GOAT of GOATs?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

This is a very complicated thread and something only a guy like Peter would start (just playing with you, buddy.)

How do we measure dominance? Is it by focusing on statistics alone, or the number of awards, or the number of times the athlete helped his team get to the finals? There are so many different things to look at here. Also, let's not forget that certain positions get more attention in sports. For example, forwards get more love than defenders and goaltenders.

A lot of people consider Gretzky to be the GOAT of GOATS (or whatever you want to call it), but they all fail to see the big picture. Gretzky played on an amazing team and many of these guys made the NHL top 100 list, such as Messier, Kurri, Fuhr, Coffey, etc. Now here is something that rarely gets mentioned: after Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, the Oilers won another cup WITHOUT HIM. In other words, they proved to the hockey world that they didn't need Gretzky to be great. Furthermore, many of these guys went on to win cups with other teams. For example, Messier won with the New York Rangers and Paul Coffey with Pittsburgh. Gretzky never won the cup again.

Now let's take a look at Bobby Orr. In the 10 seasons he played with Boston - his career was a very short one - he won 8 consecutive Norris Trophies as the league's best defender and 3 consecutive Hart trophies. He is the only player in his position to win the Art Ross Trophy, and he did it twice. He took his team to the finals 3 times and won twice. He would would play insane defense, often dropping to his knees and taking punishment, and he was just as effective in the attacking zone. He had two seasons where he almost scored 40 goals, and towards the end his career, despite playing in a lot of pain, almost had 50 goals - we're talking about a DEFENDER here! The list goes on and on and those who saw him play consider him to be way better than Gretzky. I would take him and Gordie Howe over scrawny Gretzky.

Not that it adds much to the eternal Gretzky v Orr debate, but I once heard Gordie Howe interviewed and he was asked if he could pick one of them to start a team, which would it be. He said Orr.

[enuffsenuff]

Joe Davis the snooker player must have a shot at this. He was World Snooker Champion in 1927,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40, from 41-45 he was busy in Europe tending to other things, & 1946. In comparison he was pretty auwful at Billiards (trust you all know the difference) being World runner up in 1926,27 - World Champion in 1928,29,30,31,32 and finally runner up in 1933,34

So, World Champion 20 times and a runner up 4 times. I guess his trophy cabinet at home had at least 2 shelves ...I have numerous cards of Joe but no idea which is his first card. If you do let me know and I will bag a few.

Would be interested to learn of other WC's for 20 years or more. BTW, Joe's brother Fred, was WC in 1948,49 & 51 and was the only player ever to beat Joe off scratch (ie with no starting points advantage - usually great players would give 1,2,3,4 etc Black ball start to opponents. A black ball being worth 7 points eg 3 black start = 21 points and so on).

[Exhibitman]

Wilt Chamberlain had sex with 20,000 women.

[mike drop]

[KMayUSA6060]

Joey Chestnut.

[sb1]

While he was beaten a few times in the Olympics and World Championships over a 3 decade career, and others will have a different opinion, the greatest U.S. Weightlifter and the first to win four Olympic medals was the late Norbert Schemansky. He was very under appreciated, could not even get time off from work to compete in the Olympics, won a Gold over the Russian's and no one even came to the airport to greet him home. There is a great book entitled "Mr. Weightlifting" which tells his entire story. He recently passed away in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Schemansky

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by KMayUSA6060

Joey Chestnut.

weiner!!!!

[Arazi4442]

Not my choice, but an interesting addition to the conversation is Donald Bradman in Cricket. I found the entry below on Wikipedia. Doesn't look like he took into account more than one statistic (i.e. HRs in baseball, rebounds in basketball, etc.) but a very impressive athlete.

Statistician Charles Davis analysed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations that they stand above the mean for their sport. The top performers in his selected sports are:

Standard
deviations

Bradman
Cricket
Batting average
4.4

Pelé
Association football
Goals per game
3.7

Ty Cobb
Baseball
Batting average
3.6

Jack Nicklaus
Golf
Major titles
3.5

Michael Jordan
Basketball
Points per game
3.4

The statistics show that "no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket". In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game. The respective records are .366 and 30.1.

[joshuanip]

Did any of them change the way the entire sport played?

People emulated Jordan, but he didnt alter the game, like Babe did.

[Johnny Ballgame]

Originally Posted by Arazi4442

Not my choice, but an interesting addition to the conversation is Donald Bradman in Cricket.[/B]

We had the same idea at the same time -- I just got distracted by writing about Joe Davis. I should've thought of expressing it in standard deviations. Nice.

