While watching highlights from the recently concluded U.S. Women’s Open, won for the third time by Annika Sorenstam, I wondered if anyone in modern sports is as large as the person she beat in the play-off, Pat Hurst. England’s Laura Davies is also heavily built, and going back a long time I remember a Canadian snooker player called Bill Werbenuik, who was also big. But snooker isn’t as much as a physical type of sport as golf, so it’s a special case.
Is there anyone who has made it to the top of their chosen professional sport while being in such poor shape as Pat Hurst?
Chad Rowan, aka Akebono, was 6-foot-9 and weighed 510 pounds when he retired as a grand champion. Granted, sumo tends to select in favor of the more massive types, but even in that crowd he was exceptionally large.
I wouldn’t say he was in bad shape, although his knees were in delicate condition when he retired, and his post-sumo career in K-1 has been absolutely pathetic.
Wells probably won’t be pitching agian this season, if ever. Bartolo Colon, however, is referred to in my household as “that fat kid pitching in his jammies.”
A lot of the early MMA fighters were fat and/or really out of shape. Tank Abbott, one of the legends and early pioneers of the sport, has a huge beer-gut.
There was another guy, whose name I can’t recall, who fought Abbott and made him look damn near skinny.
Famous anecdote in baseball: a female fan looked at hefty John Kruk of the Phillies and scoffed, “You call yourself an athlete?” Kruk sneered back, “Lady, I ain’t an athlete- I’m a baseball player.”
I’m old enough to remember Wilbur Wood, who pitched for the White Sox back in the Seventies. He was a big fat guy who threw the knuckleball, which requires very little physical exertion. Hence, even though he was in terrible shape, he could pitch both ends of a doubleheader without working up much of a sweat.
Former Green Bay Packers defensive tackle Gilbert Brown ate his way out of the NFL, showing up at training camp a few years ago at 400+ pounds. He looks big in pads, but you don’t really get a sense of just how big he is unless you see him in practice gear.
Neither Tony Gwynn nor Kirby Puckett were long, lean guys and they both did pretty well as baseball hall of fame outfielders.
I hope Pat Hurst tells the OP where to stick it. She’s had a long and successful pro golf career despite not meeting the OP’s standards of what a pro athlete is supposed to look like. I refer the OP to the recent bestseller Moneyball where author Michael Lewis discusses the Oakland A’s baseball team’s strategy during the 2002 amateur draft. At one point an A’s scout comments that one available player has a bad body type. Billy Beane, the team’s head honcho, says, “We’re not selling jeans here.” Beane was looking for ballplayers not clothes models or physical specimens.
Does darts count? Andy Fordham could give anyone a run for their money. Well, a very short, breathless trot for their money, anyway. He’s had to withdraw from competitions a couple of times from exhaustion because he was so out of shape he couldn’t stand up under the lights for the duration of a match.
Well the thing about those guys is they were always fairly rotund, so when they put on a little extra weight, it didn’t seem like they were out of shape. It’s just their natural body type.
Bartolo Colon was actually somewhat skinny at one point, not so many years ago. This is him circa 2000.
He’s probably put on about 75-100 pounds since he’s been in the majors.
US Pro Football offensive linemen are huge. Sherman Plunkett, for instance, was 6’4" and listed as 290 lb., but everyone knew he was over 300, back in the leate 60. He’d be considered on the small side today.
D’Brickashaw Ferguson, for instance, is 6’5", 295, and he’s a rookie. Pittsburg Steelers left guard Alan Francis is 6’5", 307. Marvel Smith of the Steelers is 6’5", 321. Casey Hamption is 6’1", 325 – and he’s a defensive lineman. The Arizona Cardinals have Leonard Davis at 6’6", 366.
And this was just picking players at random. I’m sure there’s someone in pro football who beats them all.
There was a top ranked pro bowler I remember from ABC Wide World of Sports almost 25-30 years ago. He was incredibly obese, as in “has to use the Walmart electric shopping cart” fat, but he could still throw the ball.
