Thanks Captain Obvious. It may make logic to you for 80,000 viewers to google it rather than one person supply context- not so much to me.
Alberto Ascari is another candidate from Formula One. His F1 career ran from 1950 to 1955, but he only raced the full season in 1951, 1952 and 1953, finishing second in the championship in '51 and winning the title in '52 and '53.
Ascari drove in 33 Grands Prix. Since the season has so many more races nowadays, 33 GPs works out to only about a year and a half by modern standards.
Ah, right, think I misread the start of his time at McLaren with his debut.
Robinson was already age 28 by his rookie year in 1947 due to the color-line and WW2 so he cannot be blamed for his relatively short MLB career, of course.
The NFL Network NFL Top Ten series named Cook the #1 One Shot Wonder in NFL history.
His 9.411 yards per pass attempt and 17.5 yard per completion are rookie records that still stand. Cook was UPI’s choice for AFL Rookie of the year.
This is true but given this thread is not so much about world class athletes who had short careers and more so about US foot/base/basket – ball athletes who had minimum 10 year stellar domestic careers with their club, the proportion of the 1,700 views without name recognition less the number of folk who know was rugby league is, divided by the number who care about league, carry the 5 and drop the quotient leaves a residual so numerous as their annual convention could be convened in a phone booth.
Along with Orr, I’d say Mike Bossy, too. 752 games over 10 total seasons, 573 goals, 1126 points.
For Australian Rules Football, I would nominate John Coleman, who played just five and a half seasons.
Yet he was still named in the AFL Team of the Century.
And I’ll second the notion that 8-10 seasons is not a “short” sporting career.
What constitutes short depends, of course, on the sport. 8-10 years is actually a LONG career in a lot of Olympic sports, for instance; Usain Bolt’s Olympic career spans nine calendar years and his level of dominance is totally unprecedented. I’d agree 8-10 seasons is not short for, say, a boxer, or an American football player who would be considered an all time great. It’s a little (but not very) short for an all time great in hockey. It’s short for an all time great in basketball. It’s definitely short for an all time great in baseball or soccer.
Marco Van Basten has less then 10 years in soccer. So did Eric Cantona.
I can’t speak for Van Basten as he was before my time, though a good case has already been made for him upthread. But I wouldn’t call Cantona an “all-time great”. Sure, he was the final piece in the jigsaw for Ferguson’s first dominant United team (and also won the league with Leeds, just prior to that) but he was known as much for his enigmatic personality and violent streak (a combination of which probably cost him a decent international career) as he was for his footballing skills.
That’s really what the OP will boil down to - a lot of all-time greats with shorter than average careers have already been identified, but if we’re looking for the absolute shortest, the debate is whether they qualify as “all-time great”. It really has the makings of one of those epic multi-thread SDMB polls, where we get shortlists for each sport, debate who is the best candidate for each, then run them off against each other. I don’t have time to do the admin, but I would participate if anyone would care to take up the baton…
I’m skeptical of that. 8 years would be a long time for a boxer to actually reign as world champion, for to have an entire career last 8 years would be very unusual. I listed Rocky Marciano above as an example of a guy with an 8 year career. But how many other “all time great” boxers had careers that short?
Not many, but that rather begs the question - we’re not looking at the average career length of all-time greats, we’re looking for all-time greats who had relatively short careers.
Having said that I agree with your main point that many boxers have a fairly long career in terms of years, so 8 years is relatively short. I’m no boxing expert, but my impression is that contenders for world title fights typically have around 20-30 fights under their belts, and due to the nature of the sport this takes a number of years. You have to prove yourself at the lower ranks before being given a shot at a title. It’s rare for an underdog to surprise someone who is expected to beat them easily, though of course it does happen.
These seem like flip sides of the same coin. To use the example we’re discussing, if “8-10 seasons is not short for, say, a boxer”, then an all-time great boxer whose career lasted 8 years would not be an example of “all-time greats who had relatively short careers”. But if 8-10 years is short for a boxer, then an all-time great whose career lasted that long would fit the bill.
That’s part of it. But even guys who become champions at young ages (e.g. Tyson) typically have careers which last a lot longer. Once you have a name for yourself you can make big bucks fighting for years and years later, and most big time boxers don’t walk away from that.
Are we talking about Muggsy Bogues now? 
Earl Campbell - Was a big star and won the Heisman Trophy in college in 1977, had a breakout rookie season in the NFL, played 5-6 great seasons for a bad team (Houston) , traded to another bad team (Saints) for a couple more seasons, then walked away after 8 years.
The 1977 Heisman winner, Billy Sims, had 4 all star years with the Lions but then a knee injury ended his career. He ended up having to sell his Heisman trophy.
Damn, I just read his wiki page, his death was pretty brutal
"According to the Worcester District Attorney’s office, a family friend found Fidrych dead beneath his ten-wheel dump truck at his Northborough home around 2:30 p.m, April 13, 2009. He appeared to have been working on the truck at the time of the accident.[28] Authorities said Fidrych suffocated after his clothes had become entangled with a spinning power takeoff shaft on the truck. "
Talking boxers, Andre Ward in recent years had a normal sort of career length in terms of years (13 years a pro) but only fought 32 times - that’s pretty sedate for someone who’s the top dog in the division. Once he became world champion he got very inactive, but is probably the greatest supermiddleweight fighter of all time.
That’s not the same thing as being the greatest welterweight, or heavyweight, not by a long chalk, as the supermid division is only 30 or so years old, but it’s still a remarkable track record of quality over quanitity.
Notoriously difficult fighter to rank, Ward, as he was a boring, spoiling fighter (had no fanbase outside of hardcore boxing fans) but he got the job done and beat all comers, retiring 32-0 (plus an Olympic gold medal). Made fearsome, explosive fighters like Froch and Kovalev look limited and out of their league.
What player of a sport played the least and made the Hall-of-fame? I mean in a non-honorary way and as a player, specifically, not a coach later.