65 years, which was only two decades after it was first used to manufacture speed.

The first documented use of the exotic fuel was in the 1930s when the Nazis subsidized the land speed-record efforts of Ferdinand Porsche. Karamesines found himself in Germany immediately after the Nazi regime was defeated in World War II.

He had only recently turned 16 when his father, who was also named Chris, signed the papers for his son’s early enlistment into the Army. At the time, the younger Karamesines was a student at Chicago Vocational School, but he wouldn’t get a chance to graduate.

“I had to get out of Chicago for some reason,” he said, later adding, “I ran into some trouble, so I got into the service to get out of there. It doesn’t sound good, but that’s what happened.”

Dispatched overseas from New York, Karamesines wound up in Frankfurt, Germany, and there he stayed for six years. He was in a “constabulary outfit,” or police unit, he said, which was ironic given the circumstances under which he had to leave his hometown.

While stationed overseas, Karamesines said he “started hanging around in the motor pool,” which allowed him to “tinker with stuff.” When he returned home after his military stint, Karamesines found a ‘36 Ford and began to modify his street rod, and he eventually started racing with it in 1954.

Along the way, Karamesines partnered with Don Maynard, and they built the first of Karamesines’ now-lengthy line of “Chizler” dragsters. Originally equipped with a 354 cubic-inch Chrysler — ‘Chizler’ was a nickname for Chrysler engines, Karamesines said — the dragster by 1959 had been outfitted with a supercharger and was fuel-injected.

It was a combination that clicked from the get-go. In that ‘59 season, Karamesines won the biggest event in the sport at the time, the World Series of Drag Racing at Cordova, Ill., and backed that up with the AHRA Top Fuel title in Great Bend, Kan.

The next year, Karamesines arguably became the first driver to break the 200-mph barrier with a run at Alton, Ill.; arguably only because there were questions about the accuracy of the brand of timing equipment used at some tracks. The clocks had the ‘Chizler’ at 204.08 mph in the timing traps, and Karamesines’ accomplishment helped earn him the nickname “The Golden Greek.”

It was a boon for Karamesines’ engine-building business back home in Chicago, as well as his racing fortunes. 

“I started buying machinery, and Maynard and I built the machine shop where we were doing motors for everyone,” he said. “Then they started paying us good money to match race, and we were going everywhere from New York to California — wherever we could get some money to go race.”

Karamesines rarely pursued a series championship, and he spent as much time match racing as he did attending national events. He was the runner-up to Maynard Rupp in the NHRA event in Bristol, Tenn., in 1965, and the following season won an AHRA-sanctioned show in Smithfield, Texas.

In ‘72, he won AHRA and IHRA contests in New York state, and he briefly campaigned a nitro Funny Car before returning to the dragster ranks.

He stayed active throughout the 1980s and began the 1990s with runner-up showings — both against Gary Ormsby — in Montreal and Seattle.

In 1993, Karamesines took a break from driving to help son-in-law Bobby Baldwin with his Top Fuel career, and in ‘99 returned to the driver’s seat. In 2001, Karamesines experienced the highs and lows of the sport, dipping into the 4-second range at over 300 mph, but also losing Baldwin, who was 47, to an aneurysm.

Even when success became harder to attain, Karamesines remained a threat. In 2013 and ‘14, he took out the No. 1 qualifier at two NHRA national events. That’s the year that multi-team magnate Don Schumacher gave Karamesines one of his team-built DSR dragsters, which was later upgraded with a canopy to cover the driver’s compartment.

It’s the vehicle in which he finished his career this year. In the Dodge NHRA Finals at Las Vegas, Karamesines qualified ninth in the Top Fuel field, then saw his seven-decade tenure as a driver come to an end with a first-round loss to Leah Pruett.

And with that, the Golden Greek was finished at age …

Sorry, still can’t divulge his age yet.

Along the way, Karamesines endured: front-engine dragster fires that singed his face; a 1974 crash at Gainesville, Fla., in which he flipped over the retaining wall and escaped with only a broken kneecap; a left hip replacement surgery in 2018; bladder cancer; and another leg injury that will mean the replacement of his right hip this week. He left the sport listed as one of NHRA’s 50 Greatest Drivers, and he’s a member of the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala., and the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Novi, Mich.

“The match races kept me racing,” Karamesines replied when asked how he sustained his career for so long. “We got paid to go to Florida, North Carolina, Detroit — everywhere. That’s what made my money, match racing. Even when I ran 20 NHRA races a year, I still did match races on the side, plus I had the machine shop going. All of that kept us going.

“I had a great time, traveling around the country and meeting people who wanted to help me keep going. I never really took their money, I just enjoyed their company. California, I’d be there for three months in the wintertime, then go to Florida. We made enough money to keep doing what we were doing. I had a small operation. The most I ever had was six guys going with me.”

Now he’ll focus his attention on his granddaughter’s career.

Krista Baldwin, whose late father was once the Top Fuel runner-up at an NHRA race near Houston, has been competing in NHRA’s Top Alcohol Dragster ranks. On Oct. 6, the day after the NHRA completed its national event near St. Louis, the 27-year-old Baldwin climbed in her grandfather’s car and earned her Top Fuel license.

Her first run was one to forget, though it’s unlikely she will: She didn’t have the strap that connects her helmet to her belts tight enough, and when she stomped the throttle, “my head went straight back. The smart thing to do was to lift, so I did.”

When the crew got the car ready for its next run, she made the most of it.

Given a directive to power the dragster to half-track, then shut it off to save parts for Karamesines’ Vegas farewell, she did so, and stopped the clocks at 1,000 feet in 3.99 seconds, 252 mph. Her half-track speed was higher than the 278 best she’d gone in her A/Fuel Dragster, and the run was potent enough to upgrade her license to Top Fuel.

When Baldwin was a baby, Karamesines said, she would sit in his lap as the dragster was towed to the pits following a run. Following her licensing pass, they were both bawling like newborns.

“They came down to pick me up, and he was crying, I was crying — everyone was crying,” she said. “He didn’t say too much, I could just see him crying, and I ran up and gave him a hug. I could tell he was proud. He’s not very emotional, so when something like that happens, you know it’s big.”

“It was a beautiful run,” he said. “She went straight down through there.”

So just how old is the man Baldwin lists as “Grandpa” in her phone’s contact list?

“I honestly think he doesn’t know,” she said. “What I think, I think he just turned 91. … He has some brothers and sisters, and we ask them — and every one of them says something different.”

What does Karamesines admit to?

Nothing definite.

“Well, I’m close to 90, I’ll tell you that much,” he said. “They’ll figure it out one day. Ask Garlits. He knows all about it. He knows how old I am. Garlits can tell you everything, I can’t.”

Since Wayne County, Mich., where Karamesines was born, doesn’t make birth certificates available online, Top Fuel legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits will have to suffice as the authoritative source.

So, “Big,” to the matter at hand: How old is the Golden Greek?

“Years ago, when we weren’t old, this was Chris’ whole story: ‘I’m exactly the same age as Mickey Mouse. I was born while Walt Disney was drawing Mickey Mouse on a napkin — and that was Nov. 11, 1928.’

“The Greek is 92 years old,” he said.

Maybe — and that depends on whether you believe the legend of a legend as told by a legend.

Get all of your https://t.co/Reh86n8GFm apparel by visiting https://t.co/QR7z0rKzRO. The finest in quality as produced by @gosvaink and Greg Ozubko #CompetitionPlusApparel pic.twitter.com/pUsl6qgses

— Competition Plus (@competitionplus) October 27, 2020