Yes, I am a Chicago Bears fan, so it was instilled in me at an early age to hate anything and everything that has to do with the Green Bay Packers, but I secretly have always had some admiration for the “gunslinger”.  He was what football should be all about, being tough, commradderie, and having fun.  His yearly charade of retirement has turned from comedy, to sheer disgust.  I am pretty sure he started hinting at retirement each year starting in 2002.  He then finally made up his mind and sat up at a press conference with the Packers in 2007 and cried about how is body just couldn’t do it anymore, and he was ready to walk away to spend more time with his family.  Of course that lasted a few months until his ego decided that he couldn’t handle people not talking about him day after day.  So he starts this big saga of putting the Packers in a horrible situation asking to release him so he could play somewhere else, all of this during training camp for the 2008, after the Packers have already invested in Aaron Rodgers to take over.

After weeks of endless media speculation, the Packers finally released him and he jumped ship to the New York Jets, where he started off hot and faded down the stretch.  After the 2008 season he retired again.  He even made fun of himself in an interview about all of his retirements.  Here we are today, May 7, and the lead story on ESPN is that the Vikings are flying to to Mississippi to meet with Brett about joining them for next season.  Are you kidding me?

Rodger Clemens did the exact same thing numerous times.  In 2003, the Yankees played the Florida Marlins in the World Series.  Before the playoffs Clemens had said that the 2003 season would be his last.  He started game four of the series in Miami.  When he came out of the game in the bottom of the 8th, the Marlin fans rose in unison to give him a standing ovation.  I thought that was rather impressive when a visiting player gets a standing ovation from the home crowd, especially during the World Series.

It quickly became much stranger as the entire Marlins team came out of the dugout to give Clemens a standing ovation.  I have never seen anything like that in my life, an unbelievable sign of respect for a player deemed as one of the best pitchers ever, leaving the field for the last time.  It was one of those moments when you are watching a sporting event, and you know you will remember it for the rest of your life.  The only problem with it, was that Clemens completely contradicted himself and was back with the Yankees in 2004, and probably would still be pitching today if he wasn’t in the middle of the biggest steroid case in the history of sports.  Now, I vividly remember that moment, but more so as the moment when I stopped caring if an athlete spoke of retirement.

Jeff Pearlman wrote fascinating book on Clemens and spoke extensively about his ego.  In the end, to be a professional athlete, you have to have some sort of an ego.  In order to be in the top .1% of society in a specific skill, you have to believe you are that talented, so having an ego is a good thing to a certain extent.  Unfortunately, when your playing days are over, that ever growing ego still needs to be fed, and these two men are perfect examples who can’t bear to live outside of that spotlight.  It could be a byproduct of our society and semi worship of athletes that has created people like these two men, but to me, if you say you are hanging it up, accept praise and adulation from everyone, then go the exact opposite direction, you are a hippocrite and you have lost the respect of a lot of people, myself included.

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