Ok - slightly cryptic title (didn’t want it to be too long)
The question is, how many athletes that are at the absolute top of their sports would have been a success in a different sport had their interest, environment, parents, upbringing, culture or whatever led them in that direction?
How many of the very greatest baseball players could equally have excelled at cricket?
Would Federer today be a rival for Tiger Woods if he had picked up golf instead of tennis at a young age?
I would wager that many of the elite, best-in-the-world athletes have specific physical or mental gifts that happen to suit their sport. They are clearly fine physical specimens and probably could be very good at many other sports if their interest had been in it from a young age. But to reach elite, best-in-the-world status probably requires some sport-specific quirks that set them apart from all the other fine physical specimens who have been just as obsessed and put just as many hours of practice into the sport as they have.
I imagine many sprinters could make for decent wide receivers in the National Football League.
http://www.hofmag.com/content/view/1256/60/ Bo Jackson made the all star game in pro baseball and football.
Dave DeBusshere was a very good pro basketball player and pitched for the White Sox.
Bullet Bob Hayes was an Olympic Sprinter and played pro football.
James Jett was OK. He didn’t start very often but he stayed in the NFL for about 10 years.
There’s no concrete answer to this, but yes, some skills carry over to many sports, so if you have the physical gifts and determination to succeed in one sport, it’s conceivable you could be good at others. Footwork and balance are important in just about every sport and so is the ability to judge distance. I don’t know if golf is big in Switzerland, but Federer played soccer and tennis when he was young and decided tennis was the one he wanted to focus on. Most good athletes (and a lot of not-so-good athletes) play more than one sport when they’re young and sometimes they change sports. Jim Brown may have been the best football player AND the best lacrosse player ever, at least according to some people. There’s no shortage of NBA players who grew up overseas and played soccer or another sport first and picked up basketball later. LeBron James played football in high school as well as basketball, and you may have heard announcers compare his body to a football player’s.
Moved to The Game Room from Great Debates.
Until he had a growth spurt (and the pool was ruined in a hurricane) Tim Duncan was a pretty competitive swimmer.
Well, I guess that’s better than Michael Phelps, who’s an ugly competitive swimmer.
Wayne Gretzky could have excelled in any sport. He succeeded at every sport he tried. He was his school’s track star. He was by all accounts a baseball prodigy, and would likely have made the majors. I doubt he would have dominated baseball the way he did hockey but he would have been a major leaguer.
Later in his life he took up golf and was a scratch golfer within an almost absurdly short period of time. He likely would have been a pro golfer had that been his childhood love.
Michael Jordan’s experiment with baseball is well known. He failed, playing badly at AA ball, but it’s worth noting that he didn’t start trying until he was 31, which is absurdly late… baseball players peak around 27 and most pro ballplayers are falling out of the league by 31. That Jordan could take up the sport that late and do anything at all is amazing. Had he started as a teenager I believe Jordan would have been a hell of a major league baseball player.
Danny Ainge was a decent player for the Blue Jays for 3 seasons and then went on to have a pretty great career in the NBA.
Dave Winfield and Charlie Ward were each drafted in four different sports. Ward won the Heisman but played in the NBA. Winfield was drafted both NBA and ABA teams. Deion Sanders played in the major leagues and NFL in the same day.
I still think Kirk Gibson would have made a better NFL player than MLB player. Danny Ainge was a much better basketball player than baseball player. I don’t know if there is anyone who could have been an all star at multiple sports, Deion I don’t believe was all that great a baseball player nor was Bo Jackson, in my book.
I had a friend in Sarnia, Ontario, who played baseball against Gretzky’s Brantford team when we were about 16 years old. Gretzky was the pitcher and was untouchable.
Hakeem Olajuwon played goalie for Nigeria’s under-(something) national football team before turning to basketball. Dunno if he outgrew the position or just changed focus.
Deion Sanders was another legitimate two-sport starter in the NFL and MLB.
He DID play baseball as a teenager. He got as far as high school baseball, at which point, if he was Major League quality, I assume someone would have drafted him.
Jim Brownoriginally attended college on a lacrosse scholarship, and was inducted into the lacrosse hall of fame.
Jim Thorpe won two track and field gold medals in the 1912 Olympics, played outfield for the Giants, Reds and Braves, played in the NFL for 8 seasons and played pro basketball before there was such a thing.
Mike Shannon played eight years for the Cardinals before illness ended his career. In high school he was named Missouri player of the year for both football and basketball, and has said that if football players had been paid better in the 1950s, he would have chosen football over baseball.
If we’re talking about two-sport athletes, the most amusing example has to be Patrick Ewing, who played cricket while growing up in Jamaica. Imagine trying to bat against a giant 7-footer who could tear your head off if he wanted. The cricket ball must have looked like a BB in his hands.
He somehow never got the publicity that Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders did, but Brian Jordan was probably the best baseball player of the three, and a good football player.
I’ve heard the same thing about Jackie Robinson–in college, football was much more his sport than baseball.