Bolt and Biles, Phelps and Federer

(Full Title:)

Bolt and Biles, Phelps and Federer

Or,

On the Casual Use of the Phrase "Greatest Ever"

My dad was out visiting a few weeks back and he and I share a deep love of a few things: the Simpsons, the Yankees, and literature. Our conversations, when they aren't rollicking laugh-filled Simpson quote-tennis or State of the Yankee time-spenders, tend to meander to "Have you heard of this writer?" or "Do you prefer Gould's Book of Fish or Narrow Road to the Deep North?"

He was out to see our Long Beezy place and meet the Boy.

Anyway, one of our conversations started with him saying an awesome and blasphemous-for-baseball-fans sentence, one that fully got my attention: "I would need to see a pretty serious argument that Derek Jeter isn't the greatest shortstop ever."

Say wha?? Okay, I'm listening: "Okay, so, I get the complaints about defense," he says, "but the defects late in his career weren't so bad, and were, frankly, blown out of proportion. They didn't lose a bunch of games because of his defense. And early in his career, his range never gets the credit it was due."

Okay, I was thinking. Sure. I grew up with Jeter and love hearing anyone, even an inveterate Yankee homer, make a case for Jeet as Best Shortstop Ever. "And Honus, well, what can you say? Besides he mostly played before World War I against only white players who chain smoked cigarettes and worked in warehouses during the off-season. Honus was weight training to stay in shape and these palookas would be on the docks."

That's true. Honus Wagner's performance is so much better than his competition that it is the personification of "outlier." This begs the question: How much of that can be chalked up to his highly strict diet and nutrition, his ahead-of-his-time weight-training in the off-season, and the lack of black and Latin competition?

I have no doubt that Honus Wagner would be a Hall of Famer today, but would his numbers be as many standard deviations ahead of his competition?

My dad and I have been having an ongoing conversation about Jeter versus Cal Ripken Jr for the last few years, and have settled on the following position: Ripken is ahead in HR and RBI and that's it. Jeter is ahead everywhere else.

So my dad's point was really Jeter vs Wagner and Jeter vs Ripken. Having already settled the Jeet vs Ripken debate for ourselves, he'd focused on Wagner. "There aren't any tapes or stats to show Honus' range, or anything about his defense. And how many rings did he win in Louisville or Pittsburgh? Just 1, in his age 35 season."

I looked it up. He had a pretty good year. Led the league with .339 average in 137 games. It was his first championship.

In 2009, Derek Jeter's age 35 season, he too won a championship, only this was his fifth, in a season when he had 212 hits in 153 games with an average of .334.

In what is one of the most important positions in the game of baseball (shortstop), the premier team for visibility had a shortstop who spent 20 seasons in the spotlight, created zero controversies, led the team to five World Series victories, and ended up 6th all-time with 3465 career hits (45 more than Honus' 3420 total).

Why not just recognize him as the best ever?

And that got me thinking about the current times and talks about the Best Ever.

Either we live in a wondrous time, a golden era if you will, for witnessing some of the most amazing feats ever by athletes, or...or...drugs?

Usain Bolt has overtaken the mantle of World's Most Historically Important Jamaican from Bob Marley, or at least that conversation has started, which blows the mind. 

Usain's Olympic line: games in 2008, 2012, and 2016: 9 events---9 gold medals; and world records in all three separate events, the 100m, the 200m, and the 4x100m relay.

Moving on to gymnastics in both men and women, at this Olympics we have been inundated with "Best Gymnist Ever" talk, with American Simone Biles representing the ladies and Japanese Kohei Uchimura representing the fellas.

At first I thought, Best ever? Really? And then after watching both I thought, Okay, that could be the best ever. 

Phelps...Michael Phelps is a pot-smoking dolphin hybrid. Katy Ledecky is a phenom and on the verge of being considered the next Greatest Swimmer Ever.

How about Roger Federer? Federer is finishing up his career (over the next decade), and has pretty much cemented his legacy as "Best Tennis Player Ever", but Serena Williams may have a word about that.

Mike Trout playing center field down in Anaheim? We live in a world where we get to see Mike Trout play baseball all the time? Tom Brady behind center in Foxboro?

Too bad Tiger Woods melted down so badly over the last seven years...

Will anyone ever be as fast as Usain Bolt? Will anyone ever win as many Olympic gold medals as Mike Phelps? Will anyone ever be better at tennis than Roger or Serena? Is there another set of Simone and Kohei out there? Could Mike Trout be the best ballplayer ever? Is Tom Brady better than everyone at QB?

Weren't we saying the exact same thing about Lance Armstrong?

To answer: no; no; maybe in 50 years; doubtful; sure; likely; we sure were.

We live in an era when either the use of Best Ever is either casually thrown around because of lack of memory, or because it is warranted. 

Back to Jeter and a few of my own thoughts: how many key playoff games were lost because of a Jeter error? ZERO. And if there had been one, us fans would all have the same reaction: bummer. We'll get them next time. How many other players have been a part of so many memorable plays in a storied career? The Maier homer, the Flip Play against Ryan's A's, the walk-off in his last Bronx at-bat...

I'm also working on a Bolt centered piece. After long conversations back in 2008 with my Jamaican coworker (and now executive chef of the restaurant where we both worked) Denton, Usain Bolt became an athletic hero of mine (an for large swaths of the world) and I've gleefully watched him kick ass since then.

And, for what it's worth, both my father and I feel that Narrow Road to the Deep North could be the more accomplished novel, but we both prefer Gould's Book of Fish.