Enough. Please?

By Kate Dailey
There are those who argue that if God blessed you with a love of the game and the talent to play, and if owners are still willing to shell out big bucks to have you suit up in their team colors, why stay retired? The answer: athletes, especially iconic, historic figures like Brett Favre, belong to us. We don't get to share in their multimillion dollar paycheck, but we do get to revel in the narrative of a star athlete's rise to glory. Their stories are our stories, and those stories lose a lot of their power if we witness a painful, protracted professional death. We all get old. We all lose our abilities. But we don't need it rubbed in our faces by the likes of Favre or Muhammad Ali. The good news for Favre is that most athletes who return to the national stage, only to be less than great, don't do serious damage to their legacy. A look at nine other athletes who broke our hearts by refusing to go gently into color commentary: