Sports returns gone right and awry

Cito Gaston earned raves this season for his work with the Toronto Blue Jays in an overdue return to managing in the city where he helmed two World Series wins in the early 1990s.

The "back to the future" trend continued in Toronto in September, when five-time Canadian Football League coach-of-the-year Don Matthews returned after dealing with anxiety issues for a third go-round as Toronto Argonauts coach.

Matthews 3.0 was a more user-friendly, well-rounded version, but with a buggy football program. The winner of five Grey Cups took over a 4-6 squad. The team finished 4-14, and Matthews decided to walk away again.

Here's a look at a mixed bag of some other sports figures returning to the scene of previous glories:

Doug Gilmour

The Toronto Maple Leafs made an annual rite of acquiring aging players at the trade deadline in the late 1990s and the early part of this decade.

Many of the moves were met with derision, but there was a special feeling when the team in 2003 brought back the centre who scored 238 points over a two-year span as Toronto reached the conference final in 1993 and 1994.

Though he was no longer that kind of offensive force, it was thought Gilmour's leadership and two-way abilities would help the Leafs in their playoff push. Instead, Gilmour's season and career ended after less than two periods, the result of a knee injury in a game in Calgary, where he also starred as a member of the 1989 Stanley Cup Flames. 

Gilmour tried in vain to for another shot at playing with Toronto, and is now an assistant coach with the team's American Hockey League club.

Tom Glavine

One of the craftiest pitchers of the modern era while with the Atlanta Braves, Glavine was cruising along into mid-September 2007 with a 13-6 record as a New York Met.

He couldn't win in his last four starts, getting progressively worse until he gave up seven runs in less than one inning as his club completed a late-season collapse that put them out of the playoffs.

The Braves didn't take the hint, signing him in the off-season to an $8 million US deal. Glavine hadn't pitched fewer than 29 games since 1988 but was essentially shut down in the first half of the 2008 season, making one futile attempt in August to come back. He finished with a 2-4 record and 5.54 earned-run average in 13 appearances, last winning a game on May 20.

Magic Johnson

Johnson shocked the world in November 1991 by announcing that he was HIV positive and that he would retire from the NBA, where he had starred with the Los Angeles Lakers, winners of five championships after he arrived in 1979.

After an aborted comeback attempt as a player, Johnson replaced Randy Pfund as coach late in the 1993-94. Like many former superstars, however, he found frustration trying to lead from the bench. The Lakers went 6-12 under, Johnson and he didn't return the following year.

He did, however, seek closure on the court in 1995-96. He returned as point guard for the Lakers, averaging 17.6 points in 32 regular season games, a number in line with his first few seasons in the league.

Trevor Linden

Linden rode a rollercoaster in 1998, traded after 10 years with Vancouver, just weeks after playing with Canada's Olympic team.

Linden, 29 at the time, would struggle often over the next three-and-a-half years spent with the New York Islanders, Montreal and Washington.

He appeared to have not much left in the tank when he came back to Vancouver in a 2001 trade with the Capitals. He soon found his niche, however, as a dependable depth forward and leader for the Canucks. Linden would soon set franchise marks for goals and points, although those were later broken by teammate Markus Naslund.

Linden retired with his head held high in June, and holds franchise records with 415 assists and 1,138 games played.

Diego Maradona

With his career in tatters after his departure from the Italian league because of drug use, Diego Maradona returned to the biggest stage in all of sports by scoring for Argentina against Greece at the 1994 World Cup.

Maradona, then 33, was king of the world again and for the briefest of moments, and there was hope that he could lead Argentina to its third World Cup title.

But just four days after scoring against the Greeks, El Diego was sent home in disgrace after testing positive for the banned substance ephedrine and was slapped with a 15-month ban. He never played for Argentina again.

Proving time can heal old wounds, Maradona was announced as the national team coach on Oct. 29.

Willie Mays

The two-time National League MVP and perennial all-star with the New York/San Francisco Giants entered the 1970s second on baseball's all-time home run list, behind Babe Ruth.

Father Time began to gradually catch up, and the 41-year-old was traded to the New York Mets in 1972. Mays was a passable reserve for the rest of that season, although he famously fell down in the outfield during a World Series loss to Oakland.

His 1973 campaign was painful. A United Press International column from May of that year was headlined "Willie Mays Can No Longer Hack It," with an anonymous NL pitcher expressing pity for one of the best to ever play the game. He would hit .211 in 66 games in the final season of his career.

Joe Namath

There's very little that could tarnish Namath's image in New York after he led the Jets to one of the biggest upset wins in sports history in Super Bowl III, but he returned for a home game in 2003 to provide one of the most cringe-inducing moments in recent sports memory.

Namath was trying very hard to give lucid answers to sideline reporter Suzy Kolber during a television interview, but several hours spent drinking with teammates beforehand were evident in his speech. After declaring he didn't care about the "strugg-a-ling" Jets, he expressed his desire to kiss Kolber.

Namath sought counselling for alcohol abuse and later wrote about the incident in a 2006 book.

Pete Rose

Rose was traded by Montreal in 1984 to Cincinnati, the team where he had once won the NL MVP along with two World Series between 1963 and 1978.

Rose was named player-manager of the Reds and chalked up hit No. 4,192 in 1985 to break Ty Cobb's all-time record.

Though it didn't come to light until after a 1989 investigation, it was later revealed that 1985 was the year evidence began to mount that Rose began betting thousands on several games the Reds contested. After banishment from baseball and several years of denials, Rose admitted to betting in 2004.

There's little reason to believe the behaviour wouldn't have taken place had Rose managed in another town, but it sure made things complicated in a city that had renamed Riverfront Stadium's Second Street to Pete Rose Way.

O.J. Simpson

Simpson was 31 and coming off knee surgery when the Buffalo Bills traded the perennial all-pro in 1978 to San Francisco, where he first gained notice for football greatness as a high school and junior college player.

Simpson hadn't missed a game in six previous seasons before the injury and was close to becoming just the second man in league history (after Jim Brown) to reach 10,000 rushing yards.

But the player who averaged over five yards per carry in his prime was a shell of his former self, managing just 3.8 yards. Simpson left his hometown, with Los Angeles and Las Vegas the settings for much more shameful moments later in his life.