A walk-off Cup title for Jeff Gordon?

ByRYAN MCGEE
February 16, 2015, 2:29 PM

— -- Here we are, 20 years later, and Jeff Gordon is crying again.

On Jan. 22, the day NASCAR's living legend announced that 2015 would be his final full-time Sprint Cup season, the 43-year-old four-time champion did what he'd sworn to himself he wouldn't do again. But he did, unwittingly re-enacting the night he earned the first of his 92 career wins, famously emerging from his Chevy in Charlotte Motor Speedway's Victory Lane openly sobbing as he celebrated his Coca-Cola 600 triumph.

"Yeah, it took me a little while to live that down," he admitted during January's preseason media tour. "And honestly, when the day came that we'd decided on to make my announcement about this year, the decision had been made for a while and I thought I would be totally fine. Then I broke down when I talked to the team. I broke down talking to my family. I broke down when I did a couple of interviews. I was a mess."

Emotionally, yes, a mess. Professionally, no, not even close.

Here at the end of a career that has been built on breaking new NASCAR ground, Gordon has a chance to give us one last unprecedented gift. He has a chance to pull off that rarest of professional sports feats. He can drive into the career sunset just as relevant and as competitive as he was when he first rolled into the Winston ... I mean, Sprint Cup garage 761 races ago.

"That has always been important to me, to still be competitive to the end, and not just riding around to finish up a contract," he said in January, merely the latest verification of wishes he first shared with the public years ago. "As much as I love this sport, I've never loved it enough to be embarrassed. Being fast and running up front at the end is how I've always wanted to do it."

That's how every racer wants to do it. That's how every professional athlete wants to do it. But the list of those athletes who have actually pulled it off, particularly those considered among the greatest in the history of their respective sports, is tiny.

In 1960, Ted Williams hit .316 in his 19th and final season with the Boston Red Sox, slugging a homer in his final at-bat. In 1965, Jim Brown rushed for 1,544 yards and 17 touchdowns before packing up his locker to go make movies. The following year, pitcher Sandy Koufax posted a 27-9 record in his last go-round for the Dodgers. John Elway, Barry Sanders, Bobby Orr, Bobby Jones, Bjorn Borg ... that's pretty much it.

Far more common are the images of the aging superstar being flogged by Father Time. It's Willie Mays stumbling in the outfield, Johnny Unitas playing for the Chargers, or Michael Jordan slinking to the bench one last time, having scored 15 points in a meaningless Washington Wizards loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, all set to the rhythm of A.E. Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young."

In racing, where the names hang on into ages older than those in other sports, the long goodbyes are even worse because so many times the last person to realize it's been a long goodbye is the man to whom we've been trying to say goodbye.

No one enjoyed hearing Darrell Waltrip's excited screams echo through the Charlotte garage not because he'd won a race but because he'd merely qualified for the race. No one enjoyed watching Richard Petty go winless for seven and half years or David Pearson racking up DNFs while driving a patchwork of post-Wood Brothers rides.

Everyone winced and cursed as they watched Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt being hauled out of racetracks in ambulances. Had Gordon hung up his helmet a few years ago, as he approached his self-imposed "I'm not going to race into my 40s" threshold, then he might have risked becoming another one of those faded legends. Notable not for the here and now but for nostalgia. In the seasons that led into '14, race wins were harder to come by and seemingly every September he found himself clawing just to make it into the postseason Chase.

That's exactly why he didn't walk away then.

Sure, there were other factors that kept him around, from sponsorship contracts to a desire for his kids to become old enough that they could have tactile memories of Dad as a successful racer, not just tales and scrapbooks. But deep down, Gordon felt like he was only a few clicks away from rediscovering his old magic, though as he continued saying that, a lot of us politely smiled and nodded while we silently began to doubt the possibility.

In 2014, he erased that doubt, enjoying his best season in seven years and coming within one point of being among the final four title contenders in the season finale.

Jeff Gordon was going to be on everyone's short list of 2015 title contenders regardless of how close he was to moving toward retirement. Now, as his 23rd Daytona Speedweeks begins, he returns as one of the few drivers with his entire 2014 team intact, his confidence fully restored, his bad back loosened up, and with sentiment on his side. He also has the most dangerous tool of them all.

He has nothing to lose.

"Now that the emotion of the announcement is out of the way, I am really focused on getting down to business," he explained. "I am sure the emotion of it all will return when we hit the second half of the season and start visiting some tracks for my last time as a driver. People might make a big deal out of it."

They will. Just as they did for The King, DW, Rusty and the other Hall of Famers who have said goodbye before. There will be plaques, framed artwork and rocking chairs. It's a routine we saw most recently with New York Yankees legend Derek Jeter, whose 2014 farewell tour brought pregame ceremonies, gifts and standing ovations, but also increasingly loud questions about whether a 40-year-old infielder hitting .256 with only four homers was hurting his team in the long run.

If Gordon's 2015 is anywhere close to his 2014, then no such questions will arise. And if he manages to scale the tiniest of '14 humps, to finally grab his fifth Cup and walk off the stage as a walk-off champion? "That's the goal," he said, smiling at the scenario. "Man, if that happened, I don't know how I would react."

My guess? With a good cry. And he won't be alone.