Crow’s Athletic Career Still Alive, Kicking

Play word association with “retirement,” and what responses would you expect?

Aging?

Gray?

Pension?

None of the above applies to the Sockers’ Kevin Crow, yet retirement is very much on his mind these days.

“I’m leaning that way,” he said one morning this week.

This was what I had heard, though I had not given it much credence.

Athletes, you see, retire when their knees bend both directions or the pins in their bones set off airport metal detectors or they cannot lift their arms high enough to brush what teeth they have left. Some of them retire because their eyes are so bad they cannot read the writing on the wall, which has been telling them for years it is time.

Kevin Crow, as a retiree, does not seem to fit the profile. This, after all, is not exactly George Burns in shorts. If this guy is ready to retire, Macaulay Culkin is ready to retire.

Crow is all of 29 years old, ripening to the Big-Three-Oh come Sept. 17. He is strong of leg and sharp of eye. If he were in any better shape, he’d be Bo Jackson. Essentially, he is an athlete in his prime.

I watched him run up and down the carpet while the Sockers were practicing, looking for a limp or a wince or even an uncaring yawn. All I saw was what I was used to seeing with Kevin Crow, which is to say an efficient and experienced young man who does what he does so well that he makes it look easy.

So what’s with this notion, Kevin? Aren’t you a bit young to be harboring such thoughts?

“I guess so,” he said, “if you’re talking about athletes who try to play until they can’t walk any more. I just have some other directions I want to explore.”

The last San Diego athlete to contemplate “other directions” at an even remotely comparable stage of life was Ozzie Smith. Joan Kroc whimsically suggested she could use a gardener. Instead, Ozzie’s other direction proved to be St. Louis, where he is compensated in such a manner as to enable him to sit back in a recliner and watch gardener s tend his grounds.

Kevin Crow’s options are different than those of Ozzie Smith. While both are educated men, only Ozzie is in a sport that pays at such extravagant levels as to discourage thoughts of retirement.

Crow is one of the best in his business, three times indoor soccer’s defender of the year, four times all-league and coming up on his seventh all-star appearance in eight years. He defines defense in the Major Soccer League exactly as guys like Lawrence Taylor and Bruce Smith define defense in the National Football League.

However, the MSL is one of those struggling leagues in which the best of the best do not drive luxury cars and live behind guarded gates. Crow probably makes $60,000, unless he had to take a pay cut to help keep the franchise semi-solvent. That would not be an outlandish occurrence in the MSL.

The catch here is that this man, given his degree in finance from San Diego State, can walk away from this professional career and make more money in his next one.

“Eventually,” he conceded, “but not right away.”

Not too many athletes can make such projections for the foreseeable future. In other sports, they don’t have to. For example, Tony Gwynn, a contemporary of Crow’s from SDSU, will be making $2 million this year with more to come. He won’t need to think about his next career, unless he wants to keep busy.

Ron Newman, the coach, understands what Crow is thinking and he understands why.

“Soccer players usually have a tough time retiring,” he said, “because they’re not making enough money to ensure their futures. They’re driven to play by the need to survive. Their other choice is a 9 to 5 job for one-third the money. Kevin’s the opposite.”

Indeed, the sooner Crow gets started on his next career, the sooner he will be on a sound track to a stable and increasing income for the rest of his life . . . or until his next retirement.

Newman, to be sure, hopes this does not happen too soon. From his point of view, any time soon is too soon.

“Kevin still has a lot to give to this game,” he said. “I know it’s tempting for him because he has business interests he wants to get cracking at, but I’ll try to persuade him that business can wait. He won’t be getting any younger, but he will be getting older. The lovely life playing this game won’t last forever anyway.”

Kevin Crow knows that, but he is also thinking in terms of a lovely wife and a lovely daughter and more time with them and less time in airports and hotel rooms.

Regardless, allow Newman to play word association with “retirement” and “Kevin Crow” and his answer would be rapid and predictable.

Premature.

Or maybe please don’t.