[Johnny Ballgame]

Originally Posted by enuffsenuff

Joe Davis the snooker player must have a shot at this. He was World Snooker Champion in 1927,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40, from 41-45 he was busy in Europe tending to other things, & 1946. In comparison he was pretty auwful at Billiards (trust you all know the difference) being World runner up in 1926,27 - World Champion in 1928,29,30,31,32 and finally runner up in 1933,34

So, World Champion 20 times and a runner up 4 times. I guess his trophy cabinet at home had at least 2 shelves ...I have numerous cards of Joe but no idea which is his first card. If you do let me know and I will bag a few.

Would be interested to learn of other WC's for 20 years or more. BTW, Joe's brother Fred, was WC in 1948,49 & 51 and was the only player ever to beat Joe off scratch (ie with no starting points advantage - usually great players would give 1,2,3,4 etc Black ball start to opponents. A black ball being worth 7 points eg 3 black start = 21 points and so on).

My guess on oldest card is the 1928 Churchman's (aka Men of the Moment series). I haven't seen anything older related to his earlier billiards career or his first title, though I've really only collected snooker items (mostly Joe/Fred Davis items and anything related to that "snooker plus" variant of the late '50s) for a few years.

I think if Joe hadn't elected to stop playing in the World Snooker Championship after 1946 he could've kept winning into the early '50s -- though I do think that Fred would eclipsed him at some point. It's incredible to think about how long the current final match is (best-of-35) and then compare it to the best-of-73 that Joe played in '41 (37-36 vs. Fred, though there were dead frames played after Joe got over the line) and the best-of-145 Joe played in his last title match in 1946. I'm not sure that Joe would've been able to sustain his performance in a best-of-145 against his younger brother. He had nothing else to prove, though, too, having been on top that long.

Fred Davis making the semifinal of the World Championship in 1978 as a 65-year-old is incredible. I'm not sure if there's anyone that can make a case for longevity like that in snooker or in most other sports.

Joe was essentially the face of snooker during his time, but that sport was only played at the top level by maybe 20 people in those 20 years. But he still had everyone's number. ... There are a few modern players (Davis, Hendry, O'Sullivan) that are ranked ahead of him in casual all-time rankings based on how competitive the game became after its explosion in popularity, even though they only have 7/6/5 titles, respectively. You can make the argument that Joe was so good that it affected the survivability of the sport as a whole, which I don't think you can make for many other athletes and is a good rubric for determining a G.O.A.T.

......

My GOAT vote is for Sir Donald Bradman, the cricketer. His career Test batting average defies statistics.

I remember Stephen Jay Gould ending an article by making a comparison of Joe Dimaggio's hit streak and the idea of cheating death repeatedly (it's a supreme outlier being about 25% longer than Keeler or Rose's streaks) ... but Bradman's Test average of 99.94 is 57% more than the second place batsman, and that's over a 20-year career. I'm hard-pressed to find even a counting stat in a sport where the margin between the all-time leader and second place is that great, let alone something like a rate stat. It's a larger difference than Rickey Henderson vs. Lou Brock in steals.

He was so good that he also threatened the survivability of his sport -- the bodyline tactic the English used against him (which was basically "throw at him and hope he defended himself with the cricket bat -- which could result in an out if he hit to a fielder) actually threatened diplomatic relations between Australia and Great Britain because of the fallout, and necessitated rules changes to reduce the effectiveness of bodyline. (I'm not sure that cricket ever put in rules to limit Bradman's effectiveness like you'd see in other sports, though.)

That's by far the most I've ever written about sports that aren't baseball. Ultimately I think it's all apples-and-oranges but it's fun to throw it out there.

[the 'stache]

Do you happen to recall when he was asked that, Peter? I watched a two hour-long Gretzky documentary called Ultimate Gretzky (2003) about a month ago, and was surprised to learn just how close Gordie Howe and The Great One really were. I knew that Gretzky had played against Howe when Gordie was on the Whalers in the WHA during the '79-'79 season, but didn't know the extent of their relationship.

I only ask because I wonder if Gordie Howe didn't want to appear to be showing favoritism to Gretzky.

Either way, you couldn't go wrong. Gretzky was undersized for a forward, and wasn't the fastest guy in the NHL, either. But he had maybe the greatest hockey instincts that the game has ever seen. The documentary talks about how Gretzky had the kind of brain the World Champ chess players have. Most real good NHL players can see a move ahead. Gretzky could see two or three. He just instinctively knew where the puck, his teammates and the defenders were going to be two or three passes ahead of time.

The great ones just process information differently. Gretzky had a ridiculous work ethic that would have made him a star, but that hockey IQ took his talents to a ridiculous level. Ted Williams was the same way as a hitter.


I had to pick up this McFarlane after watching it. It sits on my book shelves now.

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Not that it adds much to the eternal Gretzky v Orr debate, but I once heard Gordie Howe interviewed and he was asked if he could pick one of them to start a team, which would it be. He said Orr.