I was thinking about that the other day. What if Michael Jackson had died immediately after releasing “Dangerous” instead of living through both of those molestation cases?

What if Bob Marley was still alive and releasing “meh” albums to help him pay for the oodles of illegitimate children he had?

What if Elvis was all fat and bloated, like the tail end of Marlon Brando’s career? What if Brando died in the 70′s?

Short careers are always lauded more than long ones, because there’s no long, ugly tail. Interesting.

(slight quibble: Tupac DID live long enough to release crappy albums. The Don Killuminati was trash.)

They are glorified entertainers.

Nirvana, Tupac, Hendrix, none of them stuck around long enough to write a crappy album that was all about getting paid. Therefore, they are legends with hardly any negative on their ledgers.

Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Jim Palmer, etc….. the list of great who couldn’t figure out when to end it is quite long. It speaks well of Mussina that he understood his athletic mortality. These guys have been the best of the best their entire lives. They don’t want to be embarassed, and they don’t think they can be. But when they don’t realize it is time to quit, it is painful for all involved.

Black Ink Pitching – 15 (141), Average HOFer ? 40
Gray Ink Pitching – 244 (25), Average HOFer ? 185
Hall of Fame Monitor, Pitching – 121 (67), Likely HOFer ? 100
Hall of Fame Standards, Pitching – 54 (28), Average HOFer ? 50

Athletes DO NOT live in a real world. How many people in your real world get paid millions to play a child’s game? They live in a land of legends.

They are entertainers.

How would people remember Nirvana, or Tupac, or Jimi Hendrix, etc if they had been around long enough to throw together some crappy albums just to make a paycheck?

Or if you’d prefer a baseball comparison: my father’s saddest memories as a baseball fan are from Mickey Mantle struggling to play 1st base and Willie Mays barely hanging on with a terrible Mets team. Sure those two are considered all time greats, but most of those who saw them at the time agreed how painful it was to witness that.

Mussia realized his time was over, and he moved on. His sense of his own athletic mortality is commendable.

They are entertainers.

How great is Nirvana remembered to be, because they didn’t have time to come out with a couple of crappy albums that they wrote just to get paid? Tupac? Jimi Hendrix?

Or if you don’t like the music comparisons, how about some baseball ones: My father said the saddest things in baseball he ever saw were when Mickey Mantle was hobbled and playing a terrible 1st base, and Willie Mays just hanging on with the Mets.

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