Abrupt retirements

I was thinking the other day that I cannot believe that Jermaine Dye has never played baseball again after 2009. He was 35 years old, coming off of a string of healthy, productive seasons, didn't get the free agent deal he was looking for, and ... walked away.

A lot of these kind of retirements are injury-caused. Sandy Koufax. Albert Belle.

Who else do people recall just exiting stage left in sports, before it seemed like they were ready to go?

 

John Brisker

 

It's hard to believe nobody was interested in Barry Bonds.

 

In some ways this may be a result of massive modern contracts: a player in (athletic) late middle-age may have socked enough money away in the prime of his career, he may just decide to walk away rather than play for less than he thinks he's worth and go through the grind of getting/staying in shape.

But it's risky, because as Neil Young says, "once you're gone, you can't come back" (with dramatically isolated exceptions).

 

Brian Urlacher is another recent one I can think of.

 

Ricky Williams for a time

 

I'm shocked by how many guys who made millions in their career, come back and get involved as coaches/managers.

 

yeah, but Urlacher was pretty obviously slipping, his style of play involves a lot of pain/punishment, and he is a visible enough public figure he should make a pretty nice living in the Chicago area as a Fohmah BEAR. So I was hardly stunned/shocked by his decision.

And who knows how much Fohmah BEAR legends talk to the young whipper-snappers, but you have to guess if Urlacher ever talked to Dick Butkus about it, he might have been told that hanging on for the last couple of years of his playing career has resulted in a hell of a lot of pain over the ensuing 40 years.

 

Barry Sanders
Jim Brown

 

Well, if you can get on the track to be a HEAD coach/manager, there is some nice money to be made. Toiling for years as an assistant, maybe not so much (although even low-level assistants at the major league level clear six figures plus these days).

Plus I suppose a lot of these guys think they'll actually be good at it. Some are and of course some aren't.

 

The counter-argument is that both of those guys appear to be in pretty decent physical shape, in contrast to many other players at the same position who essentially got smashed up for life.

Sanders especially being so small had to be aware at any time if he got held up in a pileup and some 6-6, 325-pound tackle bulldozed him from the blind side, he could go home on a stretcher. Brown was never at any similar risk of being physically demolished -- he was as big as many offensive linemen of his era -- but after passing 30 he must have figured it was time to quit while he was still relatively in one piece.

 

Aaron Hernandez