The most difficult thing any athlete has to face is that moment when he knows he is no longer able to play the game. Few walk away on top. Some are carried away. Most are simply excused. Occasionally one is ignored into retirement, which is pretty much what happened to Greg Luzinski.

Retirements are, at the same time, not unlike vaccinations. We have to wait a while to see if they take. Any one of us could retire ourselves if we had just had the ice concession for all of Muhammad Ali’s retirement parties. Or half of Billie Jean King’s.

I do not believe we have seen the last of Luzinski, not only because he is visible from so great a distance, but because some American League team will find a hole in its right-handed power before May and remember Luzinski’s roofers instead of his dribblers to second base. Maybe even the White Sox.

For now, let us concede Luzinski’s collision with the inevitable, however it came about.

Great athletes who have quit in their prime can be counted on one hand. Rocky Marciano. Sandy Koufax. Jim Brown. Bob Cousy. That’s it. Think of another one and the next Lite beer from Miller is on the house.

Pete Rose had to beg, take a pay cut and then a second job to keep chasing Ty Cobb. Julius Erving soars only when absolutely necessary these days and is often a fourth-quarter decoy. Franco Harris allowed his glory to be tarnished by strangers. Gordie Howe, for all we know, may still be playing hockey somewhere.

Aging athletes disturb our memories. We would much rather see Arnold Palmer make his first putt than his fourth. Franz Klammer should never have skied again in public after his 1976 Olympic downhill. Reggie Jackson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ought to always have more hair than the rest of us. Horses have the right idea. Win the Triple Crown and go to bed.

Not all athletes will admit being aware of the exact moment that the end came, but they all know. I remember talking to Bubba Smith and other Lite beer salesmen about this very thing, and Smith nearly broke into tears recalling the end.

“I was only 27 years old,” Smith said. “I went down on a yard marker in Tampa (and tore up a knee). It was so unfair. I never played a full game again. I ended up in Houston as a substitute for my little brother.”

Bernie Geoffrion first left hockey at age 32. He wanted to be a coach, and he said Montreal promised he would take over the Canadiens after some schooling in the minors. “They never called me back,” said Geoffrion, who unretired to play in New York, and did, in fact, coach the Canadiens. “I see they were just pushing me aside for young kids.”

Impatient youth can shove harder than the calendar.

Ray Nitschke is in football’s Hall of Fame. He played 15 years in Green Bay, his last one as a substitute linebacker. “I was cut in training camp (by Dan Devine in 1973),” Nitschke said. “Most of Lombardi’s boys were already gone and I knew it had to happen to me sometime, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“The hardest thing any athlete has to do is realize you’re only on stage for a little while. But, oh, it is so hard to resist taking one more bow.”

Len Dawson was past 40 when he stopped playing quarterback for Kansas City.

“When do you get out?” he asked. “The only guy who can decide is the athlete himself. It’s never a question of how much you’ve done or what you’ve achieved. There’s always something you still have to prove, even if it’s only to prove you can recapture something.

“Then there’s the question of still believing you have the skills. It’s no different for anyone who ever played a game. Everyone plays like that.”

No one put this in better perspective for me than Rocky Graziano, the old middleweight champ, who was explaining at the time why Ali kept fighting.

“A fighter, a champeen,” Graziano said, “he fights maybe 10 fights after he’s through. He fights them for the money.

“Then if he’s smart, or lucky, he gets out. I see old champs all the time. Whadda they doing? They’re caddies, shoeshine boys. I see old champs all the time. Bette”

Bob Lilly, the great defensive tackle for Dallas, admitted he played two years too long.

“I left because I didn’t want to be on the sidelines, waving at the crowd,” Lilly said. “The thing I didn’t want to do was to have a good career and then wind up with people laughing at me and running over me. There’s so much money out there, but money has nothing to do with it, finally. We all have to quit.”

I always believed that Chris Evert Lloyd, for seven years the uncontested best female tennis player on the planet, would walk away on top. The first year she slipped from No. 1, we talked about her choices.

“What I have to decide,” she said, “is if I want to make a million dollars a year but be No. 3 in the world.”

She took the money. They all do. So would we.

Keywords: ANALYSIS