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When to walk away

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When to walk away

I confess to the guilty pleasure of participating in the Tom Brady watch — “As TB 12 turns.”

Did he really quit football at the top of his game? Did he open the door, a week after he quit and all the eulogies rolled in, to un-retiring? And, a week later, did he close the door again?

I read and listen to all the gossip and blather.

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I like football. I like Brady. And I find his dilemma fascinating.

It makes sense that he would quit at 44. He has nothing left to prove, a record that will likely never be equaled, more money than Midas and a young family that needs him.

It also makes sense that, having made football his life from roughly the age of 6, he would have second thoughts. He can still play at the highest level.

I was told last week, by someone with first-hand experience, that every player in the NFL goes through serious withdrawal, and emotional desolation, when his career ends. Indeed, professional athletes have a hard time with the off season. They aren’t sure what to do on non-game days or in ordinary life. They are not wired, the vast majority of them, for “spending more time with the family.”

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When to walk away?

I can tell you that no U.S. senator who voluntarily retires and gives up that rather swank address is glad he or she did so a year later.

Yet few U.S. senators in their third, fourth or fifth terms are happy.

And sport is more complicated. It is one of the few endeavors in which something like glory — treasured by the Greeks, Romans and our Founders — is still possible. Tom Brady is not only still eminently capable; he is also a believer in the old fashioned idea that sports are a way to affirm, and live into, values.

But, staying too long, a hero can become a pitiable “has been” — an invisible antique in his profession.

So, when to fold ‘em?

Cary Grant famously retired while still fairly young, dashing and able. He is the gold standard for quitting while you’re ahead. He never stopped hearing: “Come back.”

Interestingly, Grant died at 82 in Davenport, Iowa, where he was doing a one-man show that he toured around the country at his own leisure. There was no script or format for the show. He reminisced and took questions. He wasn’t in Davenport for the bucks.

The opposite of Cary Grant is Bob Hope, who stayed way too long at the party. I used to work at a place where two sports writers had a running debate: Is Bob Hope ever funny? Was he funny once? When?

There is no simple answer as to when to make a good and becoming exit.

Quentin Tarantino has long said he will quit after his tenth film, and he has now made nine. His reasoning is that they can only decline in quality, and his great work will diminish in reputation as his newest work registers anti-climax.

I get it.

But Tarantino has cited the late work of the great John Huston as reason to walk away. Huston did make some stinkers in his career, just for money or locations. But two of his later films, “The Dead” and “Wise Blood,” are among his greatest.

Film directors, actors and musicians can work into their 80s and beyond. Huston was on an oxygen tank when he made “The Dead.” Pablo Casals was 96 when he died in 1973. Four years earlier, he recorded the First, Second, Fourth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies of Beethoven. It would be cruel to tell creative people of this kind, “You have to stop now. Take a nap. ‘Jeopardy!’ will be on in a few hours.”

The distinction to be made, perhaps, is between a job and a vocation.

Americans are addicted to their jobs, often in the same way we are addicted to unhealthy substances, relationships and social media. Our jobs often shorten our lives, and yet we give them up only under extreme duress.

Conversely, very few of us are blessed with vocations.

The thing about a vocation is that it does not depend upon demand, a boss or even remuneration.

Orson Welles kept making films long after the world had lost interest in him. Recently, his final film, “The Other Side of the Wind,” assembled by his friends, was released — 36 years after his death. His pal John Huston is in it.

Maybe the key is to find another and new way, as the Jesuits say, “to do what you do.”

I am pretty sure that Bob Hope’s vocation had become a job.

Audrey Hepburn, on the other hand, used her fame for something not only new but also more visceral and important: She became a UNICEF ambassador and a fearless advocate for endangered children. When I say fearless, I mean she marched into war-torn areas, without hesitation, to do her work.

The late Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy objected to The New York Times writing and filing obits on persons like himself years before their deaths. “A person might do the finest thing he has ever done in his life, on the last day of his life,” he said.

So, even if Tom Brady appears to do nothing but stroll the beaches of Costa Rica for the rest of his days (doubtful), he might still be up to something great: like John Lennon raising his son.

But not everyone is wired that way. My own father was not. He had to be up and doing. He wasn’t going to sit at Starbucks and talk to you about his feelings.

I knew what they were anyway.

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers (burriscolumn@gmail.com).

First Published: February 20, 2022, 11:00 a.m.

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