QUITTING TIME : Some Athletes Leave in Style, but Others Stay Too Long

EDITOR’S NOTE

Laker center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will retire after this season at 42, ending a remarkable career in the National Basketball Assn.

How will he perform in his final game? Will he go out like Ted Williams or Johnny Unitas? Like Norm Van Brocklin? Or Babe Ruth?

In this story, Earl Gustkey explores how these and other famous athletes wound up their careers.

When you’re big in sports, really big, this is the right way to retire:

You take your football team into the end zone for the winning touchdown in the waning minutes of a championship game.

That’s how Norm Van Brocklin did it, nearly 30 years ago.

On Dec. 26, 1960, Van Brocklin and his Philadelphia Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers for the National Football League championship, 17-13.

The Dutchman. He went out a winner. A big winner. Other big-name sports figures should have been so lucky.

On Van Brocklin’s last day, he beat Vince Lombardi. Lombardi wasn’t yet a legend, but he soon would be. He would never lose another championship game.

Van Brocklin, at 34, went out in style, but not in character. On that final, masterful drive, before 67,325, at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field, Van Brocklin ran when Lombardi expected him to throw, and threw when he expected him to run.

Situation: Green Bay, early in the fourth quarter, had just driven 80 yards for a touchdown to go ahead, 13-10, on a pass from Bart Starr to Max McGee.

Then a Philadelphia rookie, Ted Dean, returned the Green Bay kickoff 58 yards to the Packers’ 40-yard-line. On the winning drive, Van Brocklin used Dean on three running plays, the last one a five-yard sweep around the left side for the touchdown.

Green Bay valiantly fought back but ran out of time. When the game ended, Green Bay was at the Philadelphia nine.

Van Brocklin, who even today is thought to have had one of football’s greatest arms, passed only once on the winning drive, for a 13-yard gain to Billy Barnes over the middle. Even on the touchdown play, Green Bay expected a pass.

He completed nine for 20 for 207 yards, and was voted the game’s outstanding player.

Van Brocklin, who died of a heart attack in 1983, brought the Eagles from behind twice in that ’60 title game, just as he had all year. In compiling an 11-2 record, Philadelphia had come from behind to win eight times.

This is how not to retire:

Nov. 4, 1973: John Unitas, 40, regarded by some as the best quarterback ever, was on the bench in San Diego.

He watched as rookie Dan Fouts threw another interception against the Kansas City Chiefs in the fourth quarter of another Charger loss.

“Unitas!” coach Harland Svare yelled, as he pulled Fouts from the game.

The 1973 Chargers were not a bad team. They were awful. They finished 2-11-1. And Unitas, in his final season, went down with them.

When he had walked off the field the previous season, after 17 years with the Baltimore Colts, he was accorded a standing ovation.

That would have been a good final moment. But for Unitas, the scent of big money was in the air. The Chargers gave him a $175,000 signing bonus and a $250,000 salary for 1973. Sportswriter Jerry Magee, who covered the Chargers for the San Diego Union that year, recalled Unitas’ Charger debut:

“The team opened in Washington. On Unitas’ first snap, he faded back, back, back--and fell over on his back. No one touched him. His knees were so bad, one of them just sort of gave out.”

It got worse. Pro football people who remembered Unitas leading the great Colt teams of the late 1950s and early 1960s had to cover their eyes.

In the fourth game, the Chargers were at Pittsburgh. Late in the second quarter, the Steelers were ahead, 38-0. Unitas had completed two of nine passes for 19 yards and two interceptions. Svare pulled Unitas for Fouts, who made his first pro appearance.

San Diego lost, 38-21, but Fouts generated three fourth-quarter touchdowns.

In effect, that was the end of the road for Unitas. After four games, he was benched.

The absolute finish came on an unsightly afternoon in San Diego, in a caldron of boos and thrown garbage directed at Svare, the team’s coach and general manager.

When Unitas was sent in, paper wads and assorted trash were thrown at Svare. Unitas completed one pass for seven yards, then was thrown heavily to the turf on a sack. On his final play in football, Unitas had injured his shoulder and was taken out of the game.

When it was over and the Chargers had lost, 19-0, Svare had to dodge refuse thrown from the stands as he left the field.

Also walking off the field was a lone figure, No. 19, holding an ice pack on an injured shoulder. Hardly anyone noticed Unitas.

