Greatest Athlete by Decade

Cafe Society
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Lemieux? He was truly exceptional, but nowhere near Gretzky. I notice your original post said:

I don’t know cricket, so I’m taking your word that average runs is the most significant career stat, but it is not so in hockey, where the most significant career stat is points.

Your guy: 99.9 / 61 = 1.637, or 64% above second place.
Gretzky: 2857 / 1887 (Messier) = 1.51, or 51% above second place.

Okay, I misremembered and mistakenly thought the gap was larger, which it is not. It is, however, a gap of a similar magnitude.

Not when you cherry-pick stats to suit your point, but when looked at objectively, he did exceed his fellow competitors by a similarly insurmountable margin.

Lemieux might have put up a challenge to get somewhere near Gretsky, but cancer sidetracked him and effectively ended his chances to catch The Great One. To seriously compare the two is to assume Lemieux would have fulfilled his potential “if only…”

Well, if that’s the criteria, then I submit Ricky Williams as the greatest running back of all time, because “if only…”

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For a batter (or “bastsman,” as they tend to be called) in cricket, average runs is indeed the most significant statistic, by a long way. The only statistic that even comes close in terms of importance is the number of centuries scored (i.e., the number of times a batsman scores 100 runs or more in a single inning). Bradman was also miles ahead in that statistic, scoring a century at a rate of better than once every two matches.

The reason that total runs scored over a career is not considered the main yardstick in cricket is that there are so many more games played nowdays than when people like Bradman were playing. Bradman played 52 total test matches (a test match is a 5-day game between two national teams), while modern players easily break the 100 barrier, and some have played more than 150. So, by simple dint of playing a lot more games, modern players score a lot more total runs than their earlier counterparts.

If you want to see how Bradman stacks up historically against other cricketers, you can check out his stats here. The statistic you’re looking for as Avg, in the second-last column. As you don’t know much about cricket, it’s worth pointing out that anyone with a career average of 50 or greater is generally considered to be one of the legends of the game, and even people with an average in the mid to high 40s are usually considered outstanding players. Having looked up some baseball stats, i see that 55 major leaguers have a career average of .300 or better, and i think that a career average of 50 in test cricket is probably a pretty similar yardstick.

You say that Xema was cherry-picking stats, but surely if you’re going to choose career points as your main criterion, that also is cherry-picking, because it doesn’t take account of how many games a person plays. Gretsky scored a total of 2857 career points, and played 1487 games, for a total of just under 2 points a game. Lemieux scored only 1701 points, but he only played 889 games, so he also had a career where he scored just under two points per game.

I’ve watched games showing both Gretsky and Lemieux in their primes, and i think that Gretsky was the better player, and that he was the best player ever to play the game. But simply looking at his career goals or points without taking into account the number of games he played seems to me to skew things in his favor. Sure, we can respect longevity in the game as something worth admiring in its own right, but to privilege it by simply counting total stats seems a little odd.

You say that to include Lemieux we would have to make some sort of “of only…” guess about his future career. But we wouldn’t. We would just have to look at what he did, and at how many games it took him to do it. Despite having his career cut short, he still had a long enough career that his high points-per-game average must be considered as something more than a fluke. I could understand your unwillingness to consider him if he had played 10 total games and scored 31 points, because his career wouldn’t have been long enough to iron out statistical aberrations. But it was long enough, so we can look at what he did without guessing about what he might have done.

It’s the same with Bradman. He played far fewer tests than some of the people further down the list ( e.g., Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Javed Miandad, Steve Waugh), and he scored fewer total runs than those folks, but when judging Bradman the greatest player of all time no-one feels the need to guess about what he might have done had he played more games.

Look, in the end i don’t really think you can compare cricket and hockey performances anyway. Batting in cricket is like batting in baseball—something of a lone endeavor, where you are pitting your wits and your skill against the pitcher/bowler and the fielding team. And it’s something quite easily measured statistically. Hockey is much more of a team sport in the true sense of the word, and i think a real measure of Gretsky’s greatness is not measured by statistics, but by the fact that his performances on the ice stood out so clearly even though he was part of a team. His greatness was, in a very real sense, immeasurable.

I think it really is the case, whatever the sport, that sporting greatness is much more than mere stats. Those who saw Bradman bat say that his brilliance was much more than just his average. The ease and fluid style with which he played are a matter of legend; he took something extremely difficult and made it look easy. I think you can say the same thing about Gretsky, and about a lot of other legendary athletes.

