Big Finish
Posted: June 7th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Essays, Pop Culture | 83 Comments »
It is not often that we get to quote Shakespeare here, and so we pull this quote from Macbeth … it is a line about the treasonous Thane of Cawder, who had fought for the Norwegians against his own Scotland. At his execution, the Thane apparently confessed his sins and repented, which led the King of Scotland’s son Malcolm to say:
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”
Yes, this is about endings … inspired, I guess, by the Atlanta Braves’ decision to release Tom Glavine, one of the greatest pitchers in team history. The Braves had signed Glavine after he had gone through elbow and shoulder surgery. He pitched a couple of minor league rehab assignments and then the Braves released him. It seemed a heartless way to end a brilliant career; and Braves’ dictator John Schuerholz publicly apologized for the way it was handled. Glavine was still enraged. He had pitched 11 scoreless innings in the minors, but said that he had to endure a day and a half of listening to Braves officials tell him that he could not get out big league hitters. He believed — lots of people believed — that the real truth was the Braves did not want to pay him the $1 million roster bonus.
Well, endings are hard in baseball. There just aren’t many stories that end spectacularly, like Ted Williams hitting a home run in his last at-bat*.
*Though, let’s be honest, how SPECTACULAR was that ending? It was made poetic by John Updike’s brilliant “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” story, but, let’s be honest, Williams’ career ended on a cold and dreary Boston day in front of 10,454 fans at the end of a dreadful Red Sox season. An artist might see the beauty in it. But it’s not exactly the way a sports movie would end.**
**Based on some of the awful sports movies I’ve seen lately, Williams career would end with him hitting his last home run to beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series. Right-handed.
As Bill James points out — this whole post comes out of a conversation I was having with Bill — Glavine’s ending is made even more poignant by his connection to Warren Spahn. Here they were — two lefty pitchers, roughly the same size (Spahn listed at 6-foot 175, Glavine at 6-foot-1, 190), both spent most of their careers pitching for the Braves (though in different cities), both pitched for the Mets late in their careers, both won almost exactly 60% of the time, both won 300 game even though neither ever struck out 200 in a season, both had ERA+ of 118, etc. and etc. and etc.
The biggest connection, perhaps, is that Glavine’s father was a huge Spahn fan — Spahn was his favorite player. And now, there are their endings: Bill reminded me that it was Spahn who was the first one to say the now cliche line: “They’re going to have to tear the uniform off my back.” He simply kept pitching on and on, until finally in 1964 the Braves, apparently, offered Spahn the manager’s job in the middle of the season. The offer, likely, was an effort to get Spahn to bow out gracefully. He turned it down, saying that he still had some life in his pitching arm.
When he signed with the New York Mets for the 1965 season, he told reporters: “I think I’m still a 20-game winner.”
Tom Glavine after the Braves released him, “I’m absolutely certain I could have gotten people out.”
When asked if it was his salary that forced the Braves to release him, Spahn said: “It had everything to do with it.”
When asked if it was the $1 million signing bonus that forced the Braves to release him, Glavine said: “It usually is about the money.”
Spahn made 19 starts for the Mets, he was 4-12 with a 4.36 ERA, and he got released. He picked up with San Francisco to finish his career, and he actually pitched quite well. He threw three complete games in 11 starts and had a better-than-league average 3.36 ERA. But at that point — even though he was absolutely certain he could still win games — he did not want to fight the fight anymore. He was 44 and it just didn’t seem worth the pain. So he retired. Glavine is 43 and even though there will be offers for him and he feels absolutely certain he can still win games. He might come back, but I suspect he will walk away too. Maybe he wants to prove the Braves wrong but … is it worth the pain?
Is there a good way to retire? A right way? I find myself admiring Mike Mussina — the guy won 20 games last year and walked away. It’s funny how quickly that is forgotten. Lots of people are yapping these days about how Randy Johnson will be the last 300-game winner — those days are over, it will never happen again, the pitchers go every fifth day, blah blah blah — and it’s like they forget that Mike Mussina just months ago WALKED AWAY from 300 victories. He has 270, and he won 20 just last year, and he retired. Is there much doubt that if he wanted to stick around he would have won 300? Coming off his 39 year, he had more wins than Gaylord Perry, than Nolan Ryan, than Phil Niekro, than Randy Johnson … and all but two pitchers with more victories (Bert Blyleven and Robin Roberts) won 300.
Mussina didn’t stick around. Why? I think it’s because Mussina knows who he is, knows what he’s about, and he did not want to scramble around to reach to a number. I admire that decision. It will probably cost him a few Hall of Fame votes, but I think he will still get in. And anyway, like I say, he knows who he is.
But, I have to say, I equally admire Greg Maddux, who kept on pitching long after his legend was secure and he wasn’t the same pitcher. To be honest, he was not much more than a league average pitchers his last six seasons — 82-75 with a 104 ERA+ those last six years — but he kept on pitching because, obviously, he loved it. He loved to compete, loved to challenge hitters, loved to challenge himself, and as long as someone was willing to pay him and send him out there every fifth day, well, absolutely, he would pitch. Isn’t that an admirable way to go too?*
*Isn’t that the very meaning of “Until they tear the uniform off my back?” Funny, we tend to admire people who say that, but we don’t REALLY admire people who stick around until someone comes to tear the uniform off their back. Think about Brett Favre. How many times have you thought in the last couple of years, “Damn, Brett, walk away already. Geez, this is getting embarrassing. You’re ruining your legacy.” And yet, isn’t this EXACTLY what made Brett Favre in the first place? His whole game was built around his passion for football, his love for competition, the fact that he really was an overgrown kid, the high school quarterback who never quite grew up. Well, why would that go away just because he got old? How can we blame Brett Favre for being Brett Favre?
I always remember George Brett telling me that there was something about his finish that he regretted … stunning, really, because Brett had one of the great baseball endings ever. Late in his final year, in a game against California, he doubled in the first inning to drive in the Royals’ first run. In the fourth, with the Royals down by two, he hit a two-run homer off John Farrell to tie the score. In the ninth, with the Royals down three, he was hit by a pitch, and scored a run on a bases loaded walk … the Royals went on to tie the game.
Then, in the bottom of the 10th, Brett hit a walk-off homer to win it. He retired one week later.
