The stakes were higher for Barry Sanders, professionally if not personally. The stakes were historic, at least insofar as the history of the NFL can be made to matter.

What Sanders walked away from, that is, bears almost no resemblance to the suspension-laden shambles from which we now learn Ricky Williams was trotting. And that makes Sanders' retirement from the game -- five years ago now, though it has lost almost none of its shock value -- something to be viewed, discussed and maybe even appreciated entirely on its own.

	Barry Sanders rushed for 15,269 yards in 10 seasons.

It's interesting: Williams was a prime-of-his-career talent who at first seemed to be making solely a crucial personal decision about what he wanted to do with his life. It wasn't until later, in subsequent conversations with Miami Herald and ESPN The Magazine writer Dan Le Batard, that Williams acknowledged how much his marijuana use and positive drug tests entered into the equation.

Sanders' case, though no less surprising in its moment and in terms of its devastating effect on his team, takes on a different hue with the passage of time. It was weird and it appeared to make little football sense, but this much we can see clearly now: It was, indeed, pure.

There has been no second act of Barry Sanders. In fact, there have been precious few public moments for Sanders since his abrupt departure in the summer of 1999, the most notable of which will occur Sunday when he takes the stage in Canton, Ohio, during his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Sanders walked away not just from the remaining years of his contract with the Lions and the millions of dollars included there, but also from the brink of one of the greatest individual accomplishments in the game's annals. As things stood, he was a virtual lock to pass Walter Payton and take over the all-time rushing yardage record.

Instead, Sanders quit. Emmitt Smith eventually had the moment that would've gone first to Sanders, taking down Payton's record in 2002, and Sanders has since said he finds it appropriate that Smith should be the record-holder.

But the truth is that the record could have been Barry Sanders' to break. And while it has never been completely apparent what drove Sanders from the NFL (or, rather, that any single thing did it), what is abundantly plain is that Sanders knew what he was leaving behind.

We've barked it before and we'll bleat it again: One of the toughest acts for any professional athlete in America is getting away clean. Botched careers, bogus retirements, crippling injuries, graceless waivers -- it is brutally difficult in sports both to construct a wonderful career and to keep it in one piece.

Sanders' career was hardly an unbroken series of epic events. He played for the Lions, first of all, with all of the heartbreak and frustration that would imply. In fact, Sanders eventually would suggest that his frustration with the direction of the franchise played a role in his decision to retire after 10 seasons and 15,269 rushing yards.

And the ending itself was hardly perfect: Sanders was roundly criticized for doing to the Lions what Williams just did to the Dolphins, leaving them scrambling to install a running game as training camp began. Sanders has since said he regrets not returning phone calls from then-Lions coach Bobby Ross in 1999, as Ross tried to make sense of what was happening and appeal to Sanders to reconsider the move.

But Barry Sanders had had enough. He really was done, no matter the rampant speculation at the time that he might turn around and un-retire (sound familiar?). Sanders had lost his burning desire to play; as he said last year, "I knew that I just didn't have it in me anymore to continue." And as difficult as that concept was for the football-watching world in '99, the five years since then have advanced no other explanation for Sanders' stepping down.

There was no second act, and that's the beauty of the thing. While it was traumatic for the Lions, it was true. Sanders was on the brink of a great personal achievement, one he likely would have accomplished amid another season od mediocrity, and it never came close to outweighing his larger sense that his time in the NFL needed to be up.

Sanders' life since he left the game has been a real one. He stayed in Detroit, the only pro city in which he plied his trade. He started a business, got some personal appearances going, began his own family. He didn't consider playing for another franchise.

It doesn't make him a hero, no. But it does bring into focus a career that ended when the athlete said it should end. As clumsy as that ending felt at the time, it's easy to see, now, that the Hall of Famer who made the decision meant it.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com