Well, by the time I finish this post, it will not have been 2 months since my last post. So what of this title? A few months ago, I was listening to a podcast of Rick Shiels, whose pods refer mostly to golf, as he is a very good amateur player, an avid fan of golf who watches it constantly (more than me even), and a diligent student of the game who has relationships with many of the participants and media. During this specific podcast, Rick and his co-host, Guy Charnock, decided to discuss the topic of the “Mt, Rushmore” of sports. I don’t remember from whom they got the idea (maybe I can go back and find the relevant pod, but he does them so often that it will be difficult). I don’t think I need to explain to anyone what Mt. Rushmore is. He and Guy had a discussion trying to identify (according to them) the 4 greatest athletes ever. Now Shiels is a Brit, so I suspect his knowledge of baseball is quite limited, and he probably has only passing interest in American football and basketball. So they focused mostly on golf and futbol (soccer), but, interestingly, Rick proposed Serena Williams, and I believe Michel Phelps’ name came up. Anyway, this got me thinking that this could be an interesting topic for the blog. I even discussed it with one of my great friends, who not only agreed with the idea, but he went as far as to provide his list on his own blog. Now it’s my turn. Here’s how I’m going to do it. I will have an entry for the sports of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, soccer, and possibly miscellaneous (other sports). Likely, each sport’s entry will have 5 – 8 names with some dialogue associated. I will limit it to professional sports, although I might have a few exceptions in the miscellaneous category. After I complete all of the entries, I will identify whom I think are the 12 greatest athletes of all time. Trying to limit to 4 isn’t possible for me (I don’t know if I can even limit it to 12, but I’m going to try). and there are a lot more athletes than there are U.S. presidents, so I feel that it’s OK to have a bigger mountain. I will use the following criteria: 1) the statistics, 2) dominance relative to the player’s competition, 3) the circumstances under which the athlete performed (this criterion will become clear during the discussions), 4) what I observed (either live, on TV, or on film), 5) the opinions of relevant individuals (where it applies). I will start with baseball and maybe football also in my next post, but it’s late so I’m going to end this post and leave you hanging for a bit.
#Mt. Rushmore
#Rick Shiels
#The Rick Shiels Golf Show
#Greatest athletes of all time
Disentangling the mess 