Still, even with an ending that good, Brett would tell me that he wished he had played one more season … he wished he could have come to camp like a rookie and tried to legitimately win a job, and then he wished he had played the season for the rookie minimum salary. I’m not sure that would have been possible for a great player like Brett, but I do like him thinking of it, and I do like him asking: “Wouldn’t that have been the perfect ending?”
The perfect ending. We all long for it, right? The players. Management. Fans. Already in New York, there is a palpable sense of concern about how it will end for Derek Jeter, even though the end is still a ways off for the guy. There is worry that Big Papi will not come out of this tailspin and will linger on as a mediocre player for a while. Yes, we all want the perfect end … but what is it? Is it a six-month celebration of the player, like it was for Johnny Bench or Cal Ripken? Is it to simply walk away one day in late May like Mike Schmidt — he walked in the ninth inning of an 8-5 loss then, the next day, announced that he was finished. “I looked for signs and reasons every night to continue as a player,” Schmidt said. “But I just couldn’t find them.”
As Bill points out: There are no Senior Nights for Major League Baseball players.
We like the way Frank Robinson retired. In 1976, he was player-manager of the Cleveland Indians. He was mostly manager by then — he only gave himself 79 plate appearances that year. But on Sept. 18, the Indians were down 3-1 in the eighth and with runners on first and second. Buck O’Neil, when he was the manager of the Kansas City Monarchs, would occasionally run into an obvious pinch-hitting situation, look up and down the bench for a pinch-hitter, and then finally say, “All right, give me my wood.” Well, that’s just what Frank Robinson did. He sent himself in as a pinch-hitter, and he rapped an RBI single, and then he said “Bring me the head of Alfredo Griffin,” who came in to pinch-run. That was the last time the great Frank Robinson appeared in a game. There were no fireworks, no tears, no “Tribe Fans Thank Frank,” stories. He ended it all quietly, a silent slip into retirement, kind of like my Dad, probably like your Dad too.
Anyway, bad endings are usually forgotten. Yes, everyone remembers Willie Mays falling down in the outfield, but how many people remember that Joe Morgan finished his career in Oakland. Or that Robin Roberts threw his final pitches for the Chicago Cubs. Or that Dave Winfield finished his career with the 1995 Cleveland Indians … hell, I’d forgotten that.
Here’s where a few finished their careers:
Harmon Killebrew: Kansas City
Eddie Murray: Dodgers
Billy Williams: Oakland
Eddie Mathews: Detroit
Steve Carlton: Minnesota
Tom Seaver: Boston
Gaylord Perry: Kansas City
Goose Gossage: Seattle
Dave Parker: Toronto
Dan Quisenberry: San Francisco
Mike Piazza: Oakland
Fred Lynn: San Diego
Dale Murphy: Colorado
Does it really matter? Maybe we make too much of endings. I suppose it’s because we are conditioned to wanting our movies and television shows and novels and songs to end in a satisfying way. We want the giant “GOODBYE” spelled out in rocks as the helicopter pulls away, like the final episode of M*A*S*H.* We want Suzanne Pleshette to be under the covers at the end of Newhart. We want Bruce Willis to be … um … and we want Keyzer Soze to be … and we want Snape to be … well, wait, you might not have finished those.
“I think you overestimate our dear Viennese, my friend,” Salieri said to Mozart in the movie. “Do you know you didn’t even give them a good bang at the end of songs so they knew when to clap?”
But sports are not like the movies or television or books or songs. The best stuff in sports generally happens in the middle, after an athlete has learned the game but before skills have faded and frayed. Sure, Jim Brown walked away at precisely the right time — when he was still the best football player on earth — but two decades later later he was racing Franco Harris in a pathetic display. Michael Jordan walked away when he was the best basketball player in the world — TWICE — but he could not stay away, could not leave it all behind.
Maybe my favorite baseball ending was that of Dan Quisenberry. The stuff on the field wasn’t too great … he was released by the Kansas City Royals on Independence Day, 1988 … he went on to pitch or the Cardinals and he finished off the career with five outings as a member of the San Francisco Giants. He got roughed up in three of those. Years later, before the doctors found the tumor, I asked Quiz if he missed baseball. He was, by then, a poet, his kids were growing up, and he had Janie his wife, and he was involved in his church, and he said that, sure, he missed it sometimes. But then he would go out to the ballpark, listen to the cheers. And he would pretend they were for him.
* * *
*OK, this is a long Pozterisk, which is why I put it on the bottom. I don’t know if you saw this, but I have to point this out: I was watching 30 Rock, which is a good enough show — love that Tina Fey — but I almost never watch it. I was only watching it because my DVR recording “The Office” had been hijacked by a local weather report. I don’t want to go into it. I only explain because I might get some of the details wrong.
Anyway, the point of the episode was … I don’t know. Something about Alan Alda. He played Alec Baldwins father and he had to have a kidney transplant or something. Anyway, Alan Alda was on the show. Only then, in this wild turn, someone asked the star of the show-within-the-show — Tracy Jordan — to go back to his high school, and he refuses for some convoluted reason that he explained, something about a baby and gangs or something. It made little sense, and then they find out that it’s all an excuse, he left high school because he didn’t want to dissect a frog. Like I say, baffling, and it went on for quite a while until finally Tracy was confronted by Tina Fey and he starts crying about how “You’re right, there was no baby, I was chicken.”
To which Alan Alda (who happened to be walking by) said: “A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show.”
And I bring this up because … it was a remarkably long setup for one preposterously obscure line. That’s why I loved it. That to me was a Springsteen-esque effort. They were willing to take the show wherever it had to go in order to get that line in (which, I hope you already knew, was an homage to the last episode of M*A*S*H … if you didn’t, don’t feel bad, my wife was entirely lost too). I admire that sort of effort. In a way, I gained a new appreciation for Springsteen in that he continued, throughout the tour, to throw his heart and soul into “Outlaw Pete,” even though it’s an awful song. It was like he was saying: “You know what, I don’t care if NO ONE gets this. I’m sticking with it.”
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John Elway. Best. Ending. Ever.
I’m with Margo, I didn’t detect the M.A.S.H. allusion in 30 Rock.
Joe, you’re like Jack Donaghy WITH talent.
Once again…simply brilliant….
