Retire, Phelps, and live your life

Editor's note: Jeff Pearlman is the author of "Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton," out in paperback in August. He blogs at jeffpearlman.com. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- In the history of organized athletics, there has never been a person who needs to come back again less than Michael Phelps.

Yes, you have read that correctly. I am urging the greatest swimmer in all of sports to keep his word, forget about Rio in 2016 and retire. To go away. To vanish. To ignore his mother and his sisters and Matt Lauer and Mark Spitz and Rowdy Gaines and to once and for all hang up his goggles and Speedos.

Go. Scram. Buzz off.

Jeff Pearlman

Because athletics enthusiasts are a peculiar people (aka: crazy), we always beg our heroes to stick around longer than they should. It's the reason a portly, 40-year-old Ken Griffey Jr. hit .184 in Seattle in 2010 and the reason Bjorn Borg stepped back onto the tennis court in 1991 (wood racket in hand) -- only to win nary a single match. It's the reason our final snapshot of Sugar Ray Leonard is an embarrassing stoppage against Hector Camacho and the reason Jim Palmer arrived at spring training with Baltimore in 1991 throwing big, fat, Little League meatballs.

Why, it's even the reason a 41-year-old Spitz, Phelps' predecessor as our own personal Aquaman, jumped back into the pool to qualify for the 1992 Games in Barcelona. He, of course, failed -- by a whopping two seconds.

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We convince these men and women that they can still do it, that it's worth one more shot, that age is just a number, that legend is a gift of the gods, and to not use it is shameful. (Gaines, the former Olympic swimmer who now works as an NBC commentator, recently said he believes Phelps will likely come back because "he'll be able to walk through airports in a couple years and not be mobbed. He'll miss that." There is a word for this line of thinking: sad.)

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Then, predictably, when they fall short, we bemoan that the effort was ever made. We offer comments such as, "Boy, that was pathetic" and "He should have stayed retired" -- forgetting that we were the ones pining for the return. Again, sports fan are crazy.

Yet the inevitable disappointment of a then-31-year-old Phelps underperforming in Rio (and, for the record, 31 in swimming is 40 in real life) isn't the No. 1 reason he should stay away. No, Phelps needs to remain retired because, quite frankly, life in a pool sucks. OK, not for a week, while vacationing in Orlando.

But imagine being Phelps. You wake up at 5 a.m., spend four hours in a pool, go home, sleep (in your Michael Jackson-esque oxygen tank), return to the pool for another two hours, eat (a disgustingly healthy and bland) dinner, go to bed, then repeat the following day. And the day after that. And the day after that. And the day after that. And ...

For, hell, 1½ decades, Phelps' existence has revolved around the insidious smell of chlorine. When he talks, one can hear -- very clearly -- his weariness over the whole endeavor. "These Olympics have been great, but. ..."

But Phelps needs a life. If I'm Debbie, Michael's mother, I cease with all the Rio jabber (really, the woman needs to stop) and say the following: "Son, I'm proud of you. You've done amazing things. But you're 27, and life is short. You've made lots of money in endorsements. Use some of it. Here's a backpack, a Fodor's and a one-way ticket to Prague. Go see the world. Eat anything you want. Sleep in hostels, drink lots of beers, hit up Amsterdam and Barcelona and Geelong and Venice and Wolverhampton and Valletta. Tell the ladies you're Michael Phelps if it helps, or just pull your cap down low and call yourself Biff Stevens. Just make sure and live!"

When we watch the Olympics on TV, and the uplifting music is piped in and the anthems are played and tears stream down the cheeks of winners, we are witnessing a sliver of time -- a singular moment that encompasses 1/1,000,000,000th of an athlete's existence. It is romantic and lovely; Bev Oden the former Olympic volleyball star, calls the experience, "the height of euphoria."

But that euphoria, like all things, passes, and at day's end many athletes are left wondering not whether they should have stayed on longer, but whether, in missing senior proms and romantic summer nights and family vacations, they surrendered too much.

After three Olympic Games and 22 medals, it is time for Phelps to stop surrendering.

It is time to live.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeff Pearlman.