It’s that simple. Tell us who is your favorite athlete and why. Me?
Roger Federer
The greatest tennis player of all time and 100% genuine class. Not cocky, loves the game, loves his fans. Even happily married with TWO sets of twins.
I wouldn’t say I admire many athletes, but I do admire Federer.
Before I clicked on the link my initial thought was Roger Federer. Djokovic is not far behind either. Roger shades it for sheer effortless elegance and a few more majors but both are class acts.
I’ll go with Steven Gerrard since Tony Gwynn is deceased.
The ever classy, if retired, Derek Jeter.
Tony Romo (NFL)
Chien-Ming Wang (MLB)
Ai Fukuhara (table tennis)
Meb Keflezighi, because he makes me want to be a better athlete and person. Honorable mention goes to athletes who are truly interesting, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Phil Esposito.
Greg Maddux (MLB)
Jordan (NBA)
Usain Bolt. He seems to have the right touch as a leading athlete where he can showboat, play to the crowd etc, without being disrespectful to his fellow competitors.
Clayton Kershaw - he’s possibly the greatest pitcher of all time, the better he is the harder he works to get better and he’s a good guy too.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Brazillian Ronaldo are my favourite sportsmen.
Wayne Gretzky.
The world will never see a more prodigious athlete.
Look up his points total. It’s insane.
Well, if we can go that far back, it’s a tie between Ali and Tiger.
Well, he was a great first baseman, but I wouldn’t call him my favorite.
Jack Dempsey.
He was an honest boxing champion, which was a really amazing feat in that era.
When he learned that Al Capone was talking about rigging in Jack’s favor the rematch with Tunney in 1927, Jack wrote Big Al and asked him (politely) to back off.
Capone responded with a gracious note, along with flowers for Jack’s wife.
Equally relevant, at his peak, he probably could have licked any SOB who ever lived.
This isn’t the thread for it, but if you’d like to debate that, start another thread and link to it here. I’ll content myself with saying that at his peak, he weighed 180, and wouldn’t even be a heavyweight today.
Mario Lemieux, no contest. For him to have accomplished what he did, while suffering from all his health issues, is just amazing. Not to mention that if it weren’t for him, the Penguins probably wouldn’t even exist today.
Sebastian Vettel.
My favorite baseball player to watch hit was Rickey Henderson. He owned the plate.
My favorite pitcher to watch pitch was Nolan Ryan. When he was on, he was untouchable.
My favorite athlete of all time: Bo Jackson. The man once ran up a freakin’ wall.
Fedor Emilianenko: he was like some phenom or prodigy of MMA, the thinking man’s fighter. He would fight people a foot taller, a hundred or more pounds heavier and he never lost his cool and went unbeaten for ten years. He never showboated, he never bragged, he treated his opponents with respect. If you watched full videos of his fights even if someone had him on his back and had just busted him up a bit he was cool as ice, its like you could see him reason through and work out in his head exactly what needed to be done and he would take the other guy apart systematically, and if that wasn’t working then it seemed like he just made a calculated decision to release the beast and he would throw these explosive punches with just this raw power with devastating results. In his prime he seemed virtually unstoppable.
Tom Seaver. The franchise.
Ed Giaocomin.
Current player? Bartolo Colon. He’s by far the most fun to watch, especially at the plate.
Historically? Ty Cobb. Great player, fascinating character.