I was at that game when GB hit the shot in the 10th to win it. It was the day after he announced he was retiring and I took my dad, my grandfather and my little brother to the game. By the time we all called George out of the dugout for a curtain call, three generations were crying together. Thank you for reminding me of that memory….the last time I took my grandfather and dad to a game before they passed away….their own way of retiring…
SBA
Nolan Ryan gave up a grand slam to Dann Howitt in his farewell. And Bob Gibson’s last game featured a grand slam by Pete LaCock, son of Peter “Hollywood Squares” Marshall.
I bet you could find those same Spahn/Glavine type quotes from Steve Carlton. He ended up making quite a tour of the major leagues in his last couple of seasons.
You bring up a good point. We all remember guys like Williams, Brett, Cal Ripken Jr., and Mussina who go out when they can still play a couple of years but choose to retire triumphantly. However, most players are like Spahn, Clemens, and Favre who wants to keep playing and end up fading away. (Michael Jordan with the Wizards, anybody?)
I’ve always wondered why Warren Spahn didn’t become Hall of Fame eligible until 1973 even though he clearly didn’t play in the majors after 1965. I’m surprised the attendance numbers for Williams’s last game was only 10,700. That’s 6,000 less than the announced attendance for Randy Johnson’s 300th win, although we’ll never know how many people were actually at the first game.
I probably won’t make it first, but “Circle me, Bert!”
I started collecting baseball cards in 1985, and Joe Morgan was on the A’s. So I’ve always thought of him as an A. Maybe I should read a book about his earlier career.
I’m baffled by the tiny amount of money involved. Cutting a team legend and a Hall-of-Famer over a million bucks? Just because they win Tommy Hanson’s time is now? (Judging by his line today, that time is not quite upon us.)
“His whole game was built around his passion for football, his love for competition, the fact that he really was an overgrown kid, the high school quarterback who never quite grew up. Well, why would that go away just because he got old? How can we blame Brett Favre for being Brett Favre?”
Great article, Joe, but I take issue with this Favre point. We don’t blame him for wanting to keep playing. We blame him for what appears to be six years of deliberately seeking attention by pretending to retire and THEN deciding he wants to keep playing. It would be fine if he kept playing until nobody wanted him anymore, scratching and clawing to hang on. It would also be fine if he had retired once, found it was a mistake, and came back. Instead, he has been dangling the idea of his retirement for the better part of a decade, in what I can only conclude is a deliberate attempt to get more media attention than the all-time NFL interception leader might normally deserve. Its just too much.
Pete Sampras had a pretty good ending.
Whoa, David Ortiz has not been ‘mediocre’ in any sense of the word. He’s been playing about as well as the backup second baseman for Pawtucket would at the big league level.
People like to mention Mays falling down in the outfield in the 1973 World Series. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but anyone can slip. I’m sure Willie slipped chasing a few fly balls in his 20s too but no one will talk about that. I’ve seen the film – it’s not like he got confused or turned around, he just slipped. Not a big deal. But that’s not really my point. My point is that later in that same game, Willie got a single to drive in the go ahead run in the 12th inning – a game the Mets won. This would be his last hit in the majors. This is never pointed out.
He pinch hit later in the series and grounded into a force play for his final at bat.
If people are going to point out the slip why don’t they point out the game winning hit?
Did you ever read Roger Kahn’s “The Seventh Game”? It’s not his best work, but the whole book is basically about a pitcher’s last game–last pitch–in his career. I’m tempted to tell you how it ends, but I don’t want to spoil it in case anyone out there decides to read it.
Considering his love of publicity, Pete Rose had a quiet ending to his playing career. I IRC, he had a multi-hit game in mid-August against the Dodgers and drove in the winning run, but it wasn’t until after Gossage struck him out a few days later that he stopped batting in games. No announcement, nothing formal, he just didn’t put himself on the lineup card. Not the way anyone would have expected Pete to go out.
After a few years of reading UniWatch, I guess this reaction was inevitable… it’d be interesting to see Spahn and Quiz in SF Giants uniforms.
With regard to Brett Favre, I’ve always felt that he’s entitled to play as long as he can, and as long as someone wants him on their team. All the talk about tarnishing his legacy seems silly to me. He loves the game, he knows he’ll never find another like it, and he wants to play it as long as possible. The only thing that might make me a little uneasy is that he doesn’t need to work and he does have a family that is waiting for him at home.
If you like that setup, you HAVE to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David (you know, the Seinfeld guy behind the scenes). They take entire episodes, often entire *seasons* to get to one joke setup, and then proceed to knock it out of the park.
It also helps to know that like half the show is improvised.
A sad ending . . . Brooks Robinson sitting in the bullpen in 1977, being shown on television eating nachos while the game was in progress. I couldn’t help but think this was a tough way to see a legend head into the sunset.
I was living in Baltimore when the White Sox played at the Orioles in late July 1995, and I happened to be at this game. John Kruk came up for Chicago in the first inning, singled, then retired. Nice ending. In my memory, he got to first and was replaced by a pinch runner, but Retrosheet says he went to third on hits/walks by the next two hitters and was pinch hit for in his next at bat…
Man, I hadn’t even realized Murphy played long enough that Colorado was even a team. Yikes.
The perfect ending would have to be Lou Gehrig. The Iron Horse was 36 when he retired. It’s impossible to accuse him of not staying around long enough or trying to hold on too long. His farewell speech makes for such a great movie that almost everyone reading this has seen it even though it didn’t take place in our lifetime. Just reading it had me bawling before I wrote this. His illness helped to get more research to help everyone suffering from it.
Here’s to one of the best men, and players, to ever set field on the diamond.
You know, I didn’t realize the M*A*S*H baby-and-chicken comment until three days after I saw the episode… then it comes to me in a flash, I’m overwhelmed by it’s brilliance… and I’m all alone, with no one to tell and relate to it — I felt like Jimmy Valvano running around looking for someone to hug. That was frustrating.
If you experience something really cool, and there’s no one around to share it with, did it really happen?
My childhood favorite player, Will Clark, definitely went out on top. Traded to Saint Louis at the deadline in 2000, he proceeded to hit .345/.426/.655 to finish the season, then .250/.357/.500 in the NLDS and .412/.500/.706 in a losing NLCS effort. He was 36 years old and probably could have hung around for a few more years, but he walked away. Five years later he’s one-and-done in the Hall voting, and while I wouldn’t vote for him myself, he’s better than quite a few guys who are in.
ajnrules,
You cite Ripken as a guy who could have played a couple more years? Really? He managed a .239/.276/.361 line (70 OPS+) in his last season. He was slightly below league average the year before, and below league average seven of his past 10 seasons. He looked pretty clearly done when I saw him play in ‘01.
One guy about whom we MIGHT wonder what might have been is Larry Walker. Here’s a guy who finished one half-decent season from 400 HR and managed a .289/.384/.502 line in mostly platoon duty – only 367 PA – in his last season. For his career, he has an excellent (but obviously somewhat Coors-fueled) .313/.400/.565 line, good for a 140 OPS+, and he was a good baserunner and defender throughout much of his career.
He could wind up falling shy of the Hall of Fame based on his counting stats, which made it all the more baffling to me that he called it a career when he seemed to still have a fair bit to give.
Joe, I know you’re super busy, but you’ve got to watch “30 Rock.” It’s very smart with a lot of very clever and hilarious lines, especially the ones between Tina’s character (Liz Lemon) and Alec Baldwin’s character (Jack Donaghy). Trust me, you’ll love it if you allow yourself the chance to watch it.
For those who didn’t get the reference, after 11 seasons of being arguably the greatest comedy in the history of TV, The Last MASH (which I think is still the most-watched episode of any television show ever) was famously criticized for not being funny. If you watched only that final episode and nothing else, and had never heard of the show before, you would have assumed you were watching the series finale of a long-running drama series. More than assumed. It literally would not have occurred to you that this was the finale of a long-running comedy series.
Anyway, the show begins with Hawkeye (Alda) in an army mental ward. In flashbacks during his therapy we see that some of the MASHers had been on their way back to camp on a school bus type vehicle, with some locals, and the bus had to stop and shut down and turn off its lights to avoid a North Korean patrol (or sniper or something). A local woman has a chicken making a lot of noise and Hawkeye yells at her to “keep that damn chicken quiet.” And the chicken keeps making noise and the woman is looking frantic and then with the camera on Hawkeye the noise stops. And he turns around and sees that the woman has killed the chicken in the course of trying to keep it quiet. Only then during therapy he realizes the woman didn’t have a chicken, she had a baby. And he yelled at her to keep her damn baby quiet. And she accidentally smothered her baby trying to keep it quiet so that they wouldn’t be found by North Koreans. And that was the horrible event that Hawkeye blocked out of his mind and wound up in the mental ward over.
And this was the first half hour or so of the 2-hour finale of a comedy series.
I gotta say, the lack of “The Simpsons” in your poll is very troubling.
Scott Lange has the Favre idea exactly right. It’s not that people are upset Favre wants to play past his prime. It’s that Favre has become a me-first attention whore who alienates himself from teammates, calls pointless press conferences to get his name in the spotlight, and plays this BS teasing waiting game. I have no problem with somebody wanting to stick around because they want to play. I do have a problem with somebody just wanting to be in the spotlight because they have no idea what to do with themselves if people aren’t talking about them. Favre is quite clearly the latter.
First the typos. Joe, this may be the worst sentence I’ve ever seen you write: “[Quiz] went on to for the Cardinals and the finished off the career…” Probably should be “went on to pitch for the Cardiansl and then finished off his career…”.
Loved the MASH reference. So many folks have no sense of perspective. Alan Alda directed and co-wrote that final episode, so it makes sense that he would remember it. I’m pretty sure 30 Rock remembered it on their own. You can’t slip Russia past Tina Fey.
I remember having a conversation with my young cousin that started with him contending that Kobe Bryant was great, but Michael Jordan was the best of all time. “What about Wilt Chamberlain,” I asked. “Who?” “Wilt Chamberlain, averaged 50 points a game one season, scored 100 points one game.” “You’re making him up!” “No, I’m not. And maybe Wilt had an unfair advantage in a league which didn’t really have many men big enough to guard him. But what about Oscar Robertson. One season he averaged a triple double.” The words slowly sank in.
Few folks today dredge up the past. A lot of the so called classics weren’t so much classics as they were the only thing on the air. Milton Berle does not impress me, for example. But MASH had the largest television audience ever for its final episode, the sole scripted titan amongst all those Super Bowls, and deserved it. Not a likely outcome for a show almost canceled its first season. Baseball is one of the few events that causes reflection and a search for historical perspective. Will Pujols or ARod be the best right handed hitter of all time? Hard to argue against Rajah. Was Bonds the best of all time, or Pedro? Again, you have to look to the past. Television, except for film school, has no such cultural memory. “Land of the Lost”, a crappy television show, became a crappy movie that probably lost its studios a zillion dollars. Without in any way diminishing my fondness for Robert Altman’s original movie, wouldn’t MASH be a more interesting movie to remake?
to quote, then note:
When asked if it was the $1 million signing bonus that forced the Braves to release him, Glavine said: “It usually is about the money.”
another writer, not nearly as good as joepos, recently commented on this same topic, pointing out that it seemed odd for glavine to take a stand on the money issue, after he was paid
8 million dollars last year for producing 2 victories, while spending most of the year on the dl…a scenario very very likely to be repeated this year, if he does make it back…but glavine had no issue with taking that money.
The Office and 30 Rock are literally the only two TV shows that I do not miss.
I would go to ballyard and watch Glavine as a 4th or 5th starter
for the Royals. Perhaps I am nostalgic or just a moron but I enjoy watching legends like Gaylord Perry play out the string in KC.
I’m not sure who you are Richard Aronson (#27) but you’ve lost all credibility as an editor when you recommend “went on to pitch for the Cardiansl…”. Sure joe has the occassional typo in his blog but generally the crowd here can figure out the missing word – like you did.
John (#13)—If I remember correctly, Gossage struck out Rose on three pitches. Blew him away. That probably made his decision a little easier.
It’s not just athletes who are stumbling around past their prime. How about the announcers? Pat Summerall and Dick Enberg are two that come to mind.
Right now “Mad Men” and “Top Chef” are my must-watches.
The Simpsons hasn’t been must-watch in 10 years.
Good timing with this post. It gives me the chance to mention that I went to the Mets-Nationals game on Saturday, and there was a guy wearing a Willie Mays Mets jersey. I was dumbfounded.
I do not know anything about soccer, but shouldn’t Pele be on the list?
