Читать книгу Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest - Thomas Hauser, Thomas Hauser - Страница 12

(1999)

As 1999 moves towards its long-awaited close, there have been numerous attempts to designate ‘The Athlete of the Century’. Whoever is accorded the honour will doubtless also be recognised as ‘Athlete of the Millennium’.

The consensus list for number one has boiled down to three finalists: Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. There’s no right or wrong answer; just points of view.

It’s hard to imagine anyone being better in a sport than Michael Jordan was in basketball. His exploits are still fresh in the mind, so suffice it to say that the Chicago Bulls won six world championships during his reign and Jordan was named the series’ Most Valuable Player on all six occasions. He led the NBA in scoring ten times, has the highest career scoring average in league history and was one of the best defensive players ever.

Babe Ruth had an unparalleled genius for the peculiarities of baseball. In 1919, the American League record for home runs in a season was 12. Ruth hit 29 homers that year and 54 the year after. In 1927, the year Ruth hit 60 home runs, no other team in the American League had as many. Indeed, in all of major league baseball, there were only 922 home runs hit that year. In other words, Babe Ruth hit 6.5 per cent of all the home runs hit in the entire season.

Ruth’s lifetime batting average was .342. Two-thirds of a century after his career ended, he stands second in RBIs, second in runs scored and second in home runs. And these marks were established despite the fact that Ruth was a pitcher during the first five years of his career. In 1916, at age 21, he pitched nine shutouts en route to a 23 and 12 record and led the league with an earned run average of 1.75. From 1915 to 1919, he won 94 games, lost only 46, and compiled an earned-run average of 2.28. In other words, if Mark McGwire pitched 29-2/3 consecutive scoreless innings in the World Series (which Ruth once did; a record that stood for 43 years), you’d have a phenomenon approaching The Babe. And one thing more. Ruth was a winner. He was with the Boston Red Sox for five full seasons, and they won the World Series in three of them. Then he was traded to the Yankees, who had never won a World Series, and the Yankee dynasty began.

As for Ali, a strong argument can be made that he was the greatest fighter of all time. His lifetime record of 56 wins and 5 losses has been matched by others. But no heavyweight ever had the inquisitors that Ali had – George Foreman, Sonny Liston twice, and Joe Frazier three times. Ali in his prime was the most beautiful fighting machine ever assembled. Pound for pound, Sugar Ray Robinson might have been better. But that’s like saying, if Jerry West had been six foot six, he would have been just as good as Jordan. You are what you are.

Ali fought the way Michael Jordan played basketball. Michael Jordan played basketball the way Ali fought. Unfortunately, Jordan didn’t play baseball the way Ruth did. But then again, I doubt that Ruth would have been much of a basketball player. However, The Babe was known to punch out people rather effectively as a young man.

Thus, looking at Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali from a purely athletic point of view, it’s Jordan (three points for first place), Ruth (two points for second place) and Ali (one point for third place) in that order.

But is pure athletic ability the standard? If pure athleticism is the only test, men like Jim Thorpe, Jim Brown and Carl Lewis should also be finalists in the competition for ‘Athlete of the Century’. The fact that they aren’t stands testament to the view that something more than achievement on the playing field must be measured; that social impact is also relevant. That’s a bit like saying maybe Ronald Reagan should be considered the greatest actor of the twentieth century because of his impact on society. But here goes.

Ruth, Ali and Jordan reflected the eras in which they were at their respective athletic peaks. Ruth personified ‘The Roaring Twenties’. Ali was at the heart of the social and political turmoil of the 1960s. Michael Jordan speaks to ‘The Nineties’, with its booming stock market, heightened commercialism and athletes as computer-action-game heroes.

Jordan hasn’t changed society. Babe Ruth brought sports into the mainstream of American culture and earned adulation unmatched in his time. Nor was The Babe’s impact confined to the United States. During the Second World War, long after his playing days were over, Japanese soldiers sought to insult their American counterparts by shouting ‘to hell with Babe Ruth’ at Guadalcanal. Meanwhile, Ali (to use one of his favourite phrases) ‘shook up the world’ and served as an inspiration and beacon of hope, not just in the United States, but for oppressed people around the globe.

One can argue that Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson all had a greater societal impact than Ali. Arthur Ashe once opined, ‘Within the United States, Jack Johnson had a larger impact than Ali because he was the first. Nothing that any African-American had done up until that time had the same impact as Jack Johnson’s fight against James Jeffries.’

Joe Louis’s hold on the American psyche was so great that the last words spoken by a young man choking to death in the gas chamber were, ‘Save me, Joe Louis.’ When The Brown Bomber knocked out Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in 1938 in a bout that was considered an allegory of good versus evil, it was the first time that most people had heard a black man referred to simply as ‘The American’.

Meanwhile, Jackie Robinson opened doors for an entire generation of Americans. If there had never been a Jackie Robinson, baseball would in time have become integrated; and, eventually, other sports would have followed. But that’s like saying, if there had been no Michelangelo, someone else would have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Still, Ali’s reach, more than that of any of his competitors, was worldwide. So for impact on society, it’s Ali (three points), Ruth (two points), and Jordan (one point). That means there’s a four-four-four tie, and we go to tie-breakers.

Babe Ruth seemed larger than life. So do Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. Ruth and Ali had much-publicised personal weaknesses. Jordan has flaws although they’re less well known. All three men have been idolised. Ali has been loved. It would be presumptuous to choose among them as human beings.

So where do we go from here?

Sixty-four years after Babe Ruth hit his last home run, a half-century after his death, men like Mark McGwire still compete against him. Without Ruth ever having been on SportsCenter or HBO, he is still in the hearts of most sports fans. Ali might enjoy that type of recognition fifty years from now. It’s less likely that Michael Jordan will.

That brings us down to Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali.

And the envelope please …