Verse 355
More than 200 Verses ago (Verse 140 in February, 2016), I tackled a top ten list of the greatest professional athletes of my lifetime. A friend/reader of this forum sent me a youtube clip that got me thinking about the top ten must-see athletes of the same span up through today. Must-see is not the same as greatest, so let’s define it. One could make the argument (an argument I won’t be making, by the way) that Michael Vick was more must-see than Tom Brady. I would imagine the crux of that argument would be that early Vick was doing things as a quarterback we hadn’t seen before, breaking QB rushing records and still being a top-level passer. He brought a unique, exciting presence that momentarily altered and ultimately expanded the possibilities of the position. It was a thrilling wrinkle. It was must-see.
In the spirit of this distinction, I offer you the following argument-inducing list of the top ten must-see athletes of the last half century. I’ve scrubbed the list to try and avoid ties, pairings, or the influence of having 617 tattooed on my balls.
10) Ronda Rousey: Her undefeatability literally expanded a sport. Dana White famously said in 2011 that women would never fight in the UFC. In the winter of 2013, she was headlining a UFC fight card for the championship. She won and defended many times. A medaling Olympic judoka, she was snatching arms in lesser MMA promotions, but her mean-muggin’ dominance was sufficiently great to entice the premier MMA promotion to include women, now offering four highly competitive women’s divisions.
9) Barry Sanders: His on-field flash was tempered by being a humble superstar. He still holds double-digit NFL rushing records, retiring healthy in his relative prime — only 30. Even all-time rushing leader Emmitt Smith says Sanders would have the record if he kept playing. His quickness, inventiveness, and athleticism made every game a highlight reel.
8) Venus & Serena Williams: Venus took over women’s tennis. A couple years later, her sister overtook her. They contested in the finals of four consecutive Grand Slams from 2002–2003. It boggles the mind. By comparison, my brother and I weren’t even the two best R.C. Pro-Am players on our street.
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7) Shohei Ohtani: Let’s look at his last 48 hours. At the dish: 4 hits, 2 homers, 8 RBI. On the hill: 8 shutout innings allowing 2 hits, 1 walk, fanning a career-best 13. He may end up higher on the list if he sustains this success, in some cases statistically-besting Babe Ruth.
6) Wayne Gretzky: A transcendent superstar that consistently did what one must do to be must-see. He took over the sport for years. As all-time goals and points king, he’ll likely never be caught. If you double Alexander Ovechkin’s points right now, he’s still in Gretzky’s shadow — despite that Ovechkin is presumably nearing the end of his career (age 36) and is third all-time in goals scored.
5) Tom Brady: He was the 6th round pick suddenly supplanting multi-Pro Bowler Drew McQueen Bledsoe and winning three Super Bowls in four years. Then he was marking perfection and ascending the all-time lists. Finally, he won four more Super Bowls in a seven year span, claiming every meaningful quarterback record. He has owned the sport of football for over twenty years, but isn’t the most must-see from the gridiron in the last fifty years.
4) Tiger Woods: Golf has boomed in America since Tiger padded onto the scene, turning professional at age 20 in 1996. Months later, he became the youngest winner of the Master’s, age 21. He was ranked #1 in the world less than a year after turning pro. His fifteen Grand Slams is still second best, but he’s tops in all-time PGA tournament wins. An enigmatic, young, black (in a historically racist sport) star is exactly what golf needed to revitalize a sleepy old sport into one of the most-watched events in the world of professional athletics.
3) Bo Jackson: Two sport star. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief. The very idea that a pro athlete could be so ambitious and talented as to play all season in baseball before bleeding into the NFL season in the fall is astonishing. The power he showed in punishing defenses, his inhuman talent roving the outfield, launching bombs and breaking bats — it captivated the American culture. A (virtually) career-ending hip injury adds a bit more allure to his legacy courtesy of the ‘what could have been’ vein. But when, for example, you look at his modest career stats for baseball and contrast that to the fact that he has a strong presence in the Baseball Hall of Fame, it’s a measure of just how must-see he was.
2) Michael Jordan: Jordan was the first athlete that transcended into a brand. As with Brady and Gretzky, he not only owned the sport, but reshaped it. The style of play and excitement he brought into the game fundamentally changed the sport. He found it one way, left it another. I won’t debate whether or not that’s entirely made the game better, but his dominance and dunks defined an outbreak era of the sport. He was so good on the hardwood that he left basketball in his prime to pursue baseball, and it kinda made sense from the perspective of thinking he had done everything he could do in the sport.
1) Mike Tyson: He was the subject of last night’s youtube clip that got me thinking about must-see athletes. The pay-per-view era only added to his mystique. He was inaccessible. A killer. I watched him last night wailin’ on a can, felling him within twenty seconds of the first round. Boxing’s relevance in our society during Tyson’s time is debatable. The fact that he could magnetize so many eyeballs and imaginations in a sport that isn’t one of the core four helps cement his legacy of being the all-time must-see athlete of the last half century.
