The first time Favre came back, when he threw confusion into the Packers' camp last summer, I understood. His legacy, it seemed, could not be undermined by a few weeks of indecision or even the resulting fizzled season with the Jets.

Likewise, Michael Jordan's quasi-geriatric time with the Washington Wizards and Jerry Rice's latter-year experiments with Seattle and Denver left no negative marks on their careers.

If these superstars couldn't walk away in their prime, or in the cases of Jordan and Favre, stick to a retirement plan, so what? If we played pro sports and didn't have to leave, we wouldn't either.

But Favre's fickle approach to retirement is an embarrassment that should follow him forever. For a quarterback, indecisiveness reflects incapacity. An indecisiveness that conveniently keeps you out of training camp reflects a supreme failure of leadership. If someone really, really wants to play in the NFL, he doesn't pull this stunt, not even at age 39 with a working knowledge of the new team's playbook and a shoulder that needs rest.

One of the biggest tasks for any great quarterback is knowing that you're the most important person on the team five times over, and acting as if you accept that only as a responsibility, not a privilege. By all accounts, Favre accomplished that in Green Bay, commanding respect up and down the locker room - but this latest flip-flop supports the stories that he didn't fit in with the Jets last year.

At this point, he seems to have quit on them by retiring and then seeking out a team that could take him to the Super Bowl, rather than one he planned to carry there. If the Vikings do end up in the Super Bowl, Favre's legacy might recover. But right now, he is a sadder figure than Willie Mays falling down in the Mets' outfield in 1973. Mays succumbed to age, to unpreventable vulnerabilities.

Favre let his ego run wild, and instead of a sympathetic older athlete, he appears to be a spoiled child.

E-mail Gwen Knapp at gknapp@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle