09/25/06
Athletes
It is no secret that many commentators have recently opened a debate regarding Tiger Wood’s candidacy for “Greatest Athlete of all time”. I do not need to elaborate on the reasons Tiger Woods is so undeserving of such a title, but I will introduce them to elaborate on the main purpose of this article
Tiger Woods does not run, jump, lift, throw, or in essence perform any athletic acts. Hence, he cannot be on the top 1,000,000 list of greatest athletes of all time. Him being the greatest athlete is an absurd claim. But who else is not the greatest athlete of all time?
Roger Federer.
Bill Russell.
John Elway.
Michael Jordan.
Babe Ruth.
Hank Aaron.
Etcetera. (And he is a dang good player)
Some of these are tremendous athletes. But none of them are the deserving of such a title as greatest athlete of all time. Even ignoring the ego-centric premise behind naming any of these men as such (which is based upon the view that only the 20th and 21st centuries matter), they are not the greatest athletes even of our day. Sports of skill and precision have so dominated our psyche that we forget “athletics” are not confined to, or even defined by, sports. The definition of athlete is:
A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength;
Sounds like the Olympics to me. And that is where—if anywhere—you will find the greatest athletes of all time: The Olympics. There, pure strength, pure speed, pure stamina, etc. is tested in a way that professional sports players never are. Deion Sanders was perhaps the fastest football player to ever play. He couldn’t hold a candle to Maurice Green’s speed. Michael Jordan could jump like nobody’s business, but he never competed in the long jump—and not just because he would get a ton of sand on his tongue. Lawrence Taylor could drag Quarterbacks down with a few fingers, and broke Joe Theisman’s leg into a hundred tiny pieces seemingly without effort; yet he would never last against the strongest men in the world. Randy Johnson could throw a ball 104 mph. But he could not have competed in javelin toss.
Indeed, the only modern sports hero who might have a legitimate hold upon such a title as “greatest athlete” would be Lance Armstrong, pained as I am to say that. Sure, all he does is ride a bike, but that’s the point. There is no trickery, no fake field goals, no play action, no spitballs, no knuckleballs, no crossovers—he just rides harder, longer and faster than anyone else. It is a sport that would bore one to tears, but it does show who holds the most stamina and speed on a bicycle. Of course, Lance cheated in all likelihood, but since we know that everyone else did too, that doesn’t do much to shatter his accomplishments.
The greatest athletes of all time will be found not on the diamond, the court or the field, but where the five rings intertwine.
HoFmann?: Trevor Hoffman broke... uh... Lee Smith’s save record recently (Lee Smith? Who?), and many proclaim Trevor Hoffman a “shoo-in” for the Hall of Fame. Lee Smith isn’t in the Hall of Fame, so breaking his record certainly doesn’t make Trevor a Hall of Famer immediately. He isn’t a shoo-in, but who really cares.
But that is besides the point. This guy has had a remarkably consistent ten year run (minus 2002), in which he saved around 40 games a year. No one really cares. He has had very respectable ERA’s. No one cares.
The truth is: Trevor Hoffman is as exciting as watching Anatoly Karpov win a chess game. Hoffman does not blow people away, he doesn’t fool them with curveballs... he just throws a changeup. Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time (who, by the way, has 413 career saves), has a pitch which either makes the hitter look stupid when they stare at strike three, or makes the hitter look stupid by breaking the bat and grounding weakly to short. Eric Gagne, in his not-so-remarkable steroid-induced run (tell me someone else has seen the oddities of his career and immediately thought “roids”...) would launch fastballs by people or make them whiff at curveballs in the dirt. Heck, even Bobby Jenks, who does nothing but throw 98-102 mph fastballs, is more interesting than Trevor Hoffman. He throws a change up. No one really gets excited by a guy who just throws change ups (and not only because they don’t understand why hitters still get fooled when they know it is coming).
But more than anything, no one cares about Trevor Hoffman for the same reason no one cared about possibly the greatest hitter of our age, Tony Gwynn. He plays in San Diego. They reach the play-offs about as often as the Marlins win the World Series. If you live on the west coast—where the closer doesn’t come in until 1:00 am—you have to make the play-offs or do something remarkable to get noticed.
Passing a guy who isn’t even in the Hall of Fame hardly qualifies as “remarkable”.
“Experts”: It seems the self proclaimed pundits of the major sports leagues have resorted to new tactics in their efforts to cease being wrong all the time. How have they accomplished this? By never offering an opinion. Take this ridiculous quote from Mark Schlereth on espn.com, in response to the following question:
Are the bears the most complete team in the NFL?
Mark Schlereth: “Although they've played extremely well and have dominated their first two opponents, they haven't played a good team yet. Before they get anointed a great team, they have to play a good team...”
