Rickey Henderson kept trying to come back for years after his last major league game before finally giving up the ghost. He was actually a half-decent minor league player there for a while, but he insisted he could play in the bigs and kept begging for a chance.
Willy Mays was a shadow of his former self when he was a Met.
Other than his 12-win, lightning-in-a-bottle 2008 campaign, pretty crummy. But, to be fair to him, when he joined the Titans, he wasn’t really milking his fame, he was settling into the completely dignified role of the veteran backup signed to assist in the development of a hotshot youngster. It’s not his fault that he wound up playing so often because Vince Young was a basket case.
Roger Clemens is 50 years old and playing Minor League Baseball, not great.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-400_162-57496748/roger-clemens-to-pitch-in-minor-league-baseball/
In Henderson’s case I didn’t mind him sticking around because I think he genuinely loved playing baseball. He didn’t keep playing because he was chasing stats or ran out of money or had to rebuild his image.
Clemens definitely fits the bill here, especially if he really does come back to Houston in '13.
Randy Johnson is another guy who stuck around much longer than he probably should have in pursuit of his 300th win.
Barry Sanders
In what possible way did Barry Sanders stick around too long? I’ve never heard anyone suggest such a thing, but rather that he retired too early.
The last seasons of Harold Baines and Carlton Fisk, for the White Sox, were unbearable to watch. Baines had no bat speed and was lucky to hit .131. Fisk could no longer throw the ball to second base but was chasing the games-caught record and refused to admit that his talents had vanished.
Ernie Banks played an unnecessary final season for the Cubs in which he took up a roster spot all year, appeared in only 39 games, and hit .193.
I don’t know if this counts, but Mike Modano is already talking about making a comeback. Dude, you only retired two years ago!
I’d agree. He probably had a couple of good years left in him when he did retire. Did FoieGras mean to say Dion Sanders?
Jacques Villeneuve, who should have been told years earlier that he sucked.
Guy Lafleur, who first retired in 1984 (the year before the Habs won their only Cup of the decade!), then decided that retired life wasn’t for him.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose last few seasons with the Lakers were probably 3 too many.
If I were a pro-athlete, I would never retire. The amount of money they make is staggering.
Right now, Kobe Bryant makes about $25 million a year for the Lakers. There’s speculation that he’ll retire in a couple of years when his contract is up. Shaq bounced around to Cleveland and Boston in his last few years. Though the Cleveland deal was a trade, and therefore he was still getting paid something ridiculous like $20 million for his last year, his new Boston contract was in the range of like $2 million a year
Think about that. $2 million a year for a washed up big body that’s not in basketball form. It would take me years to make that much.
If I were a pro-athlete, after my career as a star was over, I’d repackage myself as a backup. There are bench players in the NBA making $8 million. Then, after a few more years, I’d probably be sent to the end of the bench. Starting salaries for rookies in the NBA can be more than $800 thousand. And even after that, when a team as great as the Lakers don’t want me anymore, I could play another couple years on a bad team as the 12th man on the bench. I wouldn’t do much playing, but I’d earn like $100k just sitting on my ass all day. Hell yes I would do that, I’d do that right now. For the amount of money athletes get paid now, I would never begrudge them for staying past their prime or their old age and still getting paid more per year than most of us ever do.
Yea, you can’t really blame the athletes for wanting to stretch it out, even if it’s strictly for the paycheck.
As long as the body is holding together reasonably well - why not?
On the other hand, I’d like to hope that big stars have handled their money and invested properly so that after their career is over, they can still have some sort of lifestyle and not be REQUIRED to find some team, any team, that will pay them a pittance for another season because otherwise his family won’t eat.
(Wishful thinking, I know - pro athletes are notoriously poor money managers.)
I’m joking.
And maybe Deion Sanders is as good a candidate as any. That contract he signed with the Redskins was awful (not for him).
So is Jerry Rice. His days with Oakland were…kinda painful.
Going over all the well-publicized retirements I’ve witnessed over the years, I can come up with far more athletes who left much too soon than much too late. Good points by YogSosoth and Sarabellum1976. As long as someone keeps on givin’, you keep on takin’, and damn what fools who will never be in your position think.
That said, there is one name that will always stick out for me: Mike Tyson.
By the time Lennox Lewis put him away, he should have seen the writing on the wall. He was well past his prime, he no longer scared anyone, and, most importantly, now everyone knew exactly how to beat him. There was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY he was ever going to make enough to pay off his astronomical debts racked up over a lifetime of shortsightedness and misplaced trust. No. Way. Completely impossible. What he should have done right then and there is admit defeat. Declare bankruptcy, come clean about the hole he’s in reaching into the earth’s mantle, admit that he can’t pay jack and take whatever medicine the court gives him. And then seek the help he should’ve gotten a decade ago and take that first step out of the abyss.
Instead, he fights Lewis again and gets cut to pieces for his trouble. Not content with that humiliation, he gives the most boneheaded interview of his life (which is saying a lot), then gets pounded to the canvas two or three more times, getting maybe a hundred of what it would take to clear his debts. So he has to face reality anyway, except even older and more beat up. Pathetic.
And just so we’re clear, I feel exactly the same way about Evander Holyfield.
Don’t know how many MMA fans are in here, but I’d nominate Ken Shamrock during his UFC career… He was one of the big “originals” whose dominance in his hay day helped drive MMA to its current popularity. He was put into the UFC Hall of Fame, but then couldn’t let go of a feud he had with Tito Ortiz, who was at the top of his game at that point.
Ortiz continually owned his in fights, and treated him like a punk outside of the ring. It really diminished his greatness in my opinion.
For a completely opposite example, see Randy Couture, who got bored of watching the most boring heavyweight champ ever (Tim Sylvia) sprawl his way to victories. So, he came out of retirement, kicked his ass, and then defended his title a few times before retiring again. Dude’s an all-time great.
Michael Shumacher’s un-retirement in F1 wasn’t very sucessful.
George Foreman
Foreman came out of a 10 year long retirement.
And won 24 fights in a row over the next 3 years. He had his last fight at age 48 but signed to fight Larry Holmes at 50 in 1999. The fight fell through but Foreman pocketed $1,000,000.
Meanwhile Holmes fought James “Bonecrusher” Smith, who was having his last fight at age 46. Smith had just lost his title to 48 year old Joe Bugner, due to a stoppage caused by his shoulder dislocating while he was pounding Bugner in the first round.
Hlomes continued on until he was 52.
This was the age of the dinosaur heavyweight.