Oh, I see. So what your really asking is “Whats the best sport?”
No wonder discussion has been so productive, as usual.
Base hit? The stats just don’t back you up.
How about scoring a goal with a bicycle (overhead scissor kick) in soccer? The co-ordination required just to make contact is amazing, let alone with the control needed to place the ball in the goal while beating a goalkeeper.
Having said that I tend to agree with Scylla: the quad would have to rate as one of the hardest things possible.
Krispy: Obviously, you have a one track mind. Hey, I love baseball too.
Even though it would be very difficult, I know that I would be able to hit a Randy Johnson fastball for a base hit. It might take me 50 (or a lot less if I were lucky) tries, but I would definitely do it. You would do it too, given enough chances.
Now, if I go to a golf course, I may never, ever hit a hole in one. I’m sure many golfers play their whole lives without hitting a hole in one.
Also, I know for sure that I could never score a goal in hockey, score on a bicycle kick in soccer, perform a quadruple axle in figure skating, long jump 30 feet, or get a perfect 10 on the uneven bars.
So far this season, Randy Johnson has thrown around 900 pitches and Major League hitters have only 39 hits against him. …but you or I could hit him eh?
Sure. Swing the bat randomly whenever he releases the ball, and you’ll hit a few of them. Unless you think the ball has magical powers.
Look, there is nothing fundamentally different about hitting a hole-in-one versus making a base hit in baseball. You are using an extension of your arm to hit a round object. Based on that collision, the object will take flight and land somewhere.
The reason a hole-in-one seems random is simply because it’s so damned hard. But it’s still an achievable, recognized goal in sports. And the odds of getting one are definitely not random. If I drive a ball at a Par 3 hole, I might be accurate to within 30 yards. If I shot 1000 balls at the hole, they would form a random pattern within a range of 30 yards around the hole. Now, if Tiger Woods takes a shot at a Par 3 hole, he might be accurate to within 10 yards. His 1000 balls will be much more tightly clustered around the hole. His chance of making a hole-in-one, therefore, is much, much greater than mine.
This is no different than baseball. When a professional batter swings at the ball, his error zone might be 12 inches. So perhaps he’ll hit the ball one time in 4 or so, but some of those times the contact point will cause a foul or a fly out. If I swing at it, my error zone might be 36 inches, and therefore I’ll only hit the ball maybe once every 12 times or so. there is still randomness involved, but the more accuracy you have the less effect randomness has.
A hole-in-one could be considered to be same as, say, hitting a baseball and striking the ‘0’ on the scoreboard. It’s lucky if you do it, but I guarantee Sammy Soza’s got a better chance of hitting it than I do. So it’s also a measure of skill.
Let’s humor Krispy for a second… let’s say that hitting a baseball IS the hardest feat in sports. Let’s say it’s damn near IMPOSSIBLE for mortal men to hit a baseball.
So, why do we even bother giving out a Cy Young Award? Why do we pay homage to Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez? If hitting a baseball is so impossible, then obviously, they’re not doing anything remarkable! If anything, we should be scoffing at those guys every time they give up a hit!
You suppose when Krispy goes to the ballpark, we’ll see him yelling “Hey Clemens, you turkey! You just gave up 2 hits in a row! Don’t you know how hard it is to get a hit? It’s so hard to get a hit, you must really SUCK if you gave up 2 of them in a row!”
Yeah - what about Scylla’s quad?
Or my high jump or balance beam?
Or how 'bout platform diving?
I think zion and dhanson identified an interesting perspective. Can “difficulty” be defined as likelihood a “normal” person could accomplish it. Much as you wish to deny it, KO, there is the possibility, admittedly slim, that I could make contact with The Big Unit’s fastball, just by luck. Yes, it is also possible that I might make a hole-in-one (a few eagles, but no aces as yet in 25 years of golf!) But there is no chance in hell that I could stand on a 10m platform and do a triple somersault. And no way could I stand on a 4" wide beam and do a back flip. And a quad? Certainly not on purpose! 
I also think, if you insist on maintaining allegiance to things basebally, you have to at least acknowledge fast pitch softball.
Another possible view. Can difficulty be defined in terms of the number of folks who can accomplish the act? Many players get basehits, tho with varying rates of success. But there is only one world record holder in various track and field, swimming, weightlifting, etc. events. How bout running a sub 10 sec 100m. It has been done, tho not often. Also, you don’t have the benefit of teammates putting pressure on the opponent, or the possibility of the pitcher screwing up.