Joe,
Great article. I agree that both guys like Mussina and Maddux should both be appreciated for how they ended their respective careers. I think they both stayed true to themselves ( I could be wrong of course). I really dislike when fans attempt to take some kind of ownership of a player’s legacy. All an athlete owes us is to play as hard as he or she can, outside of that, it is their career.
I did have two points to make however. One I agree with poster #22 Justin– Ripken was done at that point. I didn’t have the stats on hand but when I read your article his name stood out as being out of place. Justin provided the stats to prove it.
The other issue was with Michael Jordan. Here are his last two years that he played with Washington (all stats per game):
Pts. Assits Rebs.
22.9 5.7 5.9
20.0 3.8 6.1
He was not unstoppable by any means, but he was far from embarassing. Plus, in his last season he played in all 82 games. It is funny, people remember Jordan’s last two years as kind of sad, I remember them as a guy who still had a deadly turnaround fadeaway jump shot.
Joe – I’m with you in that I love the guys who retire while they’re still great (Mussina was one of the classiest guys in the game for his entire career) AND I also love the guys who just don’t (can’t?) quit.
But, HOW can you write about those hang-on types without mentioning Ricky Henderson? Others might have found it pathetic, but I absolutely love the image of him playing in independent leagues (even semi-pro, whatever that is, if memory serves). Why? Because he just loved baseball. He couldn’t imagine doing anything else. He OBP’d .456 for the San Diego SurfDawgs in 2005. It was like, “I don’t care where it is, or what uniform I’m wearing, or how many people aren’t watching. If 1st base is 90 feet away, I’m getting there.” He just wanted to play, anyway he could. I admire the hell out of that.
Matt – I think Jordan’s seasons were “sad” for some in the sense that he was merely a decent player, unable to do the wondrous things that had made him possibly the most recognizable man on Earth in his prime. Hence the “Floor Jordan” jokes. To see him relatively mortal and earthbound was an uncomfortable reminder that time wears us all down, even a demigod, even one of the greatest in his chosen field.
I don’t consider myself one of these, btw. It impresses me that he could rely on his experience and competitive drive to remain an effective and valuable player; even more that he was willing to forego being The Man in order to be what he was. Someone that determined usually doesn’t age that gracefully. Guess he was just as determined to keep playing well, so he picked his spots. He was still capable of flashes. I remember watching him chase a guy down from behind after a turnover, and he jumped and blocked the guy’s layup with two hands – just sailed in and grabbed it on its way to the backboard like it was a rebound. When I think of Jordan with the Wiz, that’s what I think about.
Ok, I’ve got a few things here. First off I think the Braves could have handled the Glavine thing much better than they did. I don’t buy that it was all about the money. He is coming off an injury plaged year and had surgery in the off season, plus he is getting pretty old. Maybe he just doesn’t have the stuff. I wonder if it was all about the money when he left for a slightly bigger contract with the Mets, just a little over a million dollars I believe…. hmmmm.
The thing that gets me about Favre is not playing past his prime, it’s the continual I’m retired, I’m not retired game. He played it several years in Green Bay before they got sick of it, some years not deciding until after the draft. He has been waffling over it for years and enough is enough. When he cried at the press conference and retired, that should have been the end.
30 Rock does make the smartest jokes. One episode they made 2 Haldeman jokes. Heck, i don’t even get the jokes, but at least i know who he was. Still they ALWAYS work for their randomness.
I beg to differ with comment no. 38: Mike Mussina was not classy his entire career just ask any Jay fan about his lack of class stemming from the 1993 All-Star Game and his showing up Cito Gaston.
If you look it up, keep in mind that after the All-Star Game ended Mussina left the impression with the media that he was going to pitch, however, it had been worked out before the game with the Orioles that he wasn’t going to pitch. It took weeks for Mussina to admit that but the damage was done. In Baltimore they had anti-Cito shirts made and everything. Baltimore fans still boo Cito.
sorry it was comment 37 that said Mussina was classy.
BTW, I think Mussina is the 4th ML pitcher to win 20 games in his last ML season (at least in the 20th century). One of the others is usually easy to get, Sandy Koufax in 1966 with 27 wins.
The other two are much harder, although if you think of the circumstances, they make perfect sense. Let’s just say, they took involuntary retirements.
Eddie Cicotte, 1920: 21 wins
Lefty Williams, 1920: 22 wins.
Nightfly– You are definitely correct. People held Michael Jordan to a different standard and when they saw him play below that standard for two years in Washington it was disappointing. No doubt about it. But if you look at the numbers fairly he wasn’t just a decent player, he was an all star caliber player. I think people need to be reminded of that.
Plus, if you look at his career arc objectively it in no way mirrors guys who hung around too long (Mays et al.). It is more similiar to that of Dimaggio, who had a somewhat down year for him in his 13th season and called it quits. Well Jordan had two somewhat down years for him and decided to hang up the Nikes.
I sincerely hope that Cristiano Ronaldo does NOT win your poll. He’s an athletic freak and a very good player. But he is a diva. He cries, literally cries, when things do not go his way with the ref. And he makes diving something that should be set to music. Ugh.
Messi is absolutely wonderful. No one is faster on the ball, no one does more with so little physically. He makes so many people look foolish and is a brilliant, brilliant player. His ability to read the game is unbelievable. The guy is just a menace for defenders.
If you could clone Ronaldo and put two of him on one team… I’d still take one Messi. Better player and far better person (at least on the field… I don’t know them personally).
And a shout for Kaka. What a beautiful player. I’d love him on my team (not enough to pay $90 million for him, though). Check this out for some thoughts on his style: http://www.runofplay.com/2008/10/07/the-tuesday-portrait-kaka/
As for Randy Johnson being the last 300 game winner, if Andy Pettite wants to win 300 games, I think he will. But he, like Mussina, may very well walk away from the game before that happens. Although if he does, the HOF might have an interesting debate on their hands, where a pitcher meets one standard for the HOF (300 wins), yet fails another (sub 4.00 ERA)
[...] Joe Posnaski discusses Tom Glavine. It is, of course, well-written. [...]
“How about the announcers? Pat Summerall and Dick Enberg are two that come to mind.”
