Going out on top isn't all it's cracked up to be
Posted: Monday July 13, 1998 07:46 PM
Michael
Jordan certainly doesn't need any career counseling from me, but I'd
like to point out a few things about this whole "getting out on top"
business. It's vastly overrated.
Everyone says Jordan should get out of basketball now, that he hit the
game winner for his sixth championship and he can only go downhill from
here.
They say quit now or he'll start to slide and the people's last images of
him will be stumbling ones, losing ones.
Well, that sounds well and good but it's hogwash. Some of the most beloved
athletes of our time ended their careers limping, wheezing and losing --
and they were all the more loved for it.
Mickey Mantle hit .237 with 18 homers and 54 RBI for the fifth-place
Yankees in 1968 and anyone who saw him play that year cherishes the memory.
Muhammad Ali stayed around long enough to have his brain cells scrambled
and lose his title to Michael Spinks. Yes, people wish he didn't but they
don't think any less of him now for doing it. In fact, they seem to revere
him more.
And Pele was 37 years old and well past his prime when he was huffing and
puffing up the field for the New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer
League. Nobody thinks of him now and says, "What a disgraceful old fool,
hanging on like that."
And who are these athletes who got out on top anyway? Jim Brown did. And
so did Bjorn Borg. Those guys may be respected for it, but they aren't
really beloved?
Years ago Bill Bradley wrote about retirement and used the examples of
Jerry West and Oscar Robertson, who both struggled in their final seasons.
He pointed out that it made them seem somehow more likable. Bradley wrote;
"the decline of the athlete is sad but human. To miss it make's a pro's
experience incomplete."
So, if I were Michael I'd put off quitting as long as possible.
No one will think any worse of him for it, at least not in the long run.
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