Michael Jordan played baseball for a couple seasons before he returned to basketball, a sport he played fairly well.
Just a couple years ago, Jerry Brown returned to be California governor after a 28-year absence.
History is filled with examples of people leaving their comfort zones to try something else – sometimes by choice, sometimes by force – only to return out of necessity, or popular demand, or for the money. See, what happens often in life is that you don't realize your calling, or that you're really good at only one particular thing, until you get away from it for a while.
This happens in many professions.
Rock bands are infamous for splitting up and calling it quits, only to return for a reunion tour. The Who, The Police and Van Halen (David Lee Roth version) are examples. Other bands handle retirement a bit differently. The Rolling Stones, for instance, gave what was generally considered a farewell tour in 1982. Starting again in 1989, they've toured multiple times, charging ever more and playing ever fewer dates. Mick and Keith are both 70, and they're done – right?
Then there's the inside joke that a couple bands have pulled when naming their “last” tour, perhaps most famously The Eagles with their recent “Farewell Tour I.”
Athletes just can't stay away either. Michael Jordan retired from the NBA in 1993 for a short-lived baseball career, returned to basketball to win three more titles, and then once again retired. ... Only to come back four years later with the Washington Wizards.
Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers/New York Jets/Minnesota Vikings is the poster boy of the unretirement. The superstar quarterback announced he was leaving the game at least three times. He retired from the Packers (2008) the Jets (2009) and Vikings (2010) before returning each time. Rumors persisted even last year he might come back.
Bjorn Borg, after retiring at age 26, tried a comeback a decade later with his outdated wooden racket. Still makes you cringe, doesn't it?
Boxers became notorious for coming back one more time, usually ill-advisedly. Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard all returned to have their craniums slammed again. Then there was Rocky, who is now returning to fight Robert DeNiro. (Oh, that's not Rocky? Just Sylvester Stallone playing a different washed-up boxer? Stop. I'm confused.)
Politicians, dictators and despots never stop trying either.
Napoleon didn't exactly announce his retirement when the French banished him to Elba in 1814, although it was pretty well understood his career was finished. But Napoleon returned in 1815 and for a hundred days or so managed to drum up enough support to briefly rule again, Then, before it was popular to say it, he met his Waterloo.
Political leaders have the chutzpah to return even though they have to know we damn well remember what they did. Ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer tried it. Congressman Anthony Weiner comes to mind (all too well).
Even authors have famously retired only to publish again. We mourned when Stephen King said in 2002 he'd written his last novel. Ian Fleming didn't retire, but he killed off James Bond in one novel and brought him back in the next.
Movie characters often die and return, and when they do return, you feel cheated. You feel tricked by a director unfairly toying with your loyalty and emotions. Mr. Spock died in the second Star Trek movie, was resurrected and even now in prequels, through the magic of time travel and wormholes and spatial rifts, keeps reappearing even when it seems highly illogical.
Explorers are inexorably and single-mindedly drawn back toward their goal after they should have called it quits.
Ernest Shackleton made three expeditions to the South Pole. He and his crew miraculously survived the second after their ship was trapped in ice, and on a third trip in 1922, he died of a heart attack.
After a 1921 reconnaissance trip, George Mallory returned twice to conquer Mount Everest, although that didn't work out so well either.
Locals aren't immune from the comeback.
Some simply return after a career move takes them away. Fort Lewis College men's basketball coach Bob Hofman, for instance, left in the mid-1980s only to return in 2000.
Others retire only to reincarnate themselves. Former longtime Durango City Manager Bob Ledger's name keeps popping up, for example. He's now on several boards and committees and even filled in as interim town manager in Bayfield for a while.
J. Paul Brown is attempting a third political resurrection. The former county commissioner (1989-93) returned in 2010 as state House representative. After losing in 2012, he's in the process of trying to regain that seat.
And yes, what this is all about, the reason all these pieces of history have been dredged up in this space today, is personal:
After an eight-month absence, whether you missed it or not, this column is back. Will it be more like Napoleon's ill-fated return, or Michael Jordan's second three-peat?
You can be the judge.
johnp@durangoherald.com. John Peel writes a weekly human-interest column.