Ask a Jayhawk fan about Curt Gowdy mangling their players’ names in a late ’70s NCAA game that basically spelled the end of Curt’s NBC career. They did give him one last Super Bowl, the Steelers-Cowboys game, much like Fox had Summerall work one more before giving him the boot.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Koufax, who had probably the greatest last season in baseball history.
Koufax has always been considered a bit differently since his retirement is viewed as injury-induced rather than Sandy walking away when he wanted to.
I think a big reason we hate to see people like Glavine or Spahn hanging on past their prime is that it is a reminder of our own mortality. Tom Glavine covers 20 years of my life. He was a rookie when I was in high school. I hate seeing him go out there and struggle to the end of the line because it reminds me of the passage of time, which is something I’d rather not think about.
What a superb post by Joe. One of my favorites I’d say…
A few observations…I know that Warren Spahn was not a tall man but 175 lbs? That seems awfully light to me. Maybe he was near that early in his career but I remember him in the ’60s as having a very broad back and strong, muscular shoulders and arms. I’d say he must have been more like 190lbs if my memory of that era is accurate. He could hit well for a hurler, too.
I hadn’t thought of Suzanne Pleshette for a long while. She was a wonderfully natural and most attractive actress with that sultry voice and a perfect match as Mrs. Bob Hartley. A nice surprise to be reminded of her. She was in a movie probably in the early ’60s where she played a rather believable twenty-something nymphomaniac. It was probably quite a ground-breaking Hollywood movie for that era. Does anyone remember “A Rage to Live?”
I had also forgotten about Dave Parker’s career ending as a Blue Jay. Great stuff, JOE!
I would like to point out that the vast majority of athletes at every level ‘play until they tear the jersey off [my] back’. If you were good in high school and wanted to play college but couldn’t maybe you played at club level, or a 5-a-side, or pick-up, or beer league. If the only chance to play is at the Y or on at the local park many many folks do. I know I only stopped playing hockey when I wasn’t able to both skate in a game and be able to walk the next day.
Point being – if you’re fortunate enough to play sports at a professional level (presuming it’s what you actually want to do – not just a job because you’re very very good at it) you’re going to play until you’re told you’re not good enough. For most atheltes this is well short of the level of those many names mentioned above…So if Joe Smith gets drafted by team X and plays for three years and gets cut, and moves to Greece and signs there for a couple years, then goes to Japan and plays there, and then comes back to back-up someone on a semi-pro team and then gets a ‘regular job’ while playing weekend’s; noone really notices. And I’m sure that it happens all the time. If those guys/girls are playing like that I can only imagine that the desire must be the same to keep playing when you had a 10, 15, 20 year run of being amoung the greatest. For folks like Mussina I imagine that he believes he’s ‘not good enough’ anymore. Maybe he’s better than most and maybe that still isn’t good enough.
As an aside, I think it’s interesting that we don’t tend to see these same articles critcizing folks in less mainstream sports. It could simply be the lack of exposure. But no one was telling Dana Torres that she was risking tarnishing her legacy; I can’t recall on impassioned plea for Tony Hawk to just hang ‘em up no self-respecting 41-year old still skateboards[!]; and Laird Hamilton is 45 and still surfs. So if Tom Glavine decides he wants to go the Oil Can Boyd route and pitch for the Broxton Rox for a couple of seasons – hey good for him. I don’t care to watch him do it – but I don’t care to watch the Grizzlies play the Clippers either and no one is telling those 24 guys to go quitely into that good night; that they’re just tarnishing their legacies…
In the fitting endings department, I like this one. Curt Schillings last game was earning a victory in game 2 of the 2007 World Series. That seems strangely appropriate.
I think it was a Deford piece on NPR where he talked about how difficult it is for a great athlete to walk away from the game. In their twilight they can recapture the magic momentarily…they just cannot do it regularly. But those recaptured moments keep their competitive fires alive, that they can recapture their past glories and continue on.
JW – You are correct but with one big difference. Tom Glavine was to play a team sport and be paid BIG money regardless of how he performed. Now, we know Glavine is a great competitor and that he’ll go to the wall for his team but the one million dollar up front money from the Braves was quite a sticking point. With Dana Torres or Tony Hawk or Laird Hamilton, sure, their sponsorship $$ is in jeopardy if and when they are gone from the sports scene but otherwise no true upfront salary and no true necessary “teammates” in the picture makes for a completely different scenario in my mind.
The point about Glavine, I think, is not that he wants to pitch but that he seems to think he is entitled to because of his past career. It’s not like he is going to pitch for nothing or for the minimum; he wants to get paid decent money (at least for most people), when he is likely not going to be very effective. As a Braves fan, Glavine has long been on of my favorites, but, let’s be realistic–this is a business and Tommy has made many, many millions of dollars. I understand him wanting to play as long as possible, but baseball teams are not eleemosynary institutions.
I also think at some point it’s time to grow up. Glavine, like many other athletes, always invokes his family as a reason to play in a given city or for needing to make $10 million to put bread on the table. Glavine ostensibly came back to the Braves so he could be with his family in Atlanta. But, now, apparently it’s not important enough to be with his family to keep him from potentially going somewhere else to pitch. I understand that playing sports is fun and challenging and great athletes want to keep on doing it. But, in real life, we don’t usually have the opportunity to do whatever we want all the time. If his family is so important, stop whining, act like an adult, and retire.
How about the final season of Arrested Development, where they used 4 or 5 episodes to set up the Mr. F joke with Charlize Theron? I’m still laughing at that one.
There was a question as to why Spahn had to wait more than 5 years after finishing his career before being eligible for the HOF. After he retired, Spahn managed in the minors for a while, and he would occasionally put himself into games. This was one guy who never wanted to quit.
I saw Spahn in the Crackerjack Old Timer game that they had at RFK stadium in the 80s, the one where Luke Appling hit a home run. He had to stand about five feet in front of the pitcher’s mound in order for his pitches to make it to the plate.
I have a vastly different attitude toward aging than Jim [#51] in that I’m always a little sad to see my past heroes hang ‘em up. Watching guys limp to the finish is never fun, but at least they’re still out there, living the dream.
I’m currently in my mid-30s, and it’s rare that you see an MLB player older than me. Guys who were playing in the majors when I was in high school are even rarer, and it seems to make me feel older when they retire – more so than when they struggle to keep up with the younger guns.
I say keep on keeping on to the Griffeys, Sheffields and Moyers out there. When they’re all out of the bigs, I’ll REALLY feel my age.
