Odd Thoughts

When should an athlete retire?

You've probably heard that Roger Clemens has unretired so that he can pitch for his hometown Astros. I had planned to post a farewell to him earlier this year; I even started writing it, bt for some reason I just felt like I was being premature by assuming he was really finished. Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to break the news, but rather an attempt to answer the question above.

I'm going to confine the discussion to the greats, since they are really the only ones who get to make this decision - most athletes are forced out. The way I see it, and athlete can end his career in three ways: he can go out on top, he can slowly fade away, or he can just fall apart and be a pathetic shell of what he was. So is retiring in one of these ways better than another? At this point I think it would be fair to say Roger Clemens, should he stay retired, went out on top. Obviously he wasn't as good as he was in 1986, or 1996 for that matter, but he was still among the best pitchers in the game. But is he harming himself by coming back?

I don't think so. There are three reasons that players walk away in their primes, or at least when they can still be quality players: Personal reasons (i.e. family, which is what Clemens claimed), loss of competitive edge (Michael Jordan in retirement #1 and 2), and a desire to preserve a legacy or reputation. The first two are legitimate reasons, and there's no real way to argue with them - if that's what a player wants or the way he feels, then he should retire. This does raise another question: what should they do if they change their minds about those feelings? That one's for another time.

The third reason, that of the legacy, is what I intend to debunk. We all remeber how pathetic Mark McGwire and Tony Gwynn were in their final years, but I don't think that tarnished their legacies. They're still first ballot Hall of Famers, just like Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs who were still servicable major leaguers in their final years.

It's very hard to go out on top. I looked at the last 12 years, or so, of writer inducted Hall of Famers (I excluded Ozzie Smith as his HOF ticket was based on defense, and Kirby Puckett as his career ended by a freak accident, I also included Pete Rose, as he would have been inducted with the group of players up for consideration). What I've found is that only 3 out of the 22 players considered could be thought of as having gone out on top: George Brett, Rod Carew, and Paul Molitor. Obviously, going out on top is loosly defined - I estimated it as being within 10% of their career averages - and these guys were. 5 of the 22 were still servicable players, that is, still regualr players that made contributions to there teams; these are theones that I consider "faded": Robin Yount, Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, Gaylord Perry, and Ferguson Jenkins. That leaves 14 guys, about 65%, who ended their careers poorly, the types you wish would have ended it a few years earlier: Dennis Eckersley, Eddie Murray, Gary Carter, Dave Winfield, Carlton Fisk, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, Phil Neikro, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Rollie Fingers, Jim Palmer, Joe Morgn, Pete Rose. Now, this last list of guys could have retired, but it's hard to know when you're done. In 7 of the 14 cases, the players were still valuable in their second to last seasons: Murray, Sutton, Neikro, Fingers, Morgan, and Rose.

To take the argument a bit further, I randomly chose 20 all-time greats, and found about the same ratio: Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, and Sandy Koufax went out on top, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, and Honus Wagner faded away, while George Sisler, Tris Speaker, Yogi Berra, Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks, Warren Spahn, Rogers Hornsby, Christy Matthewson, Cy Young, Mel Ott, and even absoulte legends like Walter Johnson, Willie Mays and Babe Ruth were just disasters. But that hasn't harmed the reputations of any of those guys. Hardley anybody even knows that Ruth finished his career by playing 40 lousy games with the Boston Braves: he had 6 homers and 12 RBIs in 72 at bats, while hitting .181.

Clearly continuation doesn't hurt a players legacy or repuation, so I say, keep going, fellas. Clemens, David Wells, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, and Jamie Moyer will all be 40+ for the 2004 season, some of them could fall apart, but 4 out of five of those guys (5 out of 6 when you consider Bonds is getting up there too) were still great players last year. The only thing regrettable about Clemens return, is the emotional ovation he received at the end of the World Series. It will be hard to capture that again. But I don't think he's making a mistake. I'm glad to see the greats that we have today keep on ticking.