This story is part of a special section commemorating Michael Phelps that will be available in Sunday's edition of The Sun.
If there is one thing that Michael Phelps should always be remembered for other than the world's largest Olympic medal collection, it is his incredible sense of timing.
When it was finally the right time for him to climb out of the pool for good, he did it in exactly the style to which he had become accustomed during a swimming career that may never be equaled.
When it was time for redemption after his personal life spun out of control a few years ago, he picked exactly the right moment to hit the reset button and set about the hard work of creating his own perfect ending.
And when it was time to share that redemption with his crisis-ridden hometown, Phelps delivered another uplifting performance that allowed Baltimore to look itself in the mirror and see something good in the wake of Freddie Gray, a year-long crime wave and a damning Department of Justice indictment of its police department.
That's why Michael Phelps matters.
The huge medal count is certainly impressive. America is all about going for gold and Phelps obviously has done that better than anyone in the history of the Olympic Games. He'll be remembered as one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen, but only Baltimore will remember where it was when he stood up for us on the world stage.
We can spend the next century arguing whether he is the greatest athlete to come out of the Baltimore area. If you want to get really provincial about it, you can narrow the list of candidates to Phelps, Babe Ruth and Cal Ripken, since the other faces who might appear on our athletic Mount Rushmore — Brooks, Johnny U, Frank Robinson, Ray Lewis, Jim Palmer — all were born outside of Maryland.
There's no right answer, of course. Babe Ruth was a transcendent figure in American history, a global superstar who burned so bright that he may be the single human most responsible for making baseball our "National Pastime."
Ripken supplanted the legendary Lou Gehrig as baseball's all-time Iron Man and also did it at a watershed moment. When he ran down the "Iron Horse" in 1995, Major League Baseball was reeling from a long labor war that had so disenchanted its fan base that attendance plummeted, so he took it upon himself to use that summer to reach out personally to fans all around the country.
Phelps' story is, at the same time, simpler and more complex, if that makes any sense. The case can be made that he became the greatest swimmer in history eight years ago in Beijing and everything since — from a strictly athletic standpoint — has been gravy.
Of course, there is so much more to it than that, starting after a semi-reluctant Olympic return in 2012 that still produced four gold and two silver medals and made him the most decorated Olympian in history.
He wandered through a personal wilderness after that, attempting to figure out a life that didn't include the daily, grueling regimentation necessary to achieve such an unparalleled level of athletic excellence.
What happened then does not need to be fully recounted here, but forays into golf and high stakes poker did not fill that void and neither did the drinking and partying that led to his lowest point.
So Phelps returned to the place he had always felt most comfortable and experienced a baptism of sorts. He committed himself to rewriting the narrative of his life and career and — as he would explain — he got back into the pool for all the right reasons this time.
He didn't do it for us, but we got to go along for the ride. We got to share the exultation as he climbed onto the medal stand time after time. We got to see him send the cocky South African Chad le Clos slinking back into his shadow box. We watched as the new family man proudly acknowledged his fiancé and new baby. We watched and cheered as tears welled up in his eyes after that final victory and knew he really meant it this time when he said this would be his last hurrah.
The time has come for the next stage in his life's journey and, as he has already proven, timing is indeed everything.
Read more from columnist Peter Schmuck on his blog, "The Schmuck Stops Here," at baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog and follow him @Schmuckstop on Twitter.