When I Grow Too Old To Dream

"I'm going to try and win an eighth Tour de France." With these words, Lance Armstrong launched a thousand blogs. And a few thousand more casual conversations during which we come to find that we prefer our legends to remain legendary. In an interview with "Vanity Fair," he offered this assertion: "Older athletes are performing well," he said. "Ask serious sports physiologists and they'll tell you age is a wives' tale."
Aside from thumbing his nose at his age, which will be thirty-seven years young next week, Lance will be doing his bit to raise worldwide awareness about cancer. I should say that if Lance Armstrong decided to take on the national debt along with these other concerns, my money (literally) would still be on him. Even if you believe that he is a liar and a cheat, he is at least a world class liar and cheat, and should be afforded the dignity of his station.
But do we really want him to come back and fail? Plenty of people would take smug satisfaction in seeing the seven-time winner of the Tour de France finish at the back of the peleton. He's divorce, you know. He broke up with Sheryl Crow, you know. He rides bikes with President Pinhead, you know. In some cosmic fashion, he doesn't deserve all the success he's achieved, you know.
That may be, but I'm just hoping he doesn't embarrass himself. Joe Montana decided to stick it out for two more years in the NFL, and was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs. In 1993, Joe led the Chiefs to the AFC championship game at the tender age of -wait for it - thirty-seven. He even managed to help them to another playoff appearance the next year, then hung up his cleats. But is that how history remembers Joe Montana? And who remembers that Babe Ruth ended his career with the Boston Braves? He made the leap back to Boston when we was forty. And he didn't come back.
Maybe Tiki Barber will get tired of interviewing celebrities and get back to carrying a football before he becomes "officially old." But please, don't let Cal Ripken Jr. come back - or Cal Ripken Sr., for that matter.