At first glance it seems like he is saying something relatively reasonable, but peer a little closer. What he said was “You can’t say anything until they have beaten a good team”. OF COURSE YOU CAN! You are the “expert” Mark Schlereth! You are supposed to tell us whether or not they can beat a good team! If everyone adopted your standards, we would have people refusing to commit to anything until it had already been proven—err, wait, these are the standards everyone has adopted. Taken alone, perhaps this one answer can be forgiven. But it is definitely the norm these days and not the exception.
No longer do our pundits on TV stick their neck on the line and call it like they see it, attempting to show their knowledge by predicting correctly. Nope, they are too smart for that. Now they wait until after the game is over, and then they tell us who the best team is! How brilliant! Why did no one think of this before? I mean, after all, it is much more useful to have our “experts” telling us that the Dolphins are worse than the Steelers after they have lost, right? Because, the outcome of the game was not enough, right?
Schlereth and others like him recently answered a question on NFL Live regarding Carson Palmer: “Fact or fiction: (Carson Palmer) will be the best QB in the league by year’s end.” Their answers? Resounding... “we don’t knows”. They all technically said that this was fiction, because to be the best, you have to beat the best, and they aren’t willing to say Carson will be the best until he has beaten Manning and Brady. Well, duh! The question was “will he”. No one said he is yet. The question was: will he. Instead of answering, they stick their tails between their legs and invent an excuse about having to beat Peyton Manning. Brilliant, guys, brilliant. Sports annotation is in capable hands with the likes of these experts.
(To further prove that Reggie Bush should have been drafted first this past spring, all the experts said so—before the Texans took Mario Williams. This might be stronger proof than anything that the Texans made a completely idiotic move, since our experts never put their credibility on the line unless it is a sure thing.)
Addendum: There are experts still who actually have incredible amounts of knowledge stored away, seem to live *insert football/baseball/basketball here* and do not shy away from offering opinions. These are the Joe Morgans, Tim Kurkjians and Ron Jaworskis of the world. One would think this would make me, the eternal hater of all things wishy washy, happy. But these people scare me.
For instance, the other day, during one of the many recent attempts to kindle a tear from our eye regarding the return of football to New Orleans (seriously, do we need ESPN giving us these sob stories?), a commentator from a baseball game made a comment similar to “of course, as important as the football game is, it is pretty insignificant compared to the real life stories of these people, and no sport is as important as this, blah blah blah”. And it looked like Joe Morgan was straining not to say something like “No, no, baseball is more important than reality. It is more important than life. It is all that matters.” It seemed like the only reason he was silently sitting there, seemingly in accordance with the claim of the relative unimportance of sports was that he knew it would be politically incorrect to say otherwise.
But this makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, Tim Kurkjian can tell you who won the NL Cy Young in ’72 off the top of his head (it was Steve Carlton, in case you were wondering). Ron Jaworski always starts every sentence by saying “After watching the tape on this game for the tenth time....” and so on and so forth. These guys do nothing but study this one thing, and instead of it being related to the meaning of life, like philosophy, or their salvation, like theology, or how to build more efficient machines with physics, or curing diseases by studying biochemistry, they study...
A game. That thing you do from the time you are 2 years old. We all love them, but in the end, every professional baseball player in the world could go up in smoke, and the world would continue on just fine—get rid of all the doctors and we have an epidemic on our hands in every way.
The truth is: they need to believe in the usefulness of their chosen field—how else could one apply one’s self so wholeheartedly? And I love these guys, minus Joe Morgan (more on him next time...), so I don’t say this disparagingly. I mean, I feel like I didn’t know what football was until Jaws started explaining it to me. Without Tim Kurkjian, who would know Jason Bay is a good baseball player on the pirates and not an ocean resort? I love Jaws. I love the Baseball Encyclopedia. They are somewhat frightening in their devotion, but at least they have the decency to tell us whether Carson Palmer will be the league’s best QB by year’s end.
Humor: Where’s the humor gone, you say? It is hiding in Al Saunders’ seven hundred page playbook. Or at least, that’s what I thought initially. Then I realized Randy Johnson put it the same place he put his talent. Someone stole it from his hideout, though, so this information did little to aid the progress of my investigation into my humor’s disappearance. I heard a rumor that it got traded for two minor leaguers and, ostensibly, a player to be named, but my general manager never informed me of this so I am not yet going to believe it. Another interesting rumor says that it went to wherever Ricky Williams went, and is now smoking whatever Ricky Williams was smoking. I have serious doubts about this theory. My sense of humor has always been “dry”; I highly doubt it would want to be labeled “high and dry”. There is the possibility it is in Nebraska, in its many fields of corn, re-energizing itself so it can make more comments like the previous one about “high and dry”. Wherever it went, I hope it comes back soon; I feel like the Yankees without Mo, the Colts without Peyton, the Bulls without Jordan, the Texans without Reggie Bush—oh... wait. Never mind.
