Susceptibility to Burnout Increases With Income

Burnout is a 20th-Century word, in fact, a late 20th-Century word.

George Washington never experienced burnout. George Burns hasn’t, either.

Burnout seems to be a product of the playing fields. And then in only specific places. Babe Ruth never had burnout. Neither did Ty Cobb.

You’re never going to get Arnold Palmer off a golf course. Sam Snead was still trying to make a buck out there when he was 80.

But a lot of young players suddenly can’t get the putter back anymore. Instead of in tournaments, they’re in therapy.

Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Harry burned up, not out. Harry, so to speak, died in the kitchen.

It’s really a form of quitting while you’re ahead. But quitting’s quitting. Some people chuck it when they find they can’t meet their own exacting standards anymore. They don’t want to give less than their best.

Joe DiMaggio left when he found he couldn’t get around on the fastball anymore and he didn’t want to devalue his considerable lifetime average with a lot of .243 seasons.

They had to cut the uniform off Casey Stengel. Casey didn’t care about posterity. Only prosperity. His.

In part, it was a matter of money. Burnout is a luxury like a new Rolls-Royce or a condo in Palm Beach.

In the old days, you couldn’t afford burnout. When Lou Gehrig made only $40,000 a year, he had to keep burning. So did almost everyone else. I remember my personal hero, my grandfather, worked for 54 years repairing assembly-line belts in a factory. He couldn’t burn out, he had eight kids to support. He did it on $14 a week, working 12 hours a day.

Burnout is an occupational hazard only with the very rich, it would seem. It equates with boredom, which is another occupational hazard with the rich. It’s a self-indulgent emotion.

I bring this up because of Joe Gibbs, perhaps the best football coach in the business these days. He has been in four Super Bowls (with three different quarterbacks) and has won three of them. He is ninth on the list of all-time victorious coaches and has been successful wherever he went. Suddenly, stunningly Gibbs quit the Washington Redskins. Burnout. He is 52.

Now, Amos Alonzo Stagg coached until he was in his 90s, Pop Warner until he was in his 80s. You don’t burn out at $20,000 a year, you burn out at $2 million.

I guess Alexander the Great was the most famous burnout in history. He complained at age 30 that he had no more worlds to conquer. He died three years later. Presumably of boredom.

Word out of Chicago these days brings the unconscionable rumor that Michael Jordan, of all people, is hinting at chucking it all. No one is sure why.

Basketball probably interferes with his golf. He is said to have complained that he is out of challenges. Like Alexander, he is only 30.

Bjorn Borg packed it in at 26, an age when most athletes in other sports are coming into their own. But Jimmy Connors is still trying to beat players half his age at 40.

Why anyone would quit doing what he does best 10 to 15 years before he has to has always been a mystery to most guys in a 9-to-5 world who show up with lunch pail and hard hat or on the back of a truck or with a pail and shovel.

With big money, is there big pressure? To be sure. But Lee Trevino once said that pressure was not putting for $200,000 of Bob Hope’s money, pressure was putting for $20 when you had only 20 cents in your pocket. Particularly if your opponent came from a prominent crime family. Reggie Smith once said pressure was trying to raise a family of five driving a bus.

So, is burnout a copout? Does a guy set fire to his insides trying to make life-or-death decisions like whether to go for the field goal or the first down? Whether to bunt or hit away?

Does standing at the foul line with 10 seconds to play and the score tied turn adults into screaming nerve endings?

Can you get old looking at a lifetime of 3-and-2 counts? Six-foot putts to tie for the Masters?

Pro coaches Dick Vermeil, John Madden and Bud Grant took Gibbs’ route out. They all punted on third down, so to speak. But George Halas coached the Bears until he was 74. Pressure didn’t bother Halas. Having nothing to do all day did.

Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe the baby-boomers, brought up in time when stocks constantly went up and banks and factories stayed open, lost their staying power.

Suppose Ruth had suffered burnout at age 20-something? He would be remembered today as a moderately successful left-handed pitcher. Why didn’t Bill Tilden suffer burnout? Why didn’t anybody in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s? Probably because they liked to eat.

Like to see a Pete Rose retire prematurely? If Jordan goes, can Scottie Pippen sell shoes? What would golf have done if Palmer retired at the age Borg did? It’d be like John Wayne getting shot in the second reel of “Rio Hondo.” The audience would be cut in half.

It was General MacArthur who said, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Well, young sportsmen are hitting the silk all over the place.

Has winning become so important that it corrodes the psyche? Well, John McGraw managed the Giants for 30 years, or until he was 59. Connie Mack managed the Athletics for 50 years, or until he was 88. They must have lost lots of times in those spans without heading home to hide.

Burnout is a lousy modern invention, a sign of the times like rap music and call-waiting. It’s a disease that inflicts only the affluent. A product of prosperity. It’s a good thing for us Thomas Edison needed the money. Or Rembrandt. Or Michelangelo. (What if he said, “I can’t stand to look at that ceiling another minute!”)

Look at how long our great comics, Burns, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, stayed to entertain us long after they needed the money. I can see certain professions leading to burnout--goaltender for the Kings, for example, a ground-ball pitcher for the Dodgers.

But I wonder what Gibbs will find to do that is one-half as rewarding as beating Denver or Buffalo in the Super Bowl.

Or one-half as easy.