(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. 

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. 

News: Olympic legend Phelps: 'I'm done with swimming' 

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.) 
Is he legendary?
News: Olympic legend Phelps: 'I'm done with swimming' 