Athletes
It is no secret that many commentators have recently opened a debate regarding Tiger Wood’s candidacy for “Greatest Athlete of all time”. I do not need to elaborate on the reasons Tiger Woods is so undeserving of such a title, but I will introduce them to elaborate on the main purpose of this article
Tiger Woods does not run, jump, lift, throw, or in essence perform any athletic acts. Hence, he cannot be on the top 1,000,000 list of greatest athletes of all time. Him being the greatest athlete is an absurd claim. But who else is not the greatest athlete of all time?
Roger Federer.
Bill Russell.
John Elway.
Michael Jordan.
Babe Ruth.
Hank Aaron.
Etcetera. (And he is a dang good player)
Some of these are tremendous athletes. But none of them are the deserving of such a title as greatest athlete of all time. Even ignoring the ego-centric premise behind naming any of these men as such (which is based upon the view that only the 20th and 21st centuries matter), they are not the greatest athletes even of our day. Sports of skill and precision have so dominated our psyche that we forget “athletics” are not confined to, or even defined by, sports. The definition of athlete is:
A person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength;
Sounds like the Olympics to me. And that is where—if anywhere—you will find the greatest athletes of all time: The Olympics. There, pure strength, pure speed, pure stamina, etc. is tested in a way that professional sports players never are. Deion Sanders was perhaps the fastest football player to ever play. He couldn’t hold a candle to Maurice Green’s speed. Michael Jordan could jump like nobody’s business, but he never competed in the long jump—and not just because he would get a ton of sand on his tongue. Lawrence Taylor could drag Quarterbacks down with a few fingers, and broke Joe Theisman’s leg into a hundred tiny pieces seemingly without effort; yet he would never last against the strongest men in the world. Randy Johnson could throw a ball 104 mph. But he could not have competed in javelin toss.
Indeed, the only modern sports hero who might have a legitimate hold upon such a title as “greatest athlete” would be Lance Armstrong, pained as I am to say that. Sure, all he does is ride a bike, but that’s the point. There is no trickery, no fake field goals, no play action, no spitballs, no knuckleballs, no crossovers—he just rides harder, longer and faster than anyone else. It is a sport that would bore one to tears, but it does show who holds the most stamina and speed on a bicycle. Of course, Lance cheated in all likelihood, but since we know that everyone else did too, that doesn’t do much to shatter his accomplishments.
The greatest athletes of all time will be found not on the diamond, the court or the field, but where the five rings intertwine.
HoFmann?: Trevor Hoffman broke... uh... Lee Smith’s save record recently (Lee Smith? Who?), and many proclaim Trevor Hoffman a “shoo-in” for the Hall of Fame. Lee Smith isn’t in the Hall of Fame, so breaking his record certainly doesn’t make Trevor a Hall of Famer immediately. He isn’t a shoo-in, but who really cares.
But that is besides the point. This guy has had a remarkably consistent ten year run (minus 2002), in which he saved around 40 games a year. No one really cares. He has had very respectable ERA’s. No one cares.
The truth is: Trevor Hoffman is as exciting as watching Anatoly Karpov win a chess game. Hoffman does not blow people away, he doesn’t fool them with curveballs... he just throws a changeup. Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time (who, by the way, has 413 career saves), has a pitch which either makes the hitter look stupid when they stare at strike three, or makes the hitter look stupid by breaking the bat and grounding weakly to short. Eric Gagne, in his not-so-remarkable steroid-induced run (tell me someone else has seen the oddities of his career and immediately thought “roids”...) would launch fastballs by people or make them whiff at curveballs in the dirt. Heck, even Bobby Jenks, who does nothing but throw 98-102 mph fastballs, is more interesting than Trevor Hoffman. He throws a change up. No one really gets excited by a guy who just throws change ups (and not only because they don’t understand why hitters still get fooled when they know it is coming).
But more than anything, no one cares about Trevor Hoffman for the same reason no one cared about possibly the greatest hitter of our age, Tony Gwynn. He plays in San Diego. They reach the play-offs about as often as the Marlins win the World Series. If you live on the west coast—where the closer doesn’t come in until 1:00 am—you have to make the play-offs or do something remarkable to get noticed.
Passing a guy who isn’t even in the Hall of Fame hardly qualifies as “remarkable”.
“Experts”: It seems the self proclaimed pundits of the major sports leagues have resorted to new tactics in their efforts to cease being wrong all the time. How have they accomplished this? By never offering an opinion. Take this ridiculous quote from Mark Schlereth on espn.com, in response to the following question:
Are the bears the most complete team in the NFL?
Mark Schlereth: “Although they've played extremely well and have dominated their first two opponents, they haven't played a good team yet. Before they get anointed a great team, they have to play a good team...”
