GOAT of GOATs?

[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.

[the 'stache]

You couldn't stop Don Hutson. You could only hope to contain him.

Don Hutson, the greatest receiver in NFL history, did. He revolutionized the game as a vertical pass receiver. And, he dominated the game like no other player before or after. Jerry Rice, who is often (and incorrectly) referred to as the greatest receiver in NFL history, had peers, receivers who were as physically gifted as he was, who put up comparable numbers. Hutson had no peers. None. He played eleven seasons, and accomplished the receiver triple crown, leading the league in receptions, yards and touchdowns, in his seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth seasons. He did it five times, overall. Rice? He did it once in his twenty-one years played. Don't get me wrong, I think Rice was a fabulous player. I became a big Niners fan in the early Eighties because Joe Montana was their quarterback (we Gregorys are Fighting Irish fans), and Jerry Rice was one of my favorite players. But there were other receivers that were every bit as good as he was. Sterling Sharpe put up numbers that were just as good, and he didn't have Joe Montana or Steve Young throwing him the ball. He had the young, but talented Brett Favre before he became an NFL MVP. He had Don Majkowski during his one healthy, great season in 1989. The rest of the time, he was catching passes from Anthony Dilweg, Randy Wright, Blair Kiel and Mike Tomczak. The Packers had no running game, and no other receiving threat. Defenses knew that the ball was going to Sharpe, and they still couldn't stop him. His numbers were every bit as good as those put up by Jerry Rice. Then, there were guys like Herman Moore, Michael Irvin and Cris Carter.

Hutson's 99 TD receptions mark set in 1945 stood for forty-four years until the great Steve Largent broke his record. But Largent played fourteen seasons to Hutson's eleven, and, from his third season on, the league played sixteen games. NFL teams played eleven games in the Thirties and Forties. It took Largent 200 games to do what Hutson did in 116.

And since it's often brought up how great a pitcher Babe Ruth was, well, look at what Hutson did during his career besides dominating as a wide receiver (or, split end as the position was referred to). While Jerry Rice, Steve Largent, Calvin Johnson, Randy Moss et all were sitting on the sidelines relaxing, watching the defense, Hutson was playing left end, and defensive back. In addition to his 99 receiving touchdowns, he also intercepted thirty passes. That's one more than four-time All Pro cornerback Darrell Revis has in his eleven year career playing defensive back full time. Look at Don Hutson's 1942 season. He caught 74 passes for 1,211 yards (the first 1,000 yard season in NFL history) and 17 touchdowns. AND, he intercepted seven passes. Oh, and Hutson was also the Packers' kicker.

If we're talking absolute statistical dominance of a sport, there's Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Don Hutson, Wayne Gretzky and Wilt Chamberlain. Ruth changed the game of baseball forever. So did Hutson.

Originally Posted by 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.

[Arazi4442]

Originally Posted by Johnny Ballgame

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.

Ha! Just to be clear. The standard deviation math was not mine.

[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.