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Excellent post, mhendo. I have only one nit to pick.

The original question Xema asked involved the most significant career marks. Total points fits that criteria, whereas points per game does not. In that sense, using the latter is cherry picking; using the former is not.

That aside, I would tend to debate the Lemieux issue. You’re right that he had a long enough career to make his average legitimate. But here’s the thing: his long illustrious career with the great Gretzy-esque average? He would need to double it to get into the same rarified air. That’s a pretty big assumption, to say that if he never had health issues his career could have been twice as long as it was, maintaining the impressive per-game average the entire time.

Personally, I suspect he may have been able to do it, but we’ll never know. That’s kind of the point.

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There’s really too many numbers for me to do a proper comparison at the moment, as I’m busy on other things, but I did find one interesting chart by googling.

Normalized Points:

Looking at the list of the 50 most productive seasons by any player, let’s filter out everyone except The Great One and Lemieux:

You’ll notice that Lemieux is in the top 50 five times, whereas Gretzky had that same number of appearances in the top 10.

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I like those normalized statistics. Assuming the guy has made a good faith effort to take proper account of the variables, it seems like a reasonable way to compare players like Gretsky and Lemieux.

It also occurs to me, looking at those statisitics, that much of Gretsky’s greatest production was early in his career. I wonder what would happen if we compared the statistics for Gretsky first 889 games against Lemieux’s career (889 total games)? My guess is that the difference between them would become more pronounced. This would tend to support a belief that Lemieux might not have been able to keep up the same rate of production if his career had continued for longer.

The same doesn’t apply to Bradman, because his low number of games isn’t a result of a short career, but of a lower number of overall games being played. His career wasn’t cut short, it just didn’t include as many opportunities to play. He played until the age of 40.

His career did include a hiatus for WWII, though. He did not play in any of the calendar years 1939-1945, meaning that a career spanning 20 years only included 13 years of actual play. But i think it’s reasonable to assume that, had he been able to play during the war years, his performance would not have been measurably lower in those years, given that during his three seasons after the war he averaged 210 (1946), 65 (1947), and 113 (1948). Also, it seems to me that cricket is not a sport in which the players are as susceptible to the ravages of age as they are in hockey.

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(I added everything in parenthesis)

First, it’s “Didrikson” and “Daley” Thompson

Second, (as someone already mentioned) your list has 19 athletes, seven are American. It seems as if you do realize that Americans should, and will dominate any list of great athletes (for a number of good reasons). Your list is bad for a number of reasons. I’m sure most of the people here know of most of the people on your list. They don’t included them because anyone who seriously watches sports knows that they really can’t be compared to some of the athletes already mentioned. As great as Martina Navratilova is, she can’t be considered the greatest athlete of the 80’s. She wasn’t even the greatest tennis player, let alone the best athlete.

I know people consider “sport” an amorphous concept, but most realize some activities require far more athletic skill than others. Activities like sumo wrestling, cricket, rowing, cycling, swimming, tennis and race car driving cannot be compared to things like football, baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey. If we were just going by how great someone is at the activity they choose to compete in than could mention several people like:

Earl Anthony- the greatest bowler ever.
Takeru Kobayashi- the world’s greatest competitive eater. He decimates the field on a regular basis.
Lisa Fernandez- greatest fast-pitch softball player ever.
Royce Gracie- greatest UFC fighter ever.

Anyone can trot out little known athletes who dominated their “sport”, and accuse anyone who hasn’t heard of them of being ignorant. If you really wanted people to learn about the people you mentioned, you could have provided some links. Not only that, you don’t even mention what sports they played or why you think they should be considered. Instead, you just used your vast knowledge of sports and athletes nobody knows/cares about as a means to making yourself feel superior.

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This is just silly.

Do you really think that the athletic ability of a great tennis player is any less than that of, say, a champion quarterback? You must never have watched Andre Agassi play. Hell, there are plenty of QBs who are great throwers, and who have an excellent sense of tactics and precision, but who aren’t really great athletes, in terms of their speed and agility and stamina. You seem to be defining the term “athlete” very narrowly, and then misapplying your own definition. Michael Vick is a great athlete. Peyton Manning is a great quarterback, but i’m not sure i’d call him a great athlete, if your criteria include speed, mobility, evasiveness, etc.

