The Right Time to Leave

Why must it end like this so often?

Shaquille O'Neal shuffles around the court vainly seeking one last ring. Chipper Jones hobbles with an average 60 points below his career level contemplating retiring. Ken Griffey Jr. leaves the Mariners after a sad sad stint trying to reignite the spark of the Mariner's as he did last year. David Beckham makes millions to sit on benches or model clothes while limping up and down the field.

The Greeks would say "call no man happy until he is dead." In athletic terms they were all too right, but then the Greeks invented what we call athletics. Humans, demigods, athletes reach an instant, a true apex of their talent and achievement. It lasts for a limited time but that apogee generates an an extraordinary human moment, an aura for them  and their career. For the Greeks this moment defined the song that would be sung for them, their glory and reputation. For us who see and sing the song it reminds us why it is good to be human.

The ideal moment captures the pinnacle. This is the moment to leave. Few of us have moments like these, very very few understand and leave at the height of their glory.

The Greeks knew that an athlete or hero should retire at the perfect moment, the synthesis of accomplishment and glory. Sophocles' tragedies recount the quiet horror of loss after the heroic has faded and the human remains.  Heroes, demigods, the ones who get it right shun the slow decline, the gradual loss of speed, coordination, endurance that enable them to be a master of their craft.

Remember  athletes make a bargain with their body; a bargain they must lose. The greatest athletes maintain rigorous training and conditioning. They carve from their physicality all that their bodies can give long past when a normal body could give. But in the end, our bodies betray us, and athletes feel the betrayal more deeply than anyone.

Michael Jordan got it right. The perfect shot, a classic Jordan shot that cinched the Bull's six title in the last second of the deciding game. This is the moment, the leave now moment for the Greeks. Jordan knew it in his soul, and he left the game, the absolute grand master. The greatest player of the 20th. century.

Lance Armstrong got it.  He retired the day of winning his unbelievable seventh consecutive Tour de France. Beneath this triumph lay his battle and survival against testicular cancer and founding a national movement to fight cancer, I still wear his yellow LIVESTRONG band on my wrist.

Something drew them back to Act II. Jordan returned for several desultory years. Armstrong returned and races here and there as a side show and fends off more charges of doping. Both were shadows of their former greatness; their return diminished rather than enhanced them and their accomplishments.

Interestingly two who got it were coaches and maybe the tempered wisdom of age helps. John Wooden knew he reached his apogee but also knew that he had given all he had. His love of the game and passion had banked; rather than continue to gather trophies without joy, he retired after his 10th. NCAA championship. Dean Smith at North Carolina made a similar choice when he was the winningest NCAA basketball coach and after two national championships. He retired on a 27 win season and Final Four appearance because he could not bring the same passion to the game.

The other remains an enigma but a great athlete who retired at the absolute height of his accomplishment and fame.  Sandy Koufax of the Brooklyn Dodgers stands as a towering pitcher of the mid twenieth century. One of the great pitchers of all time,  the youngest player to enter the Hall of Fame, he retired with intense arm pain and problems after winning 3 Cy Young awards and two World Series in four years. The only pitcher to record more strike outs than innings pitched, he dominated hitters. He pitched  four no hitters and one perfect game in a six year span. His last year was pitched in excrutiating pain and over his doctor's objections, and he still won 27 games and the Cy Young. He retired at the end of the World Series.

The Greek gods would understand them.

Griffey/Strasburg & the Circle of Sports

Ken Griffy Jr. retired last week. One day, as he always said he would, he did not show up for practice, but left a heartfelt note to his team and city of Seattle. The same week Stephen Strasburg exploded into the major leagues with 100 mile per hour fastballs and 14 strikeouts.

Just another week in life; just another week in sport; but the week reminded us of the rhythm of life in sport. Athletes live under a sentence that their body imposes. The human body reaches the zenith of its physical strength, quickness and coordination in early twenties. Even by then some elements like quickness are already eroding. Each player lives that sentence,  knowing their body will ultimately betray them, not on purpose, but by the simple entropy of being human.

The apogee moment of life, the moment to die for the ancient Greeks, arrives at those  glorious rich moments of pure excellence. Griffey exuded sheer joy of game. His unbridled ebuliance launched him against walls where stunning catches became normal. His true glory manifest in that  pure swing, one of the fastest cleanest swings you will ever see. Not cat quick but cheetah fast. Pure clean aggression with pinpoint accuracy and effectiveness. Watching the swing was like watching the immaculate form of the swing. As Michael Jordan discovered hitting a 2.8 inch ball travelling at 96 miles per hour as the ball dances and dives and curves is the hardest action in all sports. At the height of his power and talent  Griffey did it better than any one around him including the steroidal hunks who lumbered around bases unable to get bloated muscle structure out of the way enough to run or play outfield.

Incessant and lingering injuries marred Griffey's career after he left Seattle. Some believe they arose from the pounding he took at the concrete floor in the mausoleum of the Kingdom. He never reached the sheer numerical stature projected by his apogee years simply by his body breaking down just a little too early. But the period of his ascendency were glorious for him and the sport.

One star leaves. Another enters.

Stephen Strasburg, all 21 years of him and looking every year of it, signed a 15 million dollar contract last year on the last day of contract;, he is a Scott Boras client after all. After a mandatory stay in the minors to acclimate him and protect his pitching clock with the Nationals, he blazed into the major leagues with his debut. A true prodigy, he pitched only seven innings and struck out 14 batters.

I am not worried about the hype or his final long term trajectory. The point of the game is the circle of sports, like the circle of all our lives.

We are born, we stumble, grow and with luck, love, talent and effort we arrive at the blissful time when we really are "at the top of my game." All of us have that possible trajectory. All of us face failure and success and experience those rare awesome moments when it all comes together. For a great athlete like Griffey, this continued that for a decade. But the Faustian pact athletes make with their bodies caught up with him as it does with all athletes.

The athlete, like all of us, also faces the young guns. The world does not stand still. Young kids, old kids dream of being an athlete--I don't know anyone who dreams of being a college professor at the age of 10! Athletes face constant competition and instant obsolescence. Come to think of it many of us face that it this age that specializes in replacing physical skill or mental judgment with technology.

As their body betrays them slowly and incrementally, sometimes disastrously with injuries and sometimes they face a threshhold decline in their quickness or speed or endurance. One year, one month they can do it; a year later they can no longer hit a curve  or catch up to fastballs or bounce off a tackle and run again. The decay sets in at the same time younger  fanatically devoted and well trained young players push them. The youngsters admire and want to be like the players they now face. It is an honor to face a Griffey but even more of an honor to strike him out or surpass his home runs or hit the ball past him that he once would have caught.

The circle completes itself. A great player retires, quietly and without fanfare. A new player, a potential great player, erupts onto the scene. Just another week in sport, in life.