Aging athletes–and others?–should not retire

So argues sportswriterSally Jenkins , thinking of Tom Watson and Lance Armstrong and defending Bret Favre’s desire to keep coming out of retirement:

Athletes such as Favre have it right. Studies show that retirement is no good for you. Even if you hate the job you go to every day, sudden abrupt inactivity is a bad idea. A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled “The Effects of Retirement on Physical and Mental Health Outcomes” studied people in complete retirement over six years. It found that retirement led to a 5 to 6 percent increase in illness, a 6 to 9 percent decline in mental health, and a 5 to 16 percent increase in mobility difficulties.

The study also suggested that when retirement is involuntary, the symptoms — which can range from expanding waistlines to depression to tobacco and alcohol use — tend to be even worse. Forced retirement is exactly what athletes face: They are cut, released, or injured, and then there is the more subtle pressure of being continually told that they should go out on top, because it’s a sign of neediness or weakness to hang around. . . .

The conventional wisdom is that athletes who go out on top are being true to their greatness. In fact, they are being untrue to themselves. Great champions are in the business of exhausting themselves. They aren’t content as long as they feel there is something left, and to waste any fraction of their capacities feels, to them, like a sin against nature. Their every instinct tells them to use themselves up. As spectators, we have no right to contradict them. “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender,” Vince Lombardi once said.

First of all, is she right? (Notice how her emphasis is on athletes wanting to play, rather than teams needing them. Clearly, athletic longevity works best for individual sports, as in most of the examples she cites.)

Second, how much of this applies to non-athletes who retire? (This may be a moot point, since the bad economy with the stock market dive has pushed retirement further away for many people. But, for those of you who are retired, is it as bad as she says?)

Third, how does the doctrine of vocation relate to retirement?