And how is any greater athletic skill and ability required to play baseball than play cricket? Sure, a baseball bat is thin and round, so it’s harder to get a clean hit on the ball. But this is mainly a matter of learning different hitting skills, and i think that anyone with the hand-eye coordination to be a pro baseballer could probably also have been a pro cricketer, and vice versa. Many cricketers also demonstrate an athletic ability in the field that is the equal of any baseball fielder, and they do it without a massive glove to catch the ball in. Bowlers in cricket are often required to bowl in very long spells, and fast bowlers have a 30-40 yard run-up that requires considerable stamina to maintain for over after over. Not only that, but all bowlers have to bat and field in cricket; there’s no such thing as a designated hitter or a pinch hitter, and once the starting lineup is chosen the only substitution allowed is in the field, not for bowling or batting.

Well, this raises the question of whether we can usefully compare very different sports or athletic events. Given that there is really no objective criteria by which we might determine that one sport is more worthy than another, i think it’s logical to spread our net fairly wide and to assume that being a great baseballer requires no more or less athletic ability than being a great cricketer, and that being a great tennis player is a rough equivalent of being a great soccer player. Sure, the skills and abilities and physical characteristics required by each sport are different, but your criteria as outlined above seem almost completely arbitrary.

Well, you’ve apparently heard of Google, and i guess that casdave thought that if people didn’t know who a particular person was, they qould quite easily find out. The internet is great for that sort of thing, you know.

Also, some of us were responding to earlier suggestions by other posters that some sports didn’t count simply because they aren’t big enough or popular enough in America. That’s a stupid requirement, and one i refuse to abide by.

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Nowhere did I say that anyone was ‘ignorant’, well done for making an argument that was not there, way to go.

What I did say was that if we were to look at the greatest athletes, then maybe we should also look further than the North American continent.

You’ll notice that actually some of those previously mentioned, were mentioned by myself first.

In any case, does it somehow disqualify them from consideration just because myself or others have mentioned them previously ?

So Martina Navratilova should not be considered among the worlds greatest athletes of her age ? Well it happens I think she should be considered, and after evaluation you are quite a liberty to dismiss her in favour of others, isn’t that generous of me!

That cycling can’t be considered as a sport against team sports, well duh!!

Actually - for your lack of current information, cycling is a team sport, shows a lot about what you know of team sports., cycling demands not just fitness, it demands skill at handling at speed in a bunch that can be travelling at 60mph or more over varying surfaces, it demands courage, it demands willpower, and sheer bloodymindedness to go on when things look bad, and it demands strategy in events which may unfold over several weeks.
Not Lance Armstrong, nor any other rider can compete without a team in stage racing, time trial events alone ensure this.

Many other nations regard cyclists as the greatest sportspersons ever, the range and type of racing is huge, and demands differant abilities, no one rider can dominate every discipline in cycling sport, obviously you haven’t seen much track racing either.

Out of interest, why in your humble opinion shouldn’t individual sportspersons be considered in the reckoning for ‘Worlds greatest athlete’?

Are other sports somehow less demanding ?

Do they require less dedication ?

Differant sports require differant skills, hand to eye coordination and team strategy are not the only criteria, you don’t make any mention of boxing, which at any weight is probably the most demanding sport there is, closely followed by cycling.

Maybe you don’t think an event where there is a race across a line by whatever means of propulsion is not somehow worthy of consideration.

As for agility and sheer athleticism, well perhaps you don’t understand much about Sumo, and there is an immense amount to know, but the self discpline, dedication and talent would put it into the upper echelons of ability.

Why on earth should I provide links, the idea was for others to actually take the trouble to find out for themselves, if they choose - and if they don’t, then I’m quite prepared to leave them with their own views based on what they think they know.

The truth is that just because you are not familiar to some of those I named, it does not mean they are not well known worldwide, I mentioned it before, mere fame is not necessarily the only way upon which to base a judgement on their talents.

You seem to speak for all those who ‘seriously watch sports’ well bully for you. I do not pretend to do this, I suggest that due consideration might be given to others who are not major stars in the US, after consideration you can then dismiss them.

Tell me where the harm is in mentioning some others ?

Spelling the names of athletes wrong, does this somehow disqualify them from being regarded as top class sportspersons ?
Unless of course it was some sort of pathetic attempt to belittle myself in a thinly transparent Ad Hominem attack, utterly pathetic!!!

