Walking Away Can Be Tough To Do

As Michael Jordan lines up putts this summer and considers his future in basketball, he faces the most difficult time for an athlete-- deciding when it’s the right time to walk away.

Some pick exactly the proper moment, leaving on top, with something still left in the tank. Jim Brown, Sandy Koufax and Rocky Marciano all did it that way, on top of their sports but with nothing more to prove.

Brown was 29, coming off a career-high 21-touchdown season when he walked away from football in 1965. Koufax was 30 and had won 27 games, his fifth straight ERA title and third Cy Young award when he left baseball in 1966. Marciano was 33 in 1956, the winner of all 49 of his fights with 43 knockouts, when he became the first heavyweight champion to retire undefeated.

Others hang on, pushing their abilities beyond all reasonable limits, reaching back for one more sunrise, well after twilight is setting in. That was the sad way it ended for great ones like Willie Mays, Johnny Unitas, Muhammad Ali and Babe Ruth.

Anyone who saw Mays stumble around center field in the 1973 World Series, tripping over his own feet, was inclined to look away. Mays was one of the greatest center fielders of his time, who made one of the most memorable catches in World Series history when he robbed Vic Wertz in 1954.

This, though, was 19 years later. Mays was 42, not 23. His instincts were dulled by the accumulated years. He batted .211 that last season, almost 100 points under his lifetime average. He was done.

In any accounting of all-time quarterbacks, Unitas would be near the top of the list, the result of 40,239 yards passing, 290 touchdown passes, and a record streak of 47 games in which he threw a TD pass.

Most of those numbers, however, were accumulated with the Baltimore Colts from 1956-70. Unitas was a pale imitation of himself in his last three seasons, finishing up in San Diego as a seldom-used 40-year-old backup in 1973.

Ali played cat-and-mouse as his career wound down, frequently announcing retirements and then returning to fight again. His first retirement came in February 1970 after three years out of the ring because he refused military service during the Vietnam War. He was 28.

By October, he was fighting again and remained active through 1979, when he quit again, this time at age 37. He had beaten Leon Spinks the year before to regain the heavyweight title for the third time. It would have been the right time to leave.

Sixteen months later, however, he was back again for a fight with ex-sparring mate Larry Holmes.

Holmes punished Ali for 11 rounds before the fight was stopped. At age 38, Ali certainly seemed done. At 39, he was back again, this time losing to journeyman Trevor Berbick in a fight held in the Bahamas because no U.S. commission would license it.

This time, Ali really was finished.

Boxers seem to be the ones most prone to hanging on too long. Joe Louis fought seven times in 1951 at age 37, before Marciano ended that foolishness with a knockout. In 1965, when he was 44, Sugar Ray Robinson had 16 fights, losing five of them.

Roberto Duran, who is 47, was set to fight in Madison Square Garden last month before the card was called off. Larry Holmes (48) and George Foreman (49), both heavyweight champions in the ‘70s, swear they are going to square off one day soon. It had better be very soon.

Walking away is a tough thing to do for competitive athletes. Sometimes, however, more is involved than merely their ability. Sometimes their personalities are effected, as well.

Ruth, hurt when he was sent packing by the New York Yankees in 1934, tried to hang on with the Boston Braves and was batting .181 when he accepted reality and retired at age 40.

One of his teammates in the power-packed Yankees 1927 lineup was a surly slugger named Bob Meusel, a nasty sort of fellow, not someone you’d invite over for dinner.

Toward the end of his career, when his skills began to deteriorate, Meusel’s personality made a dramatic U-turn and he became downright hospitable, almost pleasant.

“He learned how to say hello,” writer Frank Graham noted, “when it was time to say goodbye.”