The occasion was his 300th home run-a feat that put George Brett in the select company of Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Carl Yastrzemski and Al Kaline as the only players in history to reach 3,000 hits and 300 homers.
But Brett was not celebrating. Instead he was soberly reflecting on where he was in his career and what it had taken him to get here. He was hitting .242-some 65 points below his lifetime average, and the game that only a few weeks ago had still been fun had suddenly become a labor. Instead of elation over reaching this milestone, Brett felt only fatigue.
“I don’t think it’s any secret I’ve been struggling lately,” Brett said. “It used to be I was used to getting three hits a game. Now they’re few and far between. You begin thinking, `Gee, who’s this impostor in my body?’ “
While it might not have been a retirement speech, it was definitely a concession speech. Like so many of the immortals Brett will one day be joining in the Hall of Fame, the road to Cooperstown was full of potholes and unnecessary detours at the end.
Just last Thursday, two-time National League MVP Dale Murphy, 37, only two home runs shy of 400 career home runs, but batting only .143, decided he’d had enough of the rocky road and announced his retirement from the Colorado Rockies.
But Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson and Warren Spahn are only some of the many Hall of Famers who could never quite concede when it was time to quit. As a result, their eventual retirements were seen as more welcome than sad occasions.
Mays is the classic case; his final days as an aging Met in 1972 and ’73 remain painfully vivid. Had he retired after the 1971 season (in which he hit .271 with 18 homers and a league-leading 112 walks), he would have been remembered only for the great catches, the power and speed and boyish exuberance. Instead, there is now the everlasting image of a 42-year-old shell of former greatness, stumbling and falling down in the outfield in the 1973 World Series.
“I always said I gave the first 20 years of my career to baseball and baseball gave me the last two,” Mays said years later. “I don’t know if it was the extra double-headers I played at first base in 1971 or what. I do know that then was the first time I was really fatigued at the end of the year, and I knew something was happening.”
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At least those last two years-in which he hit .250 and .211-didn’t cost Mays his lifetime .300. He finished at .302. Mantle, with whom he always has been compared, wasn’t so fortunate. The Yankees’ legend really was done at 32. That’s how old he was in 1964, his last .300 season. The next year he hit .255 as all the leg injuries he had sustained over the years-not to mention all the late-night imbibing-finally began to take its toll.
Mirroring Mantle’s decline, however, was that of the Yankees. Their once-fertile farm system went barren under CBS’s laissez-faire stewardship, and for the first time in more than 50 years there were no adequate replacements for the faded stars. So Mantle stayed . . . and played for four more seasons. His legs were so shot at the end that he was moved to first base. He hit .237 in 1968, his final season. His lifetime average dropped to .298.
“That was definitely the biggest regret of my career,” Mantle said. “I had always taken great pride in hitting .300, and I wanted to finish with a .300 average.”
When he did finally retire, Mantle was given a special day at Yankee Stadium and much of the taint of those last fading seasons seemed to be removed, even if his .300 average could never be restored. It helped being a Yankee his entire career. So many of his contemporary Hall of Famers never got a proper sendoff from the teams they were most identified with because they became vagabonds at the end, trying to hang on.
Who remembers-who wants to remember?-that Duke Snider wound up a Giant? Or that Juan Marichal ended up a Dodger? Harmon Killebrew a Royal? The Dean Brothers, Dizzy and Daffy, St. Louis Browns? Paul Waner a Yankee?
Steve Carlton should have gotten the message when the Phillies-for whom he won three Cy Young awards from 1972-82-released him midway through the 1986 season. Instead, he went on to pitch-poorly-for four more teams over the next two seasons. Baseball’s No. 2 all-time strikeout leader and second-winningest left-hander in history wound up being released five times at the end. Worse, those teams, the Indians, White Sox, Giants and Twins, will all appear on his Hall of Fame plaque, taking up space that otherwise could have been filled with more of his many pitching achievements.
“I still think when it’s all said and done, `Lefty’ will be remembered for the 252 wins he had with the Phillies,” said Tim McCarver, Carlton’s close friend and longtime batterymate.
In Carlton’s case, the decision to hang on despite eroding skills was a financial one. Much of what he had earned in his first 20 years in the big leagues had been lost through bad investments.
“Did I want to tell him to quit? No,” said McCarver. “I don’t think any of us have the right to tell someone when it’s over because we just don’t know. Suppose Carlton Fisk had listened to all those people who said you can’t catch after you turn 40?
“What if (Dennis) Eckersley took the company line and listened to the fans after he was traded from the Cubs to the A’s for three minor-leaguers nobody ever heard of again instead of listening to Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan, who made him a short reliever? What if Nolan Ryan decided to hang ’em up after John McMullen wouldn’t re-sign him with the Astros five years and 1,700 strikeouts ago?
“That said, however, if you ask did it hurt me to watch Lefty at the end? Yes.”
Warren Spahn, the only left-hander to win more games than Carlton, also couldn’t accept what others were telling him and wound up drawing release papers from both the Mets and the Giants after a magnificent 20-year career with the Braves. Spahn should have gotten the message in 1964 when, en route to a 6-13 record, he was sent to the bullpen by Braves Manager Bobby Bragan.
“All of us respected Spahn and wished he’d retire after the 1964 season,” Bragan wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Hit the Ball With Your Bat on Your Shoulder.” “But he insisted he could still pitch. We sold him to the Mets for $1, and he had a horrible (4-12) season in 1965.”
Spahn said: “I let my ego get in the way a little bit when I said I’d go to the Mets. I thought I’d win with them like I always won with the Braves, but the Mets were just the worst team ever.”
Actually, that Mets team wasn’t nearly as bad as the first Mets team in 1962, which lost 120 games. The only beacon of respectability was Richie Ashburn, who hit .306-and promptly retired.
“I realized my best years were behind me,” said Ashburn, who finished with a career .308 average. “I think I could have played at least another two years, but it’s a good time to quit when you’re above .300 and still on top.”
Ashburn’s advice wasn’t only lost on Spahn, though. Hall of Famer Robin Roberts, Ashburn’s teammate with the Phillies from 1948 to 1960, went down to Double A-with the Phillies’ Reading farm club-after being released by both the Cubs and the Astros in 1966 at age 40.
It had been a couple of years earlier that Roberts was told by another future Hall of Famer, Bob Gibson, that he ought to quit.
“Gibby was just coming into his own, and I was with the Astros,” Roberts said. “He came up to me one day and said: `Why are you hanging on like this? You’re embarrassing yourself.’ I told him he was entitled to his opinion, but that I didn’t agree with him.
“Then in 1975, I was doing some broadcasting with the Phillies, and I was in St. Louis and Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals. His knee was shot, and he could hardly even field his position. I went down to the clubhouse afterward and went up to Lou Brock, who lockered next to Gibson, and said: `It’s sad, isn’t it, Lou? Some guys just don’t know when to quit.’ “
Gibson, sitting a couple of feet away, looked up and glared at Roberts. “You SOB,” he said, and then, perhaps remembering his own words of advice to Roberts 10 years earlier, added, “but maybe I deserved that.”