I enjoy the discussion of most difficult athletic “feat”, as differentiated from the OP’s “act”. What is the relevance to the Tour de France, that riders participate with the assistance of a team? I think that might reduce the individual achievement below that of the Ironman. Both nearly inconceivable to mere mortals, tho. And anyone who has sparred will tell you the idea of going 15 3 minute rounds against someone who is trying to tear your head off, while absorbing punishment all the time, is pretty amazing.
I thought we were discussing single acts. Tiger Woods aims for the green, not the cup when he drives. His ball sits on the tee waiting for his swing. His competition does not stand around the green waiting to field the ball. A baseball player at bat has to contend with the varibles of the pitch and the fielders waiting to throw him out. Tiger plays against himself for the most part. A batter is playing against himself and the other nine guys trying to stop him.
A well-disguised googly is the hardest thing in professional sport.
Well you knew a cricket person was going to come along. In India, Pakistan, the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Sth Africa, England, Australia, Zimbambwe and New Zealand we think little of your so-called baseball.
A leg-break is a ball bowled from the back of the hand with the wrist cocked and the arm straight. It spins from right to left and up to four feet after bouncing. A googly spins the other way whilst emerging from the same part of the hand.
It is extremely hard to pitch a leg break on the stumps. It is very hard to disguise a googly (or for left-hander, a Chinaman).
picmr
I didn’t mean to imply that a golfer achieving a hole-in-one is the most difficult feat in sports. My posts were off-topic and I apologize.
The notion of anyone even attempting a hole-in-one is, as others have pointed out, silly. Not only is the luck factor enourmous, a single ace does not really do much for a golfer’s score during an average round. I mean, I would gladly trade away all chances at ever hitting a hole-in-one for the knowledge that I would, forever, sink all putts from four feet and in.
The point I was making was that, when compared to team sports, the requirements placed on a golfer are more strenuous - to keep that level of concentration, combined with precise physical performance, over that length of time and distance, on a playing field requiring that kind of precision, and to do so consistently enough to win big…
It’s impressive, that’s all. Certainly more so than being a good hitter.
RonaldBarnhardt said:
Ronald, have you ever played golf? The ball doesn’t just sit on the tee, it taunts you from the tee! And, a golfer hits maybe 15 or 16 shots from a tee over the course of a single round (because of the shorter par 3’s) out of close to 100 swings.
And, Tiger’s not competing against the other players, he is competing agaist himself and the course - and they do stand around, waiting for him to screw up.
Look, a baseball player gets more than one crack at the ball, right? Three strikes, not just one. And, if he doesn’t get on base this time, he’s got other chances! For a golfer, every single swing counts equally. There are no “do-overs.”
Reminds me of a joke:
An American golfer gets his dream to travel to Scotland and play on the most beautiful courses in the world. He arrives at the first tee, a magnificent par-4 along the coastline. He sets up, waggles and swings, driving the ball out into the water.
Without looking at his elderly, Scottish caddie, he tees up another ball and smacks it, more conservitively down the fairway. He then looks to his caddie and says, “Where I come from, that’s called a mulligan.”
The caddie responds, “Where I live, that’s called a six.”
putts.
Krispy, if you’re going to continue with this logic, then you might want to change the OP, so it reads, “The single hardest thing…is to get a base-hit off a Randy Johnson fastball.” But, that is not what your OP said.
Might I remind you that in Johnson’s second to last start (against the Dodgers), Shawn Green hit two singles off him, in his first two plate appearances, on the first pitch of each at bat. Two pitches, two hits.
Baseball is fond of calling hitting “the hardest thing to do in sports.” This is playing a bit fast and loose with facts. I can HIT the ball (in the sense of making contact with it) even if I don’t get a “hit” from it. If the infielders move a little bit one way or another, if the right fielder sucks (like in most of my softball games), if I hit a Texas Leaguer or a grounder with eyes or a Baltimore chop…I might get a hit out of a very weakly struck ball.
Really good strike-out artists don’t usually even average 9 strikeouts a game. That means that 2/3 of the time, the ball is hit. A great pitcher like Maddux only strikes people out in most games about 1/5 of the time. If nobody was defending, they would be hitting up a storm.
It’s the defense that makes hitting harder, not simply the act of hitting a pitched ball. Of course, part of the pitcher’s job is to make sure that the ball is not hit well–popped up is good, groundouts tend to be better.
