COMMENTARY

I’m not sure whether to stand and applaud or flop to the sofa and cry. Intellectually, I know there’s every reason to be happy for John Elway, who like Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan before him, is retiring as a picture of health, his legend intact, worthy as few in public life are of our adoration. But intellect usually is tackled by emotion when the topic is sports. And the fact that we might look back on 1999 as the year in which Jordan, Gretzky, Elway and Cal Ripken retired is numbing, even a touch depressing.

Isn’t that an appropriate set of faces for the Mount Rushmore of sports, Jordan, Gretzky, Elway and Ripken? Jordan might be the most ruthless competitor we’ve ever seen in professional sports. Gretzky is the closest thing we’ve seen to a magician. Elway, after years of being lauded for his rare, and considerable, physical skills, demonstrated that his best attribute--and the one that would make him a champion--was persistence. And while Ripken didn’t dominate his sport like the others, it’s fairly safe to say nobody in any sport has personified the old-fashioned values of hard work and professionalism more than he has. What would you want in an athlete you couldn’t find in abundance among these four?

It’s almost too much to take in, that three are gone from the sporting landscape and Ripken could be gone by October, if not sooner. I suspect Jordan’s retirement made it easier for Gretzky to retire, and their retirements will make it just a little easier for Elway to announce that he, too, is gone. Who could blame Ripken if he decides to make it a foursome? If he does, 1999 would stand as one of the most stunning years in sports history, not for anything that happened on the field, but for the gods who walked away.

Elway might not go down in history as the best quarterback ever; I’d still award that honor to Joe Montana. But in the discussion of Best Football Player Ever, I’d put Elway right up there, underneath Jim Brown, alongside Montana, John Unitas, Walter Payton, Lawrence Taylor and Jerry Rice.

Elway has won more games than any quarterback (148). He has played 16 seasons, having missed only 15 games because of injury, even though he played with an abandon that made him more vulnerable to injury than any quarterback who ever played. By comparison, 1983 draft classmate Dan Marino has been sacked 282 times in 249 games; in almost the same number of games (259), Elway was sacked 559 times. Yet, Elway was almost as durable as Ripken.

He led his team to 11 winning seasons, nine playoff appearances, six AFC championship games and five Super Bowls. He brought his team from behind in the fourth quarter to win 47 times. He will be the first quarterback to retire immediately after winning a Super Bowl. He has been one of the few athletes in any sport who was called a messiah coming out of college and lived up to that billing as a pro.

If “The Drive” he authored on the frozen field in Cleveland Stadium in January 1987 isn’t the best performance in NFL history, it’s on the short list.

Even when the Broncos had only average runners, receivers, defenders and blockers, Denver was irresistible to watch because of Elway. And if you weren’t really, really careful, he’d beat you with those average, undersized teammates. The 1980s Broncos were the closest thing pro football ever has seen to a one-man championship team. Thankfully, Elway stayed long enough for backup troops to arrive.

Even though I’m paid to express thoughts that are often cynical about athletes and sports, I’ve never felt more civic pride at being from Chicago, never tingled more, never felt a greater sense of community fulfillment than I did when Jordan was on a rampage through the NBA playoffs. Every year seemed more tense than the one before it.

So, I know the anticipation they felt in Denver during training camp, and the angst after a difficult loss to the Raiders or the Chiefs, and the very real depression that set in after those three Super Bowl losses by a total of 136-40, and the unequaled sense of accomplishment that accompanied Elway’s breakthrough in 1997.

The people of Baltimore feel a similar bond with Ripken, the people of Edmonton felt it with Gretzky. I’ll bet you the people in Denver feel as if Elway made them better through his athletic brilliance, in part, because over time, he became one of them. The folks who say it’s silly, or try to trivialize it, are almost always people who haven’t had the privilege of living in a community during the athletic prime of a Jordan or an Elway, a Magic Johnson or a Larry Bird. It’s not just having a great team, it’s having that one larger-than-life figure who makes the place surge, just by being there, for at least a decade.

I’m finding it hard to celebrate the retirement of Jordan, Gretzky and Elway, because I’m worried the culture isn’t producing worthy successors who will sit beside them in 20 years. Okay, I know athletes are bigger, strong and faster. I know coaching is better, training techniques are more advanced and modern medicine can produce human beings with a greater capacity for physical accomplishment. But I’m worried that the culture is yielding kids (whether the field is sports or journalism) who are more concerned with getting paid, more concerned with celebrity than achievement. Now maybe these are just the ramblings of a guy just turned 40 who is overly romanticizing the final sporting heroes of his youth.

But maybe, just maybe, we’re in the process of waving good-bye to four of the greatest professional athletes American society ever will see. Only time and competition will tell.