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The world traveller speaks! Actually, American athletes shouldn’t, and don’t dominate any list of great athletes (for a number of good reasons). The two biggest American sports have no currency worldwide, meaning that your Ted Williams, Joe Montanas, Willie Mays etc have no real global athletic significance. To rank them as the greatest athletes of the decades is ludicrous. Greatest American sportspersons maybe, but that’s not what the thread is about.

I agree with your first sentance here, but then you go and bollox things up by using some baffling examples. Cricket cannot be compared to baseball? :confused: Its an excellent comparison, only cricket is far, far more popular than baseball (on preview I see that mhendo has covered this). Your denigration of cycling, wrestling wrt baseball, soccer etc is confusing, you seem to be conflating a sport’s popularity with its intrinsic athletic endeavour.

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Not a fair comparison, because Gretzky’s stats encompass a very long career, the last few years of which he obviously wasn’t the player he used to be. Lemieux’s career was cut short by injury. It would be more reasonable to look at the average for the best five years of Gretzky’s career and compare them to the best five of Lemieux’s.

But longevity should also count, as well as total numbers. And there, Gretzky is far ahead of anyone else.

Gretzky had the most career goals (894), career assists (1,963), and career points (2,857). Gretzky also holds the records for the most goals (92), assists (163), and points (215) scored in a single season. He also has the longest point streak (51 games), the most 100 point or better seasons (15), most 50-goal seasons (9, tied with Mike Bossy).

Overall, Gretzky holds or shares 61 NHL records.
And some of his records are so much farther past anyone else that it’s amazing. For example, in 1997 Gretzky passed a milestone - he had more assists than the number two point scorer in NHL history (Gordie Howe) had goals and assists combined. And Gretzky did it in less than half the time.

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In most cases, I think that is true.

Yes, I have, and he’s not even the best tennis player of his generation.

Agreed, that’s why I stated in my first post that I don’t consider Joe Montana the type of athlete Herschel Walker was.

How did I misapply my own definition? BTW, I don’t consider Peyton Manning a particularly great athlete.

First, I agree that cricket and baseball are similar sports. However, most of the great baseball players I consider great athletes played multiple sports on various levels. If you can tell me of a cricket player who has the athletic skill of Bo Jackson, I’d love to hear about it.

I disagree. Playing soccer at a professional level is much harder than being a tennis player. By your logic, sumo wrestling, table tennis, football, and tennis should all be considered equal as far as the athleticism required. I don’t agree with that. While you may disagree with my hierarchy, going as far as saying all sports are equal is crazy.

I could say that about anything. Why ask for a cite when you could just go to google and look it up yourself? His primary point was to chastise people for only picking Americans, not to nominate people for consideration. He knew most people would have never heard of some of those people. If his goal were to fight our ignorance, a link would have come in handy.

I agree.

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True, but my point about Agassi was simply to demonstrate that many pro tennis players are, in fact, great athletes.

You misapplied your own definition by drawing a strict demarcation between two groups of sports—one group of which requires, in your estimation, more athletic ability than the other—while not acknowledging that the range of athletic abilities within a sport can be even greater than the range of athletic abilities between sports.

So is that your new criteria? Simple versatility? I ask this in all honesty, because i truly don’t understand from your various examples exactly how you are defining the term.

You did mention the criteria of “all around athlete” in one of your earlier posts, but does athleticism include games of athletic skill (like golf) rather than speed and strength? Is simply being able to play a lot of different sports pretty well more important than being the best ever at one particular sport?

Why is this? What is it that makes being a pro tennis player easier than being a pro soccer player? Do you speak from experience, or just from how hard it looks sitting in your loungeroom? Surely if this demarcation is as obvious as you think, you can explain exactly what it is that makes one harder than the other.

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(from earlier post)

Clearly you were being condescending and rude. If you take umbrage at my use of the word ignorance, then I apologize.

No, not at all. It does mean that you (or someone else) already brought them up for discussion, and they are been considered.

No

OK

When did I say that?

Again, when did I say anything about the criteria including it being a team sport?

Many of the things you mentioned could be applied to anything competitive. I still don’t consider cycling a sport on the level of football, soccer, basketball, etc.

Obviously you have no idea what I’ve seen

When did I ever say that?

Yes, both physically and mentally.

Depends on the level of competition. Either way, not all sports are equal.

Agreed. Except the part about cycling. I completely disagree with that part

Way to attack another argument I never made.

Just as there is in competitive eating or foosball. Doesn’t mean the people who compete in those sports are phenomenal athletes.

