The Last fight in them

Sporting News, The, Jan 25, 1999 by Dave Kindred

Muhammad Ali, the greatest athlete ever, retired one morning in the Bahamas in 1981. A shell of the beauty he had been, exiled to an island when no legitimate place would allow the old man to fight, Ali had been beaten badly the night before by the nonentity Trevor Berbick. They fought in a ring raised over second base on a kids' scruffy baseball field in Nassau. Fight officials discovered they had no ring bell; they rummaged in a truck and returned with a cow's bell.

So Ali's career ended not with a whimper. It ended with the dull clank of a ballpeen hammer on a pot-metal cowbell.

The next morning, five weeks shy of his 40th birthday, Ali sat with reporters who had followed him around the world for almost two decades. He said, "Father Time caught up to me."

Though with none of the profound sorrow attached to Ali's farewell, time now has chased down Michael Jordan as well.

It's one of many threads connecting these men who are two of a kind without a third to match them. They shared extraordinary physical beauty, unique athletic skills and the unmitigated mean streak that drives all conquerors, even those who charm us.

Ali fought until his body came up empty. For Jordan, it was his mind. He said, "Mentally, I'm exhausted."

He used the word, exhausted, in its sense of emptiness. The reservoir of madness that moves a man to pursue greatness daily had been drained dry. A different man, only 35, fit and strong, might have played another three or four years, scoring 19 as an elder statesman/leader/mentor rebuilding the Bulls.

But not this man. If Michael Jordan couldn't be Michael Jordan, he'd leave the game he loves. He'd leave, he told the media, "before you guys drive me out"

He said those words with his mischievous, endearing smile. But know this: He meant them. Never would he allow us to see a leaden-footed old man who was a shadow of the Jordan once floating above mortals.

Before it came to that, he'd play one-on-one with his kids in the driveway. His wife, Juanita, even said, "I see Michael doing a lot more car-pooling."

We pause here to consider Mrs. Jordan's vision. Ask yourself: Michael Jordan, chauffeur to rugrats?

Maybe he'll do it for a day or two, even a week or two. Then one freezing Windy City morning he'll be at a stoplight and a whiny voice from the back seat will say, "Mr. Jordan, I don't feel so good ... Ohhh, I think I'm going to throw up ... right now .... uh-oh ..."

About then Michael Jordan will remember exactly who he is. He's a warrior.

So, too, was Ali, and not only in the ring. On every hot-button topic from race to religion, from politics to Vietnam, Ali waged war on our peace of mind. Now that he's a silent, stumbling figure, no longer a threat, we embrace him as a beloved and mystic symbol of serenity.

In a time of peaceful prosperity rather than Ali's violent '60s tumult, Jordan was too much the smart capitalist to threaten us. He seduced consumers with that sweetheart face and FM-sexy voice. Ali couldn't sell roach motels; Jordan could sell stoves at a shipwreck.

Jordan's kindness is real, testified to by friends, teammates and family. Yet the foundation of his wealth and fame is a piece of character that he reveals only involuntarily. You almost have to stop the videotape, freeze the frame and study it. Then you see it. A fury.

Jordan's ferocity is common to men of outsized vanity and ego for whom victory is satisfying only if it is scorched-earth victory. It was so well hidden by his game that we've never seen it in full. But to speak of his "competitive spirit," as commentators do, is to be so genteel as to deceive. Jordan will cut your heart out and eat it in his hand.

Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon wrote about a Bulls practice in 1990 when Scottie Pippen made the mistake of challenging Jordan.

"Michael kind of backed up for a half-second," Bulls guard Craig Hodges said. "Then he proceeded, literally, to score on Scottie at will. It was incredible. I mean, Scottie Pippen even then was one of the best players in the league and Michael just rained points on him."

It's fitting Jordan would leave an indelible image of such conquest. It's The Last Shot, the dagger to Utah's heart, Jordan standing stock-still, his right arm held high, the hand just so.

He insisted it was no pose. He said he'd been tired; his jump shot had been short, and this one he wanted done correctly. He called the exaggerated follow-through evidence of craft, not ego.

Jordan's pose may not have been for history's cameras, but it certainly was his signature, with a flourish, on a masterpiece of the warrior's work. Again, Ali comes to mind. The night he knocked out Sonny Liston a second time, he signed his work by dancing beside the fallen body, screaming down at the beaten man, his right arm curled up in contempt and conquest.

All this Ali/Jordan stuff is enough to send a guy to his old English lit text book. There he finds a quote from Ben Jonson on William Shakespeare:

"He was not of an age, but for all time!"

Dave Kindred is a contributing writer for The Sporting News. Look for additional commentary from Dave weekdays at sportingnews.com and on AOL (keyword: TSN).