Commentary : Leonard and Montana: Why Do They Risk It?

Recent debate has focused on the return of two celebrated athletes to their respective workplaces: Sugar Ray Leonard to the boxing ring and Joe Montana to the football field.

Leonard resumes his boxing career and unretires for the second time. He’ll have had but one bout in five full years when he fights Marvelous Marvin Hagler in April. In that time, he has had significant problems with both his retinas.

Montana underwent major surgery following the first game of the season. His back injury was described as “career-threatening.” The most optimistic view was that he could be available for the playoffs. Eight weeks later, Montana was the 49ers’ starting quarterback again.

Did Montana return precipitously?

Should Leonard return at all?

They’re both the same age, 30, the prime of an athlete’s life. They’ve both been to the mountaintop and camped there: Leonard was an Olympic and pro boxing champion, the most stylish and sage of his generation; Montana was the starting quarterback on a national champion at Notre Dame and in two winning Super Bowls with San Francisco. They’re both handsome, wealthy men with beautiful wives. In neither case is money an issue in the return. As the 49ers’ Randy Cross said of Montana, “It’s not like his pension depends on him going out there.”

It isn’t about money. And it isn’t about pride. It’s about being an athlete and knowing that you have picked the most ephemeral career for yourself. You’re a butterfly. As beautiful as you are now, your days are numbered. And then what happens? While others your age have worked to develop professional skills, your whole sweet, short life has been devoted to being physical. The very moment you leave the arena for the real world, you’re behind.

It’s about who you are and how you’ve come to see yourself: As an athlete, as someone whose body and physical skills define him.

It’s about having to leave the best seat in the house, and not wanting to.

It’s about time and the terrifying truth that it doesn’t stop, not even for you.

“You can’t understand it if you’re not an athlete,” Leonard was saying at a luncheon last May. He’d been asked, why? Given all the things he had, why would he want to fight again? He shook his head in gentle admonishment. How could he make them understand? “I need to do this for me,” he said. “I have to do it.”

Whatever pressure there was for Leonard’s return was mostly self-inflicted; he has only himself to satisfy. In Montana’s case, there’s the added pressure of responsibility to the team. None of his teammates would have criticized him for taking the whole season to recuperate. Nevertheless, they all feel the team is better with Montana playing. The tug of these conflicting positions has yielded a palpable ambivalence toward the larger issue: whether Montana’s return was too hasty.

“I don’t know the medical implications, but he sure makes a big difference on our team,” said linebacker Milt McColl, who attends Stanford medical school. Tight end John Frank, who attends Ohio State medical school, defended Montana’s reactivation as a matter of “his personal relationship with his doctors,” which “no outsider has a right to judge.” As for the effect on the 49ers, Frank said it was salutary. “It opens up so many more opportunities on offense. He’s such a threat.”

Fred Quillan, the center, described the 49ers’ reaction to Montana’s first appearance in practice a few weeks ago: “There was a sigh of relief as far as the team was concerned, but we worried whether it was right for him--it was so soon after the operation.” Quillan acknowledged there are times he’s wanted to grab Montana by the shoulders, shake him and tell him that he’s crazy to play so quickly. “We want to see Joe go water-skiing at 40, to jog, play golf. He’s our friend. We want him to be healthy for his life.”

But Quillan understands why Montana is playing. They all do. “Joe knows the risks and he knows what he’s doing,” Keith Fahnhorst, an offensive tackle, said empathetically. “We all like playing the game, and have a need to play it. That same drive that makes you play makes a guy like Joe come back maybe sooner than he should.”

It isn’t hard to find doctors who will say that Montana faces a statistically higher risk of recurrence of his injury because he chose to play in two months rather than wait four or six. On the day he cleared him to do it, Montana’s own surgeon, Arthur White, said Montana was “crazy” to play.

But Montana will look you in the eye and say, “If I had any second thoughts, I wouldn’t be here.” It never occurred to Montana not to come back as quickly as he could. “I’m so used to coming back from injury. This is what athletes do.”

Athletes are different than the rest of us. We admire and envy them because we know how difficult it is to do what they do. We’ve tried, we couldn’t do it. Ray Leonard boxes. Joe Montana plays football. That’s their natural state. It’s what they know best, what they do best and ultimately what they like best.

They take these foolish risks because athletes measure their worth by today’s game, not tomorrow’s. It’s a very short shelf life as it is. It should be easy to understand why they want to stay up there as long as they can.