Aaron Rodgers fades away

“The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that 'old soldiers never die; they just fade away.'

And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.

Good Bye.”

-Gen. Douglas MacArthur, April 11, 1951

When I was about 15 (or maybe 16 or 17, it doesn’t really matter), I noticed something I’d never seen in the world of sports. People really, really wanted Rickey Henderson to stop playing baseball.

The all-time steals leader in Major League Baseball was lacing ‘em up for the San Diego Surf Dawgs of the Golden Baseball League, an independent outfit with eight or so teams (depending on the year) including such luminaries as the Surprise Fightin' Falcons and the Japan Samurai Bears. And people were mad about it! They wanted Henderson, who had played professional baseball since he was a teenager to pack it up and go…I don’t know, somewhere else, I guess.

I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand it then, and I still don’t understand it now. Mostly. Henderson wanted to play, found someone willing to employ him, and got a spot in the lineup. What else was there to it than that?

Well, there’s that mostly. Now, I get it a little bit more.

I think a lot about the time during which I’ve been a Packers fan. Not just the raw games or years or whatever, but the actual era in which my Packers-observing mind has been conscious of what’s been going on. I’ve been alive to see not one but two Hall of Fame quarterbacks outstay their welcome in Green Bay, and this offseason is reminding me a whole lot of that time in the early 2000s when people seemed to desperately want Rickey Henderson to just go away.

I took the long route to get here, but I’m talking about Aaron Rodgers. Of course I am. We all are, in some ways, almost all the time. A lot of what happens with the Packers these days presents itself as a referendum on Rodgers’ career — beginning, middle, and end. How is Love doing compared to what Rodgers did? Is Love better now than Rodgers? Will Rodgers even play again for anyone?

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