Thus, I think the OP needs to present some criteria to establish what we’re really debating. Is it probability, danger, physical skill, what?
Bucky
Well, its becoming clear that everyone except KO sees the point. I want to respond to this, even though my thoughts have already been echoed in so many words:
1)Tiger most certainly does aim for the hole most of the time. While there are holes so challenging that he plays it conservative, the vast majority, including probably every hole I’ve played (which is alot), he aims for the cup.
2)The fact that the ball is stationary is besides the point. But if you want to argue silly points, a golf ball is 10 times smaller than a baseball (volume).
3)There is competition on a good golf course, in the form of stiff cross winds, giant trees and concrete smooth greens.
Now we need to streamline the understanding of what we’re comparing here. The hole-in-one bashers seem to be stuck on the mere act of making contact with the ball. (Could it be some sort of masculine compensation? ;)) Anyways, understand that hitting the baseball is the real challenging part of a base hit, and this is reflected by the relatively small percentage of area covered by fielders. If the hitters had a singular target, then we could consider the moving object versus the stationary one, they don’t so the point is moot. Golf’s real challenge is aiming the ball. Considering this point, we can’t seperate the impacts of each action and compare them, any more than we can seperate the placement of the ball in each act. They are two fundamentally different acts, with fundamentally different challenges and goals.
I know very little about cricket, but from what I understand, you could compare hitting a bowled ball to hitting a pitched ball fairly linearly. Golf, however doesn’t intend on making the actual contact part of the game challenging (even though it still is for beginners).
Now, we can’t focus on the moving versus stationary, or the little hole versus big field aspects, we must consider the whole of the event. Second, we have to consider equal levels of difficulty. KO said:
Yes, but those dozens or hundreds get those hole-in-ones of the golf course equilavent of a 300 pound beer league softball pitcher. You can’t compare hitting Randy Johnson to getting a hole-in-one on any course. There are professional courses which have par-3’s that have never given up a hole in one. A more accurate comparison is getting a hole-in-one on those holes which I refered to earlier, the ones that make Tiger play conservative, for example #4 at Augusta has given up exactly one hole-in-one since 1934. Now, whats more difficult, me getting a hole-in-one one this hole, or hitting Randy Johnson (Koufax/Ryan/Maddux). I’ll put all my money of getting a base hit anytime.
For the record I love baseball, going to a Cubs game Friday as a matter of fact. And I love golf. I’m pretty good at both, and am in pretty solid shape. I’d feel comfortable saying that I could bat around .100 in professional baseball, facing both good and bad pitchers. I also think I would shoot probably score around 110 playing professional golf courses. Now, both suck by competitive standards, but in that 110 strokes, the odds of me getting a hole-in-one are pretty god damn slim. That .100 BA requires that I’ve gotten several hits. A fair comparsion would be getting a birdie versus getting a hit. A hole-in-one has no real comparison in any sport.
Now many very difficult feats have been mentioned, and they all are impossible for mortal men, so its not really a fair comparison. A hole-in-one and a basehit are two feats requiring a reasonable amount of athletic ability, a large amount of skill, and a portion of luck. In the broad spectrum luck balances out, but when focusing on a singular event it makes it hard to rationalize. The raw athletic feats may need to be placed in a seperate catagory, especially when you realize that the great athlete winning the long jump, isn’t much more likely to complete a quad than I am. So, maybe the OP needs to be refined to whats the single greatest skill in all of sport. Making the point that pure athletic output isn’t a skill. Not that that is necesarily true.
Forget Holes in One–Double Eagles are rarer (and by extension) more difficult.
Gene Sarazen made a career out of his Masters’ Double Eagle. And rightly so, he hit what he aimed for.
The most recent USGA Journal contains a fascinating article about an amateur golfer who has made eight holes in one–all on par 4s! All witnessed, several occurred during golf outings/playdays. He wishes he could get one on a par 3 for a good prize. Best he’s done is get a “closest to the pin” on one of his par 4 hole-in-ones.
The single hardest act in all professional sports is, obviously, hitting a moving soccer ball with a cricket bat and sinking a hole-in-one on a par 4, while simultaneously drop-kicking a basketball into a hockey goal through several dozen defenders. I’ve only been able to do it twice.
Phil: I assume you’re doing this backwards, right?
I dunno… I still think the quad is harder…
Atually, I think getting up every monday morning is pretty damn difficult…hell, I can;t do it.