I’ve been on a family vacation this week and we’ve been watching–which I, as a UNC graduate and an NC resident have OF COURSE already seen– The Last Dance, the mini series chronicling the success of the 1990s Chicago Bulls helmed by Michael Jordan.
As we started watching it, my brother said, offhandedly to his wife, that Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball of all time. And that’s reasonable–as would a claim for LeBron or Kobe. But it got me thinking about greatest athletes, independent of sport. My husband believes that there has never been a greater athlete than Wilt Chamberlain. The older of my two brothers made a case for Roger Federer. I think it’s tough to beat Serena.
Who do you think the greatest athlete of all time is? And were you to pick an author to writer that athlete’s romance, who would it be?
Jackie Robinson. A personal hero whom we don’t think about much these days but as a lifelong Dodger fan, I have always admired him for breaking the baseball color line. His uniform number, 42, was retired across all major league teams, he was an MVP, All Star player and Rookie of the Year. Romance? Not sure but a baseball fan the author must be.
YES! As a child, I didn’t know there was a color line. Nobody had told me. But my best friend had a television set, and we would run home after school to watch the baseball game. And there was Jackie Robinson, dancing off first base and driving the pitchers crazy as they tried to pick him off before he stop second—which he frequently did. For crying out loud, the man stole home!
My hero.
“stole second”, not “stop”
I remember Maury Wills doing it 4x in one game at Chavez Ravine like it was yesterday! My dad took me to that one. And I had the joy of seeing Sandy Koufax pitch a perfect game. Those were the days…… !!
I was raised in NC, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and lived in Chicago during the 90’s, so I say Michael Jordan.
The greatest non-human athlete of all time is undoubtedly Secretariat. He still holds the record for the fastest Belmont Stakes even though the jockey was mostly along for the ride. He won by 31 lengths going away, the largest margin of victory for the Belmont. It’s an amazing video if you haven’t seen it. The Belmont is 1.5 miles which is unusually long in American horse racing. Secretariat set a world record in 1973 that has never been broken. It was found after his death that he had a healthy heart almost 3 times the normal size for a racehorse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfCMtaNiMDM
I’d pick Simone Biles or Jackie Joyner-Kersee as the best athletes because they excelled against the odds.
I thought about Secretariat too. Mainly because since the derby this year I’ve rewatched his Belmont race more times than I can count. That race is simply stunning because he’s actually accelerating in each quarter.
Exactly! I don’t know if many people can appreciate that accelerating after running a mile in record time is an amazing feat. And it was done with little or no urging from the jockey. That horse just wanted to run wide open for the love of it. I worked at the race track from around 1973 to 1979 as a groom and exercise rider, and while I’m not a fan of the racing industry (which chews up and spits out horses), I do love the horses themselves.
I’ll endorse the Secretariat nomination for GOAT. I can’t think of a comparable human athlete – the different eras and sports make comparisons difficult. Jim Thorpe? Jesse Owens? Michael Phelps?
I was thinking that, too. Different sports have different measures of what makes a great participant.
In many ways who is the “best” athlete is a purely subjective assessment. But I think it’s been shown that statistically the best athlete ever, in terms of being furthest in front of anyone else to play the same sport, was the Australian cricketer Donald Bradman. The batting average of a great Test match cricketer is around 50 runs per innings. A mere handful of players in history (Test cricket started in 1877) have averaged over 60. Bradman’s career average (over 20 years, including a 6 year hiatus during WWII) was 99.94.
Bradman was a Depression-era national hero (like the racehorse Phar Lap, with a similar story to Secretariat, even including the supersized heart) but he wouldn’t make much of a romance hero. The stats are astonishing, though.
Now I want a romance novel where the lovers are the GOATS from two different sports.
Simone Biles stand-in falls for a Tom Brady stand-in?