Please indulge me with one non-Lions topic, OK? If the Pistons don’t hang Ben Wallace’s jersey in the rafters after he retires, I may go down there and put it up myself. Seriously, the guy is the face, the model, the epitomy of what it meant to be a Piston back in those triumphant days of 2004-2008.
But the reason I am compelled to post this is, he may have delivered the best quote about retirement I have ever read or heard. It was in a terrific feature in the Freep this morning by Jo-Ann Barnas:
“When I do retire, I don’t look at it as a big celebration, riding off in the sunset smiling with dancing and music playing in the background. To me, it’s not that. Retirement, to me, is depressing. Depressing. It’s one of those things where it’s not something you want to do; nobody wants to retire from basketball. You want to play basketball forever.
“Retirement is admitting to yourself and everybody else that, ‘I can’t do this job anymore.’ For me, that’s not a celebration. It’s the end of something great, giving up something I’ve been doing all my life, something I’ve been striving for, trying to be the best at. And now you got to say, ‘I’m no longer that?’
“I don’t need a party. When I’m ready to go, just let me go.”
Amen to that Ben. Play until they rip that jersey off your back. They don’t make them like Ben Wallace any more.
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