Bernie Lincicome: Brady, Rodgers prove old athletes never quit, they just dream on
The popular mock of the day is, and it has been for several weeks, the once impeccable Tom Brady, America's quarterback, now something else. Likewise, without regret, the trials of Aaron Rodgers bring guilty joy to those of us whom he may still own.
While Justin Fields does not figure into any of this, the best hope for optimists is that the Bears' quarterback one day might.
Sympathy does not come to the ordinary, nor regret for the failed, yet an eerie enjoyment seems always to be there when the best of us becomes just us.
I note that Tony LaRussa left town to a vague wave and little ceremony, having confirmed that he was, after all, too old and too stubborn, just like we (except me) thought.
Somewhere Sammy Sosa sits waiting for fondness and Mike Ditka, well, he's somewhere isn't he? He always is.
Old-Timers. Makes you think of chuckwagon cooks too sore to ride the range.
Or maybe somebody about to drink his next meal from a screw-top bottle in a brown-paper sack.
Kinder souls may call them Legends. Old golfers are Seniors. Tennis players are Masters. There must be others. I try not to pay attention. The games between Legends and Masters are Classics. Or Reunions.
Nostalgia has its place. No place is it sadder than in basketball. Basketball is not a game that protects our memories. We see LeBron James, not himself, wishing he was. So do we.
Here's the awful truth. Old athletes never quit, they just dream on.
A sad example: Magic Johnson's second game back after 4½ years away from NBA basketball after his battle with HIV was against the Bulls, who were then the best basketball team. Ever.
After the game, I asked Michael Jordan what he thought of Magic.
"I thought he was fat," said Jordan. "Isn't that disease supposed to make you thin?"
So much for compassion. So much for understanding. So much for today making way for yesterday. Years later I saw Jordan in Johnson's shoes, ridiculed, and dissed, a relic among the young, playing against children in a game of Shirts and Mike. Presciently, Jordan had cameras to record his Last Dance and will thus remain as young as the batteries in his phone last. The digital Brady and the looming Rodgers may be with us forever but for now they mumble and stumble.
Rodgers has blamed his teammates for the Packers' woes, suggesting that "guys who are not playing, give them a chance." Brady rallies his teammates, insisting they are in this together.
In both cases, to use an old breakup line, the problem is not them, it is them.
What is the best way to go out? Griping and grumbling, accepting and admitting?
My favorite farewell moment came with Mia Hamm at the Athens Olympics. She apologized for sitting, the gold medal still around her neck. "I'm tired," she said. She was 32.
I told her she deserved to rest after inventing women's soccer. "You created something that wasn't there," I said. She nodded and said, "I hope you mean the 'you' collectively." Classy.
I saw Jack Nicklaus pose for a last look on the Swilcan Bridge at St. Andrews, a noble goodbye, and Arnold Palmer drink in the applause at 18 in Augusta. "I'm through," he said. "I've had it. I'm done. It's over. I'm finished. I'm washed up."
Never has there been a better goodbye, though I cannot discount the end of Muhammad Ali in a makeshift boxing ring over second base on a Nassau ballfield, wishing the years were fewer and his legs were newer. He quit on his stool but I recall the referee, a man named Jay Edson, coming to ringside to mark his score card, round by round. "I'd like give him a round, I really would," Edson said, tearing up, "but I can't, I can't."
"I took you around the world, didn't I?" Ali asked the press the next day. And none of us answered. Something was in our throats.
Brady took us along with the greatest career any quarterback has ever had. It should be over. It is clearly over. He had a way out. He took it for 40 days and then could not leave. They never do, until they must.
The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.