Okay, I know this post really had very little to do with Brett Favre, but I have to point something out: I don’t think anyone outside of Greenbay really begrudges Favre’s desire to continue playing. It is the drama seeking “Oh I just don’t know if I want to play or not this year, please keep paying attention to me” garbage and ESPN’s total slurpage that ticks fans off.
A team’s fanbase often has so much disregard for a player in the free agency era perhaps a better way to look at this is by remembering the player on his way out of town. I’ve never had more fun at a ballgame than watching Manny drill a homer over the centerfield wall in his last Indians at-bat, especially because I knew it was likely his last AB with the team.
Fans should enjoy the exit year since the player is often at his best. Instead of moaning about the next player to leave for the Yanks, Sox, or Cubs let’s remember why we watch the games.
That 30 Rock line, and all the twists and turns that were forced to get there, was absolutely brilliant. Amazing in it’s depth, almost shocking it the legths they were willing to go to get it, and in the end utterly amazing in delivery.
Nobody retired better than Johnny Carson. Did a farewell show then disappeared from sight.
What I don’t understand about the Braves releasing Glavine is what did they want him to do? He throws 11 scoreless innings in a rehab assignment. It’s hard to imagine a more successful one so I completely understand Glavine’s frustration. If there’s nothing Glavine could have done then why did Schuerholz sign him in the first place.
Fantastic stuff, Joe.
Here’s a look at how some recent first-ballot HOFers slipped off into the night that I wrote last week, including Morgan, Winfield, Reggie, and Rickey. More often than not, these guys didn’t even know that their last at-bat truly was their last at-bat.
This is what I wrote in the piece:
It seems sad at the time, but, really, those years and years of HOF-caliber play are what we’ll always truly remember. And that’s quite alright with me.
During Jordan’s last year with the Wizards, my wife’s birthday gift to me was a pair of tickets to see the Wizards play the Clippers, so I could say that I saw Jordan play in person. I think he scored 20 in the game, but my lasting memory of that game was MJ getting the ball on a breakaway and clanging the back iron on the dunk attempt. Ball went all the way back to midcourt, if I remember correctly. It was very bittersweet to know that I was seeing one of the greatest players of all time, but very clearly on the downslope of his greatness.
[...] JoePos: Big Finish __________________ That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? If it wasn’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college. [...]
I am incredibly grateful to Greg Maddux for returning to Chioago for some of his last years. Much like the guy who watched MJ, there were some bittersweet moments. But I would not have traded anything for the chance to see a few vintage 70 pitch Maddux games. The only down side was that those games went by too fast.
1) Imagine how many rock stars should have gone out like Mike Mussina. What if the Stones had hung it up after “Tattoo You”? Or if the Doors had never done that awful album they did right after Morrison died? Or if the Clash had never done “Cut the Crap”? The Who should have quit when Moon died. U2 and REM should have retired in like 1993. Paul McCartney should never have recorded anything after the Beatles broke up – especially since they went out on top with “Abbey Road,” their last recorded album.
2) I was seven years old in 1973 and we lived in Connecticut where we got the Mets games on channel 9, I think. All the kids in the neighborhood watched the games together over at Donny Liskov’s house during summer break.* We all agreed – at least the big kids did – that Willie Mays was terrible. Even at that age I could see the difference between an aged Mays and a competent player like Rusty Staub or John Stearns or Felix Millan or, hell, Bud Harrelson.
*In those days they still played weekday games in the afternoons. Remember?
3) FC Barcelona just won the “treble” in European soccer, only achieved in the modern game by Manchester United in 1999. Their Brazilian left back Sylvinho, now 35 and pretty old for top-level soccer, has been with the club for six years, in which he won a Mike Sweeney – Mark Grudzelanik reputation among his fellow players and the fans.
When they got him, they platooned him with the Dutchman Giovanni van Bronckhorst, starting Gio when they wanted more offense and Sylvinho when they wanted more defense. Then after about four years they sold Gio, bought the Frenchman Eric Abidal, and used Sylvinho as his backup when he was hurt, which was a lot.
So it comes down to the Champions League final last week against Man U in Rome. Abidal’s accumulated enough yellow cards to get himself suspended for the game, and Sylvinho starts in his place. He plays a perfect match, completely neutralizing superstar Cristiano Ronaldo. Barcelona wins 2-0 and takes the European professional championship. And Sylvinho retires, about as on top as it’s possible to be.
I, for one, salute him. A consummate professional.
If any of us were willing to get out at the top of our game there’d be no market for viagra.
We all do what we love for as long as we can, as we should.
Somebody mentioned Carson as the ultimate in going out on top. You may not know that he announced his retirement on stage at the 1992 NBC “upfront” which is a huge annual presentation for advertisers. The announcement was unplanned and the NBC Prez (Littlefield?) didn’t even know he was there. Carson just walked on in mid-presentation, announced his retirement, and left to a huge ovation.
Can you imagine? Show up unannounced at your boss’s biggest event of the year, announce that you’re quitting after one more year, leave to a standing O. THAT is going out with style.
To A-Ron @ 61:
You’re absolutely right. If he wants to play, Favre should play. It’s the constant “i’m retiring, I’m not retiring, I’m thinking about retiring” that people are sick of with Favre. And I, for one, thought he at least had an obligation to make up his mind before the draft so the Packers could know what to do. So in 2008 when he “really retired” the Packers go out and use 2 draft picks, including a top pick, on a QBs. And then Favre tells them he wants to play after all?
And he blames them when their reaction is along the lines of “jeez, Brett couldn’t you have told us that BEFORE we drafted Brian Brohm and Matt Flynn? We maybe, mighta thought about addressing some other needs if we knew you were coming back. You know, like we asked you to do in February?”
The main thing was always the way Favre’s hemming and hawing held the organization hostage.
And incidentally, I don’t consider Favre to have ever retired and come back. If you “retire” and then “come out of retirement” in the same offseason such that there is not even a single game in which you are inactive based on your supposed “retirement”, then you didn’t retire.
I think we often conflate what’s best for the athlete with what *we* want, when it comes to optimal retirements. *We* like the idea of a guy going out at the top of his game, with none of the uncomfortable moments of watching a guy bumbling around longer than he should have.
