Time takes its toll, even on the legends

The memories of special times long since past brought the crowd at Texas Stadium to its feet. On the Las Vegas Strip they cheered for the warrior they once knew.

Emmitt Smith is a football player -- perhaps the best ever to play his position. Evander Holyfield might be one of the five greatest heavyweight fighters ever.

You wouldn't have known it by watching either aging great last weekend.

Holyfield got the stuffing knocked out of him by a blown-up former middleweight. Smith simply got stuffed by some former teammates who didn't appreciate his parting comments about them.

It was painful for them, and even more painful to watch.

Holyfield and Smith ply their trade in different sports, but both share the same traits of dedication, determination and courage that have allowed them to keep going long past most of their contemporaries.

They also share one thing that has bedeviled athletes from Babe Ruth's time on -- not knowing when it's time to hang up the gloves or put away the spikes.

For Holyfield, that time is now, before a real heavyweight gives him even more punishment than James Toney dished out Saturday night in Las Vegas. Sticking around too long in boxing can get you seriously hurt, even killed.

For Smith, the answer is a little more complex. He can carry on, making a few yards here and there for a bad football team, perhaps breaking off an occasional run to make the few Arizona fans who actually attend games remember why the Cardinals signed him.

Willie Mays did the same sort of thing when he took a bat slowed by age to the New York Mets, only to embarrass himself on the field. The image of Mays stumbling around the outfield and falling down on the basepath in the 1973 World Series remains almost as enduring as the one of his famous World Series catch 19 years earlier.

But what's the point? Why not just go out on top -- as only Roger Clemens seems to have the proper instincts to do.

The next time Clemens takes the mound in the American League championship series it might be his last appearance. At the age of 41 he can still be dominant, but he also knows Father Time waits for no one.

He has Cy Youngs, World Series rings and tons of money. He's looking for a life outside of baseball, away from the fans and the attention that others seem to crave.

"I've accomplished everything there is to accomplish," Clemens says.

So have Holyfield and Smith, of course. Holyfield won pieces of the heavyweight title four different times, beat the fearsome Mike Tyson and fought valiantly for the better part of 20 years. Two weeks shy of his 41st birthday, though, he's getting beaten up and beaten to the punch by fighters he would have dominated in his prime.

"If he was a big puncher I'd have been torn apart," Holyfield admitted after being stopped by Toney in the ninth round.

Still, he refuses to make any concessions to reality.

"I'm not going to retire," Holyfield said. "I'm going back to the drawing board."

Smith is seven years younger, but 34 is an advanced age for an NFL running back, even one of the greatest ever. Tacklers today don't pause to look at stats that show Smith rushed for 17,162 yards and 153 touchdowns in 13 years with the Dallas Cowboys, winning three Super Bowl titles and becoming the NFL's career rushing leader along the way.

But that wasn't the Smith who walked smiling into Texas Stadium on Sunday, or the one who was shedding tears later. About the only thing the same was the No. 22, but now it was on a red Arizona Cardinals uniform.

Smith was dropped for a 4-yard loss on his first play, and it never got any better. He finished with six carries for minus-1 yard, the least-productive of his 206 career games, 201 of which were for Dallas.

His former teammates didn't just tackle him. They tried to humiliate him, remembering well that Smith was quoted in a Sports Illustrated article as saying he felt "like a diamond surrounded by trash" in his final season in Dallas.

"Every player wants to play big in a game like this," Smith said. "Obviously, it's very disappointing."

The rest of Smith's season hasn't gone much better. He had only 25 yards on 12 carries his previous game and has just 192 yards through five games with Arizona.

Almost mercifully, his day ended early in the second quarter when he left the game with a sprained left shoulder.

Later, in the interview room, Smith had tears in his eyes as he talked about getting a note from his daughter about the game.

"I'll tell you what it's all about. One of my kids, my daughter, wrote me a note and gave it to me when I got home," Smith said. "It said, 'Daddy, no matter what happens, if you win you did your best, and if you lose you did your best.' That's what it's all about. I had a chance to come home and watch my daughter player a soccer game this weekend, and that's what it's all about."

Encouraging words, spoken like a star who might finally understand the end is coming.

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.