Svare resigned that week and was replaced by Ron Waller, who put Unitas on the deactivated list.

No “day,” no final ovation, no fond farewells.

Just gone.

Of all the big name sports performers who went out on top, few can match the exit of golfer Bobby Jones in 1930.

He won the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur, the British Open and the British Amateur. In those days, those four events constituted the Grand Slam.

Then, at 28, he retired.

Jones, in announcing his departure from tournament play, said he had grown weary of competition, which some found hard to believe, since it appeared that he had no competition.

From 1922 through 1930, he played in nine U.S. Opens and three British Opens and finished first or second 11 times.

In auto racing, here are the right and wrong ways to bow out:

--In 1957, Sam Hanks, 43, won the Indianapolis 500 on his 12th try, drove into the winner’s circle, and announced his retirement.

--In 1989, Richard Petty’s fans wish he’d do the same. Problem is, he can’t seem to win a race to retire on. Petty, 51, has won 95 more NASCAR stock car races than any other driver, yet hasn’t won a race since 1984. He’s zero for 129 in that span, and failed to qualify in three of his last four races.

In boxing, page after page of the Ring record book reveals names of fighters who lingered beyond their prime--Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Jack Johnson, Max Schmeling, John L. Sullivan, Jack Dempsey . . .

But two names stand out, two who departed on top, as unbeaten champions, luster intact.

Rocky Marciano was 49-0 and 6-0 as heavyweight champion when he quit in 1956. Gene Tunney was 79-1-3 and 2-0 as heavyweight champion when he retired in 1928.

Sometimes, athletes go out on top . . . then return, only to look foolish in trying to recapture skills long gone.

Jim Jeffries retired in 1905 as an unbeaten heavyweight champion with no more worlds to conquer. Then he let promoters talk him into coming back, in 1910, to wrest the heavyweight title from the hated black champion, Jack Johnson.

On July 4, 1910, in Reno, Johnson toyed with Jeffries before knocking him out in the 15th round.

In 1969, the Lakers, with Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, were supposed to win it all.

They didn’t. The Boston Celtics did, and their player-coach, Bill Russell, retired.

In Game 7 of the NBA’s championship series that year, it was Boston 108, Los Angeles 106, at the Forum. It was Boston’s 11th NBA title in 13 years and Russell, who retired the next summer, went out as one of sport’s great winners.

At that time, Russell and the Celtics had never lost the seventh game of a championship series.

The series is best remembered today for Laker center Wilt Chamberlain taking himself out of the game in its final minutes after injuring a knee and picking up a fifth foul.

Chamberlain said afterward that he had asked the Laker coach, Butch van Breda Kolff, to put him back in the game but that the coach had refused. Some speculated that Wilt was trying to preserve his achievement of never having fouled out of a game.

About a month after the game, Russell delivered a parting shot at Chamberlain in a speech at the University of Wisconsin.

“Any injury short of a broken leg or a broken back isn’t good enough,” Russell said of his rival.

“When he took himself out of that final game, when he hurt his knee, well, I wouldn’t have put him back in the game either, even though I think he’s great.”

Statistically, Sandy Koufax had the best year of his career in 1966. He was 27-9, struck out 317 hitters and had the lowest earned-run average of his career, 1.73.

Then, at 30, he retired, fearing the arthritis in his left elbow would be disabling in his old age if he continued to pitch.

Here was a guy for whom money didn’t matter. He made $125,000 in 1966 and after 27-9, some gave him a shot at $200,000 in 1967.

“I’ve had a few too many shots and taken a few too many (pain) pills,” he said at his retirement announcement at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

(No Dodger executives were present because Koufax would not delay his announcement until owner Walter O’Malley returned from a Dodger tour of Japan.)

“I had to take a shot for every game,” he said. “That’s more than I wanted to do. I had stomachaches from the pain pills. I’d be high half the time in games from the pills. I don’t want that.

“The pain had become continual. I had one game last season when the arm didn’t hurt.”

Koufax’s last season was masterful. He was as overpowering as ever, particularly down the stretch, when the Dodgers barely staved off the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the National League pennant.

Against St. Louis on Sept. 29, the Dodgers won, 2-1, and Koufax struck out 13 and won his 26th. He also became the first pitcher to have struck out 300 or more in three consecutive seasons.

