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Commentary
Finally, something Tom Brady isn't good at: Retirement
According to the TV news, Tom Brady’s decision to return to football was a very large deal. One show on Monday morning teased “Brady Returns” before the bloody update on Putin’s mad and murderous assault on Ukraine.
What a country, indeed.
Brady’s return has delighted numbers of people, and not just Tampa Bay fans. Perhaps it’s because they want to believe in a real-life Peter Pan. For them, maybe Brady is the living, touchdown-throwing proof that pro football doesn’t really beat the hell out of the knees and backs and, much more significantly, the brains of the men who play it, no matter how long they go on.
Some fans not delighted by Brady’s reunion with Tampa hoped he’d sign on somewhere else. Brady’s own alleged embrace of that fond hope may explain his retirement, but Tampa was having none of that, so he’s back in Florida, where Peter Pan stories perhaps belong.
As a retired guy, I’m surprised that Tom Brady didn’t stay retired for more than part of a single off-season. As a retiree of going on four years, I like doing only as much work as I feel like doing and operating on my own clock, except when a grandchild calls. This is apparently not a luxury Tom Brady wishes to enjoy.
May the ghosts of quarterbacks gone and forgotten huddle above him, protective if mystified.
Apparently, he missed the game enough to return to it, even if it meant continuing to play for Tampa.
Did he miss the fraternity? The celebrity? The perpetuation of the illusion — at once weird, and sort of sad, and perhaps heroic as well — that if he can stick to his diet, he not only will never age or die, he will continue to lead a football team forever?
It is not given to us to know. Or at least it is not given to me. At various times, I’ve been made aware in dramatic ways of the difference between me and the people who most brilliantly excel at our games. There was, for example, the time a professional softball pitcher threw a 100-mile an hour fastball that rose briskly and sailed to within inches of my chin. On another occasion, a pro tennis player obligingly agreed to allow me to try to return his serve. I did not return it. I did see it. Sort of.
Now there is Tom Brady.
What’s more to say but that I wish Tom Brady good luck, as I would wish anyone risking his health good luck. As long as the Tampa Bay owner wishes to employ him, either because he thinks Brady’s still a winner or simply because he sees in the old quarterback a meal ticket insufficiently punched, only Tom Brady himself can decide whether to continue, and only Tom Brady should.
May the ghosts of quarterbacks gone and forgotten huddle above him, protective if mystified.
