Abrupt retirements

At the time of a retirement, it is a retirement. We didn't know Magic was going to come back. Most of us thought he was going to die.

 

Three basketball examples, all with Wisconsin ties:

-- David Meyers, who quit Bucks at age 27.
-- Jim McIlvaine, a 7-footer who quit at 28 because, IIRC, he didn't like the game/life and only lasted that long because he got paid BIG bucks.
-- Al McGuire was 48 when he quit as Marquette's coach. Never coached again.

I recall early in Robert Smith's career, there was talk about how smart he was and how he wanted to become a doctor, maybe an orthopedic surgeon. So his early retirement didn't surprise me as much as his plunging into and staying in TV work.

 

Dave Cowens fits into the temporally retired category.

Rumor was that he hated playing with Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe.

 

Yeah, that was a big deal going back to his days at Ohio State. IIRC, he skipped a year of football because he wanted to invest time in his classwork and John Cooper was not a fan of that idea.

 

Meyers was a strange deal. I know he missed an entire season because of a bad back, but religion -- not the back -- was his reason. Those young Bucks teams of the late '70-early '80s were really good but never made the Finals. Can't help but wonder if Meyers might have gotten them over the top.

 

Because someone mentioned Brett Favre a few pages back ...
Apparently the Rams are not enthused about the Kellen Clemens-Brady Quinn pu pu platter, so they gave Favre a call to gauge his interest in a comeback. Thank God Favre's high school team is undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the state. He declined the Rams' offer.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9872646/brett-favre-return-sources-saying-rams-reached-out

 

man, is anybody else as sick of the fucking weasel euphemism 'reached out' as I am?

 

Yeah, but that was due to his car accident.

To me, a more apt comparison would be Edge. Defended World title at Wrestlemania, then announced his retirement in the ring just a week later with no warning or hype about it.

 

We once had a guy at a shop I used to work at who went on two weeks vacation. On his last night before the vacation he left a note in the SE's box saying after the two weeks vacation he had three weeks of comp time and then he was retiring. He was old, so it wasn't a total shock he would retire. But the manner was quite abrupt.

 

Edge had neck problems and also lived a very clean lifestyle so was not gooned up pain pills for it. He was also very smart with his money, probably still has the first draw he ever took.

 

Here's one I'll bet nobody remembers: Lorena Ochoa. She was supremely dominant on the LPGA, was No. 1 in the world and just walked away from the Tour at a pretty young age (I want to say she was around 30) in a sport where you can make beaucoups bucks well past age 50.

 

So many star women's athletes have made abrupt retirements that they no longer feel abrupt.