John Daly is probably up there. He’s certainly on the unrepentant side.
Mickey Mantle was a beloved alcoholic womanizer, though nobody knew about the alcoholic womanizer part during the 50s and 60s. I think it was Jim Bouton’s book “Ball Four” which in 1970 first depicted the Mick as he really was.
The list of candidates appears somewhat short.
So do you think tat tere generally is a relationship between an athlete’s popularity/marketability, and his perceived personality/character?
I think so, which is why I was surprised at the folk who said this would not affect Tiger’s public perception and earning potential.
This is the part that I was talking about. There may be a fine line between being demanding of teammates and being abusive of them, and from what I have read Jordan crossed that line pretty frequently. Ridiculously flagrant fouls/scuffles with teammates over perceived slights during scrimmages, humiliating and reducing Kwame Brown (who idolized Jordan) literally to tears on a regular basis during his final comeback… I don’t think this sort of thing is terribly unusual among incredibly competitive athletes or that it means he is a truly awful human being… but I’d say it qualifies him as a jerk.
I thought he was just a loudmouth, goofball, and idiot. I think people actually rather like him, though. Was he really known as a “jerk” to other players on a regular basis?
Just to tickle a sore spot with the OP, Phil “FIGJAM” Mickelson.
I’ve heard that George Foreman is nothing better than a thug with a great PR sense, but I don’t follow boxing very closely.
Paine Stewart was called aptly named by his fellow golfers and people who ran tournaments. He seems to have gotten much better along the way.
My son worked a couple senior tournaments and said Trevino was an arrogant prick who was rude as hell.
I heard Palmer was cranking like Tiger during his younger days. If Tiger could have shielded himself another 20 years ,he could have been an esteemed elder statesman.
Just look at all the well built blond beauties the golfers are married to. They are throwing themselves at well paid golfers all the time. Sometimes they make a catch of their own.
In the same category, I would offer George Best. He had not played meaningful football for about thirty years when he finally drank himself to death, yet he was still a hero and legend to many. Funeral. Flower tribute.
But was Babe Ruth a pure “jerk”? No question, he was far from a clean-living milk drinker. With Babe Ruth, all the good things you heard AND all the bad things you heard were true.
Yes, he really was a lush and a skirt chaser, with enormous appetites (for food, sex, booze, whatever). On the other hand, he was also an extremely kind, generous man who seemed to genuinely love his teammates, his fans, the game of baseball ,and people in general.
He really DID visit sick kids in the hospital and sign autographs… of course, he was likely to go to a speakeasy a few hours later, where he’d down a fifth of gin and pick up a few flappers.
At the same time, teammates like Waite Hoyt said that, for all his MANY faults, the Babe really did try, in his own way, to be a good father and a good Catholic!
He was no saint, but it’s not at all clear he deserves to be tagged as a “jerk.
The Times (of London) commented that David Toms was “daringly married to a brunette” after the Ryder Cup where every other American player had a blonde wife.
He lived in a part of the world where being a unapologetic alcoholic isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can carry it off in a lovable way. George did that mostly. He’d turn up pissed on tv and everyone would laugh and say “Good old George”
And anyone interested can go to youtube and search for George Best Wogan. But if you do, also check out videos of Best playing football - a unique talent.
How about Pete Rose? He was always sort of a jerk, but people still loved him for the way he hustled.
All the people I know who served him in bars and restaurants in Philly said he was extremely kind, polite and generous.
All of the above plus Roger Clemens.
My favorite George Best story is the following:
Take the example of George Best, the famous soccer player who at the ignominious end of his brilliant football career was forced to sell himself to the highest bidder among provincial teams of the world. One time, after a season with the San Jose Earthquakes, Best hit the Las Vegas casinos and walked away with considerable cash.
A bellboy answering Best’s call for room service was saddened to see him lying in his hotel bed in a sea of banknotes surrounded by empty champagne bottles and accompanied by a naked Miss World candidate. The bellboy asked with a heavy heart: “Oh George, where did it all go wrong?”
My experience could not have been more different. When I worked at a golf resort in the mid-90’s I had the pleasure of driving Mr. Stewart to his room after his round. We got to chatting and he ended up giving me a brief putting lesson. He seemed a thorough nice guy, as were most of the PGA Tour golfers I’d met. I believe I met him after his public conversion to evangelical Christianity, so he may have been a jerk before he found Christ. Never did meet Tiger, Mickelson, or Daly.
In the years I worked in hospitality, the vast majority of athletes and celebrities I met were nice people, just trying to get from one engagement to the next.
Their hangers-on and staff, on the other hand…
A name I haven’t seen yet in this thread that I think may meet the OP’s criteria, is Lance Armstrong. Beloved and admired by fans—including me—for his cycling and charity work, and yet my third and fourth-hand understanding from talking to people in Austin is that he is a complete jerk. I’ve never met him, nor can the people I’ve talked to explain exactly why he’s supposed to be such a bad guy, but there you go. Perhaps his focus and dedication comes off to those people as arrogance?
Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio - a world class prick. If you have any doubts, read “A Hero’s Life”, a great biography about him. He didn’t sign autographs for free, or go out of his way to sign them for anyone. He didn’t do anything without getting some sort of payment. He wrote his only son off and left him nothing after his death. Yet most people had and still have a good opinion of him. He’s truly one of the strangest people I’ve ever read about, and I think he wins this category because he was so popular.
Barry Bonds wasn’t very popular except in San Francisco. He was (and is) loathed everywhere else, and he deserves everything he gets. He’s an all-time underachiever (never won a championship at any level, including Little League), with a surly attitude. Great ballplayer without the drugs, but still an asshole. Just became a bigger asshole with HGH and steroids.
Steve Carlton of the Phillies was not a very nice guy off the field, and never spoke to reporters. Great pitcher, though. I don’t know how he was with fans, but I never heard anyone say anything nice about him off the field.
Roger Clemens really defined this, didn’t he? Everyone liked Clemens (except Mike Piazza) until the steroid fiasco on Capitol Hill.
I’m now trying to imagine an overachieving Barry Bonds. Does not compute.
A second for Pete Rose, he defines the term “self serving ass” well. He is still beloved by a lot of folks in Cincinnati who know him only as the hustling hometown boy who made something of himself and was hard done by the man. Anyone who has met him in any other setting than an autograph signing will tell you he has the class of a hairy boar.
I seem to remember Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe being thought of as jerks but that may be associated with on-court antics only.