But is that what’s best for the athlete? [in this respect, football is in a different class, where each additional year not played likely adds years to the player's life].
It’s pretty easy for us to sit back in our armchair and tell a guy to give it up. We aren’t the ones giving up millions of dollars in foregone salary*, or the adulation of the crowd.
*I remember when Bill Laimbeer was nearing the end and someone asked him why he would possibly want to come back for another season. Bill raised his eyebrow, and in his best “what-are-you-stupid” voice, said: “where the hell else am I going to find a job that pays like this?”
As much as I’d love to see a guy go out on top (except, as a beleaguered Lion fan, Barry Sanders: too soon, Barry, too soon), I totally get it when they hang around – even way past their prime. On top of the money, just imagine what it’s like to live a life where every single day from the time you’re 20, you are recognized and cheered just walking down the street, and get roars from tens of thousands of people just for stepping on a field, rink or court; someone always carrying your bags for you; never having to pick up the cheque for a beer or a round of golf; and the camaraderie of playing a team sport where you absolutely bind with a group of like-minded guys. That would be pretty damn tough to give up.
Agree with what several people have said about Brett Favre regarding his apparent need for attention. It’s very similar to the way Clemens would faux retire every year near the end (and quite possibly would still be doing so if the steroid issues hadn’t come up.) For more on this point I heartily reccomend Jeff Pearlman’s “A Rocket Fell to Earth”, which is quite good, though it shares a problem with his “Boys will be Boys” book about the early nineties Cowboys, namely that Pearlman will twist the statistic of any game to make the point he wants to make. This causes things like a pitching line of 4.2 innings, 5 hit, two walks, 2 earned runs to be described as superb while one of 6 innings, 7 hits, 1 walk, and two earned runs to be merely adequate depending on the point he is making at the time.
Harmon Killebrew (great last name) ended up with Kansas City. I remember reading about how Joe Hoerner was released from Kansas City. He said “the GM called me in, i was 39, and he said “WE ARE GOING WITH YOUTH”. Then the next day, they signed Harmon Killebrew (40) – Good finish.
Ed Delehanty(HOF’r) dropped from sight – he fell between the train trestles after a night of drinking. Unfortunately, it was a bridge near Niagra Falls. They found his body a few days later… below the falls.
How did Rico Carty finish?
I’m no Mussina fan, but I do think it’s kind of cool that after a few years of people talking about how he shouldn’t make the Hall of Fame because he never won 20 games in a season, he finally wins 20 games– and then retires.
Has Pete Rose ruined the concept of the player-manager in baseball? I hope not, it’d be fun to see another one. Just pick one who doesn’t gamble.
Maybe Jeter will be the next player-manager. I could see that, five years from now as manager of the Yankees, still playing himself at SS instead of A-Rod.
Joe,
If you’re not Tivo’ing 30 Rock, give your television away.
Also, since you seem to enjoy the odd Amadeus reference, you should see the 13th episode of season two, in which Dr. Leo Spaceman races down a hallway, his cloak flaring behind him, to rescue Don Geiss from a diabetic coma, while NBC Page Kenneth Parcell peers around a corner bearing a lit candle, all set to Mozart’s Requiem. It also has this amazing exchange about writing a “porn video game,” which includes a popular internet meme of sorts about robotics and identity:
Frank: A porn video game? It can’t be done. Look, Trey, history’s greatest perverts have tried it. Walt Disney, Larry Flynt, the Japanese. But they can’t do it, because of The Uncanny Valley. Lemme show you something. Check out this chart. You see, as artificial representations of humans become more realistic, they reach a point where they stop being endearing and become creepy.
Tracy: Tell it to me in “Star Wars.”
Frank: All right. We like R2D2. AND C3PO.
Tracy: They’re nice.
Frank: And up here we have a real person. Like Han Solo.
Tracy: He acts like he doesn’t care, but he does.
Frank: But down here, we have a CGI stormtrooper, or Tom Hanks in “The Polar Express.”
Tracy: I’M SCARED! GET ME OUTTA THERE!
Frank: That’s the problem! You’re in the Valley now. And it’s impossible to get out.
Tracy: That’s where you’re wrong. I was born to design a video game where characters get weird with each other for golden points. My genius will not be denied. I’m like Mozart. You like that guy that was always jealous of Mozart.
Frank: Salieri?
Tracy: NO THANK YOU. I already ate. You will not deter me. The world is gonna remember the name Tracy Jordan!
Great post! Regarding Spahn, I’m not so sure he gave up the notion of pitching again in the majors after 1965. I seem to recall that he pitched in the Mexican League for a couple years, which leads me to believe he still held out hope of making it back to the bigs. And I think that is the reason why his induction into the Hall of Fame was delayed, there was probably a rule saying you had to be fully retired from professional baseball for 5 years, not just from MLB.
As for perfect endings, my vote goes to Sandy Koufax. He walked away from the game at age 30 after having won 53 games over his last two seasons and leading his team to back-to-back pennants. Obviously it is a shame that his elbow problems curtailed his career but I think it was great that he was able to recognize that a few more seasons of baseball glory were not were having a crippled left arm for the final 40 or 50 years of his life. Many players have held on for too long. Koufax is one of the few who retired while still on top.
“If any of us were willing to get out at the top of our game there’d be no market for viagra.”
Mikey #71 wins the thread.
FWIW–and I write this as one of the hardest-core Springsteen fans out there, so much so that my two young (3.5 and 2 yo) sons can both sing all of the lyrics to “The River” already–I think “Outlaw Pete” is a great song.
Carry on.
Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer superstar from Portugal and Manchester United, has been sold to Real Madrid for €92 million, which is like $120 million or something like that. This does not include his salary, which is going to be like twenty million dollars a year, and his share of his “image rights,” which bring him in big bucks from endorsements and advertising.
Sylvinho, the unheralded but professional and competent left back for FC Barcelona, shut him down (with help from the rest of his back four, of course) barely two weeks ago in the European Champions League final.
Sylvinho probably made a million bucks a year before he retired, as the final was his last game, at least as a pro in Europe. He was no star, he was a Grudz who did his job and did it right.
Every sport needs more of these guys.
[...] about endings … inspired, I guess, by the Atlanta Braves’ decision to release Tom Glavine, on click for more var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : [...]
It’s no more about the end than it is about the beginning and the middle. Not only true in sports but life in general.