Athletic Death

This is not fun for me. I don't like being up here for the Hall of Fame because at that time your basketball career is completely over. I was hoping this day was 20 more years [away] or actually go in [the Hall of Fame] when I'm dead and gone...When you get into the Hall of Fame, what else is there to do? You know, so this is a love hate thing for me...for me, I always want to be able to have you thinking that I can always go back and play the game of basketball...As long as you have that thought, you never know what can happen. You never know what my abilities can do. But am I [going back to basketball]? No. But I like for you to think that way.

~Michael Jordan on being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame~

I feel bad for athletes when their successful careers end.

I still remember Kristi Yamaguchi winning the gold medal. She was an icon not only as an athlete, but as a Japanese-American woman visible to the American public. She was elegant and well-spoken, and I don't think she'd mind me saying I had a tiny crush on her.

But the gold medal was the pinnacle of her career. She was on Dancing with the Stars last year, but really, that was an activity for fun rather than for perpetuating her legend. And now, where do I see my role model? In weekly magazines and on the boxes for second-rate crackers.




















Michael Jordan said it well. "As long as you have that thought, [as long as you believe in the legend,] you never know what can happen." I don't want Kristi, or any athlete, to live a life of unsatisfying hermitage. But on that note, once the zenith of their careers is reached, it is sad to see heroes reduced to petty advertising as the sole means of being in the public eye.

Some people, including the athletes themselves, might argue that endorsements are good money, that we should not pity their lives after their ultimate successes, and that we should not define their entire lives by one brief period. And I agree it is unfair to view our athletes as immutable heroes. But I bet inside, somewhere and to some degree, all athletes share Michael Jordan's sentiment that the end of an athletic career is a death—a death of their own unlimited potential and a death of their attainable dreams.