B159-DES103
A Greatest American Athletes Debate
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 7/24/04

  Sportswriting is a dismal art. Generally a sportswriter is a bad prosist who relies far too heavily on clichés, unnecessary ellipses….for poorly constructed sentences & paragraphs (a habit started in the early 20^th Century by Red Smith, perpetuated by Dick Young, & kept alive by nearly every new sportswriter to emerge in print in the last 25 years), & an absolute tunnel vision re: the rest of the cosmos. But I am not so much going to write of the poor art of sportswriting, as much as I want to highlight some of the interior things that go in to most sportswriting. Basically, I want to highlight the difference between a non-creative mindset & a creative 1 in the approach to 1 of the most rudimentary & fundamental sorts of sportswriting around- the vaunted LIST. I have highlighted these differences a # of times on my own website- mostly in the arts; now I want to apply the same strictures to a more pedestrian medium.
  Recently I came across yet another of these lists on ESPN.com. This list was compiled by sportswriter Eric Neel & it consisted of his idea of the 25 greatest athletes of the last 25 years- a reasonable list. But before I compare his list with mine & explain why mine is better let me give you a brief synopsis of my own theory of human intelligence. I have encountered 3 sorts of intellects in my life. The Functionary- which is the sort most of us associate with IQ tests & the like. This is the sort of intellect that gets most folk by. The 2^nd, & higher intellect is the Creationary- think of it as the Functionary². Creationary folk ‘create’ where as Functionaries are the drones of society. They can also see a bit farther in to most of life’s endeavors, & with greater perception than a Functionary. The 3^rd & highest of the intellects is the Visionary. It is to the Creationary what the Creationary is to the Functionary, so it may be thought of as the Functionary³ or the Creationary². The Visionary sees even farther & in more detail than the Creationary, & can also see around the corner, or almost in an X-Ray sense. The Visionary has that Keatsian Negative Capability to make leaps of seeming illogic that bear fruits, nonetheless. What this has to do with sports listmaking is that most sportswriters simply lack the requisite intellectual background & depth of experience & vision without sports to give their lists any intellectual plaudits- or as a sportswriter might term it: oomph!
  That said, the differences between Neel’s & my lists are 2-fold- 1^st, his list is only for the last 25 years while mine includes the last 3 full decades, so that some excluded athletes on Neel’s list can have their import measured. Also, my list has a stated bias- American sportsmen- not worldwide, even though his list is de facto an American 1. Now the lists:

	Eric Neel	Dan Schneider
1	Lance Armstrong	Barry Bonds
2	Michael Jordan	Magic Johnson
3	Wayne Gretzky	Mario Lemieux
4	Barry Bonds	Barry Sanders
5	Carl Lewis	Lawrence Taylor
6	Tiger Woods	Shaquille O’Neal
7	Roger Clemens	Jerry Rice
8	Jerry Rice	Michael Jordan
9	Martina Navratilova	Joe Montana
10	Magic Johnson	Wayne Gretzky
11	Larry Bird	Moses Malone
12	Mario Lemieux	Larry Bird
13	Lawrence Taylor	Carl Lewis
14	Jackie Joyner-Kersee	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
15	Joe Montana	Mark Messier
16	Dale Earnhardt	Eric Heiden
17	Barry Sanders	Brett Favre
18	Rickey Henderson	Alex Rodriguez
19	Shaquille O’Neal	Reggie White
20	Pete Sampras	Sammy Sosa
21	Alex Rodriguez	Reggie Jackson
22	Eric Heiden	Lance Armstrong
23	Serena Williams	Pete Sampras
24	Sugar Ray Leonard	Sugar Ray Leonard
25	Mia Hamm	Roger Clemens

  1^st let’s look at who is gone from Neel’s list (in red) & who is added on mine. 1^st to go are the 4 women on the list- Martina Navratilova, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Serena Williams, & Mia Hamm. Why? I’m not a chauvinist, but the truth is that the term ‘greatest’ implies the best that all humans have to offer. Facing facts, no woman would probably rank in the top 1000 of any real list. Proof of this can be seen in the only ‘real’ sports league for women- the WNBA, where the play is so atrocious that I could literally pick the 5 best high school male basketballers from any of the 1000s of playgrounds around the country, train’em as a team for a ½ hour, & they could go out & not just beat the WNBA All Stars, but whip’em soundly. & don’t give me that Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs nonsense. People forget that Riggs was 30 years older & pushing 60 at the time, & earlier in the year he STILL beat Margaret Court! So, bye-bye ladies. But before we do let’s just look at Neel’s ill rationale- Martina as the top woman? OK? But Serena Williams’ year & ½ of excellence (already fading) does not outdo, say, Steffi Graf’s decade of dominance in tennis. As for Jackie-Joyner Kersee, ok. But Mia Hamm? Can the top star of a sport whose most notable moment is the baring of a sports bra really be taken seriously?
  Also gone are Tiger Woods & Dale Earnhardt. Why? Because golf & auto racing are not sports, nor athletics. Do their tasks take skill? Sure, but Tiger’s not gonna be entering a decathlon anytime soon, & Dale? Sorry- real athletic sports do not see 55 year old men beating men ½ their age (another strike against the ‘sport’ of golf). You’re sitting on your ass & only your arms & gas foot are at work. To allow that duo means that pool, poker, & chess players, as well as bowlers must be considered ‘athletes’. Sorry, maybe in some fantasy league but not on earth. My final exclusion is Rickey Henderson- a great leadoff hitter & base runner, but nothing else.
  Who do I substitute for the vanquished 7? In order of import- Moses Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Mark Messier, Brett Favre, Reggie White, Sammy Sosa, & Reggie Jackson. I’ll give my reasons as I go down the whole of my list vs. Neel’s.
  Lance Armstrong at #1? Please- he rides a bicycle, & does not physically engage others. His dominance in that lesser sport puts him in the bottom 5. Barry Bonds is my #1. The hardest thing to do in sports is hit a baseball. Don’t think so? In any other sport a 30% success rate is considered a failure. Bonds has dominated on both offense & defense, & is the only athlete who actually got better at an aspect of his craft as he aged- hitting, even as his defense has become merely good. Magic Johnson was better than Michael Jordan. Yes, MJ played better D, but Magic out rebounded, outpassed, made his teammates better, & was the better clutch player. For every memorable Jordan heroic there were 2 forgotten last second misses. Had Mario Lemieux not gotten cancer the notion of his superiority over Gretzky would not have even been debatable. Did anyone EVER see Gretzky throw a hip check? The next 2 on my list were the best offensive & defensive football players. I give the edge to Barry Sanders over LT simply because offense usually dictates to defense in football- despite myths to the contrary. But, LT was the 1^st defender to totally alter rival offense’s standard game schemes. Shaq is simply the most dominating player in the NBA since Wilt Chamberlain. Jerry Rice could catch & block better than any receiver in NFL history. MJ is at #8. It’s time to re-evaluate this truly great, but overrated, star. Of the dominant athletes perhaps only Wayne Gretzky was more selfish- & no 1 got away with more walks & non-fouls than he did (read: referee’s- & Commissioner’s-  pet). Still, being #3 after Magic & Shaq ain’t bad. Joe Montana- only weakness was his arm- & Gretzky- the most dominant 1-dimensional athlete of all-time- round out the top 10.
  Next up is Moses Malone- the 1^st Neel omission. Only Shaq dominated basketball more, & Mo did it with less height, weight, & help- as well as far outrebounding & outdefending Shaq. He singlehandedly took a bad Houston Rockets team to within 2 wins of an NBA title in 1981 against Larry Bird’s Hall Of Fame lineup Boston Celtics club, for God’s sake! Larry Bird was the NBA’s Wayne Gretzky- all O, no D! But a clutch player. Carl Lewis’s track feats over multiple Olympics would rate higher were track more man-to-man. My added few years to the list makes Kareem a gimme- if I need to explain you should not be reading this article. Mark Messier probably should rank higher than Gretzky- his O was not as great- only Super Mario could match that, but his D & leadership were way better. Think of this, after Gretzky left Edmonton with 4 Stanley Cups, he won bupkus, while Messier won 2 more with mediocre Oilers & Rangers teams. Still, Gretzky’s career #s are so surreal. Eric Heiden’s Olympic skating triumph was greater than any of Carl Lewis’s single 1s, but Heiden was a 1-Olympic wonder.
  Brett Favre was the best all-around QB, but not as speedy nor as clutch as Montana- as his recent boneheaded playoff interception against Philadelphia proved. A-Rod- he’ll be top 10 in a decade. Reggie White- after LT the best defensive footballer to strap’em up. Sammy Sosa, barring injury, will pass Hank Aaron, & perhaps Barry Bonds as HR king- recall hitting a baseball’s difficulty level for his ranking. But, he’s not in Bonds’s class all-around. Reggie Jackson gets mention for being the single greatest clutch performer of all-time. So-so defense, yes. But 3 home runs on 3 straight pitches in the deciding game of the 1977 World Series (& 4 on 4 going back to the previous game) is perhaps the greatest clutch performance in sports history. Lance (bicycling), Sampras (tennis), & Sugar Ray (boxing) seem about right where I have them. Clemens was the greatest pitcher of the last few decades but- c’mon, you cannot rank higher than the bottom spot if you only perform every 5^th outing- sorry!
  The basic difference between Neel’s list & mine is his lack of depth- illustrated by my last comment about an athlete who works only every 5^th day being overrated, women not being eligible since they cannot realistically compete athletically with the best of males (if you include woman then I’d stipulate that horses should be allowed & counter Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, & Spectacular Bid would still bump Neel’s babes- what? It’s ok to think me a sexist yet Neel’s speciesim goes unchallenged?), or placing too high an emphasis on the gaudier ‘brand names’ (Jordan, Gretzky, Bird) while undervaluing grittier, & better players (Lemieux, Malone, Favre).
  Length prevents me from a more detailed assessment, save to say that Neel suffers from what most sportswriters do- being snowblinded by the glare of what others knee-jerkedly swear to, without an ability to actually cogitate solely (on the relative athleticness of many ‘sports’) , & an inability to discern subtleties- like Magic’s overall game vs. Jordan’s- & their effect on an athletic event. That said, this list will still anger non-Americans (where’s Pele, or other soccer greats?) as well as aficionados of particular sports (basketball’s Akeem Olajuwan or Karl Malone). & it should, for any opinion- mine, or those by any ‘expert’ should always be ripe for contesting. Without it, all discourse is liable to fall as fallow as sportswriting….

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