Blindside: The Most Shocking Retirements in Sports History

For the majority of athletes, it can be easy to predict when they're going to retire due to their age or injuries. However, some athletes have shocked the sports world with their retirements. Here is a list of the most surprising retirements in sports history. Magic Johnson was one of the best players in the NBA, winning three MVPs and five championships in 12 seasons in the league. However, the Lakers star announced his shock retirement in 1991 at the age of 32 due to an HIV diagnosis before a brief return five years later. Pat Tillman broke the Arizona Cardinals franchise record for tackles in 2000. However, eight months after 9-11, he decided to join the Army. Tillman, who turned down a $3.6 million contract, was deployed to Afghanistan, where he died in a friendly fire incident in 2004. After winning his third straight NBA championship, Michael Jordan announced he would retire from basketball to pursue his dream of playing in the MLB. Jordan's baseball experiment was short-lived, and he returned to the Chicago Bulls to win three more titles. In 1983, at the age of 26, after amassing 11 grand slams, Bjorn Borg retired from tennis. Borg called it quits as tennis stopped being fun for him, with his return eight years later being unsuccessful. In 1939, New York Yankees star Lou Gehrig announced his retirement from baseball at the age of 36 after being diagnosed with ALS, a disease he would succumb to just two years later.