So you just wanted to lecture and not teach?

I agree. Please tell me when I said that should be a prime consideration?

OK

No harm, just spare me the whole lecture before hand.

No. First, it made it hard for me to find out who Daley Thompson was. Second, you should always try to avoid spelling errors that distort your message. Try not to be so sensitive.

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Fair enough.

While I disagree with your statement that I misapplied my own definition, I can see why my criteria was unclear. First, I think the greatest athletes should display some versatility. Excellence in more than one sport is the primary consideration for me. That’s why I think Jim Brown is a better athlete than Joe Montana or Mickie Mantle. The second consideration is the sports they played. To me, certain sports typically require more athleticism than others. I don’t consider a cyclist a better athlete than a boxer, sprinter, or football player.

Your point about range within and between sports is true. I should have spent more time discussing that, and avoided using absolute terms. The point I was trying to convey was that the greatest sumo wrestlers aren’t usually the types of athletes the greatest football players are. Of course some sumo wrestler could be multi-talented, but I think my statement is true as a general guideline.

Well of course excellence in a sport should be considered, but should not be the most important thing. For example, Dave Winfield is a Hall of Fame baseball player. He was great, but not usually considered among the greatest. What I think makes him a better athlete than say Micky Mantle, or Hank Aaron, is that he played 3 sports (baseball, basketball, and football) well. He is the only person to ever be drafted in all three of those sports. Had he been a crappy baseball player, he would be out of the discussion. But, his skills in three sports gives him an edge.

Well I guess I speak from experience in that I’ve played both sports (soccer at a fairly high level). But that’s not what I based my statement on. Practically speaking, far more people play soccer. They compete for a few hundred positions on well regarded pro teams. That alone makes it harder to be a pro soccer player.

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Drew Henson was drafted in two of the three. Since when did being drafted become an athletic endeavor? Unless you count walking up to the podium and putting on a hat as athletic, you may want to rethink that bit.

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Usually, professional teams don’t make a habit of drafting crappy players. He was good enough at three sports to play on a professional level. Also, Drew Henson is clearly a gifted athlete. Doesn’t mean he’s great at either of them, but a good athlete nevertheless.

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Its interesting to see the differences between the US and UK definitions of athlete, which are quite nuanced. In the UK, the word has a narrower definition and is strongly associated with endurance events or track and field. We don’t actually use this last term, preferring the word athletics (done by athletes). As a result, polling the UK on who is the world’s greatest athlete would almost certainly throw up names like Lance Armstrong or Paula Radcliffe. I’m certain that no one would really think of Wayne Rooney (arguably the best young footballer in Europe) as a great athlete.

In the US the word seems far more versatile, encompassing all those who are skilled at sports, not just in terms of basic physical prowess. Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods etc are all frequently described as great athletes.

I prefer the first definition, not just because I’m British; its a very clear-cut description and makes no room for those sportsmen/women who are not very strong/powerful/fast etc. The US interpretation is probably more accurate today though, purely because the vast majority of super athletes don’t want to become cyclists or sprinters or rowers as there is no money there. Better to ride the bench in the NBA on a high six figure salary then be the tenth best 800m runner in the US, working weekends to make ends meet.

78

For the 90s - 2000s, consideration should be given to Michael Schumacher. I’m not a fan, and I think his dominance has hurt F1 more than it’s helped, but there’s no denying he’s an incredibly accomplished driver.

And if you don’t think that race car drivers are athletes, clearly you don’t know much about racing.

79

Maybe it would help if we could agree on what exactly counts as being an athlete.

Can I suggest any popular activity where people compete in public in a way that causes them to break sweat.

By ‘popular’ I would have to mean ‘popular throughout the world’ though.

So a great raft of the OP’s proposals would get thrown out if they are examples from sports only known in the US. Would it be true to say that every single one of them was American?! I had certainly never heard of the majority of them…

Perhaps the OP ought to have named the thread ‘Greatest US Athlete by Decade’?

The US only makes up around 4% of the world population. Worldwide, football is almost certainly the most popular sport. And, no, I don’t mean a version of rugby where the players all wear padding and helmets and the game stops every 30 seconds to allow beer commercials to be shown!

Which comes second? Rugby? Cricket?

80

How about Sir Garry Sobers? Was #2 on Wisden’s Cricketers of the 20th Century list & represented Barbados in golf, soccer & basketball.