Three days later, at Philadelphia, on the last day of the season, the Dodgers had lost the first game of a doubleheader, 4-3, and needed the nightcap to clinch.

On a rainy evening, Koufax beat the Phillies, 6-3, and struck out 10 for the 96th time and the 14th time in 1966. In the World Series, against the Baltimore Orioles, the Dodgers scored a total of two runs--and no runs at all in the last 33 innings--and were swept by the Orioles.

In Game 2, in his final appearance, Koufax gave up one earned run but the Dodgers were beaten, 6-0. Baltimore’s 20-year-old rookie, Jim Palmer, threw a four-hitter.

Like Van Brocklin, another pro football quarterback, Otto Graham of Cleveland, went out big.

Graham, the Browns’ quarterback from 1946-55, rivals Bill Russell as one of America’s greatest winners in a team sport.

With Graham at quarterback, the Browns won at least a divisional championship in 10 consecutive seasons. He retired after the 1954 season, after leading Cleveland to a 56-10 victory over Detroit in the NFL title game.

But Coach Paul Brown lost his backup quarterback in the off-season, and he coaxed Graham back for one more season.

Result: Cleveland went 10-2-1, Graham led the NFL in passing, he took the Browns to the championship game against the Rams at the Coliseum, where Cleveland beat Los Angeles, 38-14.

Babe Ruth’s departure from center stage had both lightning and meanness.

Ruth, who averaged 40 home runs for 17 straight seasons and who was the first hitter to hit 30, 40, 50 and 60 home runs in a season, was 40 and fat in 1935.

The New York Yankees had let him go the previous off-season and he was playing sporadically and poorly for the Boston Braves. On May 25, at Pittsburgh, Ruth hit his 712th, 713th and 714th home runs and a single, all by the seventh inning.

He left the game, to a standing ovation.

A perfect spot time to wave farewell, right?

Not the Babe.

The next day, his batting average still below .200, he struck out three times at Cincinnati. On May 28 he was zero for two. He did that again on May 29, and was zero for one the next day, his finale.

In his 8,399th and last at-bat, he struck out, then withdrew because of a sore knee.

Before his last day in uniform, he’d had a beef with the team’s owner, Judge Emil Fuchs, who refused Ruth’s request for a day off. He had been invited to visit New York to greet the new French liner, the Normandie, on its first transatlantic crossing.

After the game, on June 2, 1935, Ruth summoned writers to his locker.

“Boys, I can’t get along with Fuchs and have decided to go on the voluntarily retired list,” he said.

“Judge Fuchs won’t let me go down to see the Normandie. He’s a liar and a double crosser.”

Asked to react, Manager Bill McKechnie said in a written statement that Ruth had been “a disharmonious, disturbing influence” on the club, that the Braves were better off without him.

At a news conference, Fuchs said: “Nobody but an imbecile would act as Ruth did.”

Not a pretty scene, to be sure.

All was forgiven, however, when Ruth, dying of cancer, was accorded his “day” in a 1947 Yankee Stadium farewell before 58,000. With his voice raspy from his illness, Ruth made his famous farewell speech, when he referred to baseball as “ . . . the only real game, I think, in the world, baseball.”

He died Aug. 16, 1948, at 53.

But this is the best one, the one you wish you’d seen:

Sept. 28, 1960: Ted Williams, 42, after 19 seasons, is at the plate in Boston’s Fenway Park for what would be his final major league at-bat.

It’s the eighth inning, and Williams is facing Baltimore pitcher Jack Fisher. A 10,000-plus crowd rises and salutes Williams with a standing ovation, knowing it’s his last appearance in Boston.

The count reaches 1-and-1. Then Williams swings and drives a ball to right-center field. As the crowd jumps to its feet again and cheers, the ball clears the Red Sox bullpen and lands in the seats, 450 feet away.

Williams goes into his 521st and final home run trot, and disappears into the Boston dugout. But the crowd won’t let the game continue.

“We want Ted! We want Ted!” is the chant.

He emerges from the dugout, tips his cap, and everyone calms down. His teammates, inspired, score two runs in the ninth and win the game, 5-4.

Afterward, in the clubhouse, Williams and Red Sox management agree to end Williams’ 2,292-game career just like that. It’s announced that Williams won’t play in the season-ending series in New York.