At first glance it seems like he is saying something relatively reasonable, but peer a little closer. What he said was “You can’t say anything until they have beaten a good team”. OF COURSE YOU CAN! You are the “expert” Mark Schlereth! You are supposed to tell us whether or not they can beat a good team! If everyone adopted your standards, we would have people refusing to commit to anything until it had already been proven—err, wait, these are the standards everyone has adopted. Taken alone, perhaps this one answer can be forgiven. But it is definitely the norm these days and not the exception.
No longer do our pundits on TV stick their neck on the line and call it like they see it, attempting to show their knowledge by predicting correctly. Nope, they are too smart for that. Now they wait until after the game is over, and then they tell us who the best team is! How brilliant! Why did no one think of this before? I mean, after all, it is much more useful to have our “experts” telling us that the Dolphins are worse than the Steelers after they have lost, right? Because, the outcome of the game was not enough, right?
Schlereth and others like him recently answered a question on NFL Live regarding Carson Palmer: “Fact or fiction: (Carson Palmer) will be the best QB in the league by year’s end.” Their answers? Resounding... “we don’t knows”. They all technically said that this was fiction, because to be the best, you have to beat the best, and they aren’t willing to say Carson will be the best until he has beaten Manning and Brady. Well, duh! The question was “will he”. No one said he is yet. The question was: will he. Instead of answering, they stick their tails between their legs and invent an excuse about having to beat Peyton Manning. Brilliant, guys, brilliant. Sports annotation is in capable hands with the likes of these experts.
(To further prove that Reggie Bush should have been drafted first this past spring, all the experts said so—before the Texans took Mario Williams. This might be stronger proof than anything that the Texans made a completely idiotic move, since our experts never put their credibility on the line unless it is a sure thing.)
Addendum: There are experts still who actually have incredible amounts of knowledge stored away, seem to live *insert football/baseball/basketball here* and do not shy away from offering opinions. These are the Joe Morgans, Tim Kurkjians and Ron Jaworskis of the world. One would think this would make me, the eternal hater of all things wishy washy, happy. But these people scare me.
For instance, the other day, during one of the many recent attempts to kindle a tear from our eye regarding the return of football to New Orleans (seriously, do we need ESPN giving us these sob stories?), a commentator from a baseball game made a comment similar to “of course, as important as the football game is, it is pretty insignificant compared to the real life stories of these people, and no sport is as important as this, blah blah blah”. And it looked like Joe Morgan was straining not to say something like “No, no, baseball is more important than reality. It is more important than life. It is all that matters.” It seemed like the only reason he was silently sitting there, seemingly in accordance with the claim of the relative unimportance of sports was that he knew it would be politically incorrect to say otherwise.
But this makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, Tim Kurkjian can tell you who won the NL Cy Young in ’72 off the top of his head (it was Steve Carlton, in case you were wondering). Ron Jaworski always starts every sentence by saying “After watching the tape on this game for the tenth time....” and so on and so forth. These guys do nothing but study this one thing, and instead of it being related to the meaning of life, like philosophy, or their salvation, like theology, or how to build more efficient machines with physics, or curing diseases by studying biochemistry, they study...
A game. That thing you do from the time you are 2 years old. We all love them, but in the end, every professional baseball player in the world could go up in smoke, and the world would continue on just fine—get rid of all the doctors and we have an epidemic on our hands in every way.
The truth is: they need to believe in the usefulness of their chosen field—how else could one apply one’s self so wholeheartedly? And I love these guys, minus Joe Morgan (more on him next time...), so I don’t say this disparagingly. I mean, I feel like I didn’t know what football was until Jaws started explaining it to me. Without Tim Kurkjian, who would know Jason Bay is a good baseball player on the pirates and not an ocean resort? I love Jaws. I love the Baseball Encyclopedia. They are somewhat frightening in their devotion, but at least they have the decency to tell us whether Carson Palmer will be the league’s best QB by year’s end.
Humor: Where’s the humor gone, you say? It is hiding in Al Saunders’ seven hundred page playbook. Or at least, that’s what I thought initially. Then I realized Randy Johnson put it the same place he put his talent. Someone stole it from his hideout, though, so this information did little to aid the progress of my investigation into my humor’s disappearance. I heard a rumor that it got traded for two minor leaguers and, ostensibly, a player to be named, but my general manager never informed me of this so I am not yet going to believe it. Another interesting rumor says that it went to wherever Ricky Williams went, and is now smoking whatever Ricky Williams was smoking. I have serious doubts about this theory. My sense of humor has always been “dry”; I highly doubt it would want to be labeled “high and dry”. There is the possibility it is in Nebraska, in its many fields of corn, re-energizing itself so it can make more comments like the previous one about “high and dry”. Wherever it went, I hope it comes back soon; I feel like the Yankees without Mo, the Colts without Peyton, the Bulls without Jordan, the Texans without Reggie Bush—oh... wait. Never mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment