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Notes By Randy Williams and George Stahl NEW YORK (AQB)--Sports historian Bert Randolph Sugar doesn't see many similarities between ESPN's list of the century's 100 greatest North American athletes and his 1995 book The Sports 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Athletes of All Time, which he called "the prototype for the ESPN list." "It was the concept for their idea, but we go downhill from there," the noted sports historian and boxing expert said. "For one thing, I didn't have horses in there. I go back to Mr. Ed - 'a horse is a horse, of course, of course.' If you don't put a saddle on its back, it's going to be sitting in the infield eating grass. That's something similar to me saying, 'A piano is a great musician.' You need somebody to play it." "I didn't want horses in there, anymore than I wanted greyhounds or dancing fleas. And I'm a horse lover. But you look up the definition of an athlete and it says 'a person who...'" Sugar said this week after ESPN announced alphabetically the top 20 athletes at a media conference at the new ESPN Zone restaurant in New York City. But the inclusion of horses isn't the only difference between Sugar's book and ESPN's list.
"They also don't have anybody other than North American athletes. I have Pele in there, Paavo Nurmi." Sugar, who voted on ESPN's list as a member of the SportsCentury panel of experts, said he didn't understand why Czechoslovakia-born Martina Navratilova could be on the list but not Pele of Brazil. "[Pele] wasn't on my ballot. Martina was sort of a Julie-come-lately, and we accept her. I don't know why we couldn't accept Pele, who played for the Cosmos. [But] that was the criteria I was given." "In all fairness, my list doesn't queue with theirs." Sugar said that in his book, he focused exclusively on on-field achievements, as ESPN asked its voters to do. However, the author of more than 50 sports books based his decisions on more than just who had the biggest numbers. "It wasn't the greatest hockey player, it was the greatest athlete, hypothetically, on ice. To me, Bobby Orr was the greatest athlete ever on ice. He wasn't the greatest player," Sugar said, pausing for emphasis. "[but] athlete." Sugar's book and ESPN's list may have the No. 1 athlete in common - Jim Brown.
"He was the greatest in two sports - football and lacrosse, which is an ardous sport. It's hockey on feet," Sugar said. "He went to Syracuse on a lacrosse scholarship, not a football scholarship. He made both halls of fame. How many of these other people are in two halls of fame?" Sugar, wearing his customary fedora, said he enjoys these kind of discussions. "It's fun, and I think it's proper that we are at a sports bar because it's a glorified sports bar argument. ... Nobody is wrong because nobody is going to prove us wrong. This is fun." The only thing that bothers him is that too many people have an opinion. "Everybody has a list. In fact, if this keeps up, I'm going to come out with a list of the 100 greatest lists of all time." Click to see more about ESPN's top 20 list, ArmchairQB.com's coverage of ESPN's SportsCentury project or AQB's chat with Mark Shapiro, executive producer of the SportsCentury project.
Carl Lewis, a top 20 athlete on ESPN's SportsCentury list, told ArmchairQB.com some of the things, besides his obvious athletic achievements, that he hopes the half-hour show on him covers. "I think, for me, it would be important to try to illustrate the impact I tried to make from a professional standpoint and, then, from the drug problem standpoint. "I [also] hope that people see that I was an individual in my sport because we needed individuals, like Jackie Joyner-Kersee, myself and others. The sport wouldn't be where it is today, or where it was 10-15 years ago, if we didn't stand out and try to make a difference. "I had to be an individual in that sport because the sport has its own idea of how it wants to be - and that would have been good a 100 years ago. "Right now, it's dying away fast because there are no individuals. They [track and field officials] basically have the sport they want where there are a bunch of athletes running up and down the track and nobody knows or cares who they are or what they do. No one follows them. "That was something that was important for me to try to do - be interesting and be athletic." Click to see more about ESPN's top 20 list, ArmchairQB.com's coverage of ESPN's SportsCentury project or a preview of ESPN's Sportscenter of the Decades, 1980s.
Martina Navratilova, No. 19 on ESPN's SportsCentury list, had some advice Tuesday for her namesake, Martina Hingis, who lost the U.S. Open women's final last weekend to Serena Williams. "If I were her, I would just get in the best possible shape I could be in, so that absolutely you don't ever lose a point because you're too tired. She was sluggish Saturday - no matter how they say she's in better shape than she was. She still lost partly because she was tired from the match before." Navratilova said Hingis has to be in her best shape because she has to work harder to defeat the bigger, stronger Williams sisters. "There's really no excuse for missing a shot because you're too tired. It has nothing to do with ability or technique." Click to see more about ESPN's top 20 list or AQB's review of CBS' U.S. Open coverage.
Dick Schaap took pride in the fact that he had interviewed 16 of the top 20 athletes on ESPN's SportsCentury list. "That's my justification for being in this business for 50 years," the 65-year-old told ArmchairQB.com this week at ESPN Zone restaurant, where he will host The Sports Reporters, possibly beginning Sunday. "I've acted out all the fantasies of my childhood. I've met the people who seemed so remote and who meeting seemed like only a remote possibility. I've gotten to know them, and sometime it was disappointing, but often enough it isn't, so you enjoy it. "[But] when you're getting up into this group, these are special people." Schaap, who voted on the SportsCentury list, said he thought he had Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain and Bo Jackson in his top three. The Sports Reporters host co-wrote Jackson's autobiography, Bo Knows Bo, one of Schaap's more than 25 sports books. Schaap said all this reminiscing as the 1900s end is helping him write his own autobiography, which is due out next fall, "All these things help jog my mind, and my mind helps jog these things. So it works both ways." For more details and a complete list of televised sporting events for this weekend, check out ArmchairQB.com's Today's Lineup. |
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