Favorite Athlete of the Past?

[HarleyQuinn 0]

From the Bruins: Cam Neely and Ray Borque

From the Celtics: Larry Bird, Robert Parish

From the Red Sox: Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens(Assuming he stays retired)

From the Patriots: David Meggett, Vincent Brisby(I think they are retired)

 

Others: Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Steve Young, Wayne Gretzky(More so in his LA days)

[Big McLargeHuge 0]

Will "The Thrill" Clark of the Late 80s-Early 90s SF Giants.

[C Dubya 04 0]

Mike Schmidt. The greatest all around 3rd baseman to play the game.

 

Randal Cunningham. The guy was Mike Vick before there was a Mike Vick. And he was unstoppable in tecmo bowl. Some of his plays are still the most incredible things to watch.

 

Also, I was a big Jerome Brown fan. The ESPN clips of him before this Monday's game got my eyes a little misty. He would've gone down as one of the greatest ever.

[OldSchoolWrestling 0]

Bo Jackson football player

Mike Tyson pre-prison

Ricky Henderson 80's and early 90's

[Ripper 0]

Kevin Johnson

 

I saw him play for Cleveland his rookie year and followed him after they traded him to the Suns. I have been a Suns fan ever since, and patterned my whole B-ball game after what KJ did.

[Guest BobbyWhioux]

[Gonna try to limit it to guys I actually saw, and not guys I grew up on hearing the legends of, like Ted Williams and Willie Mays and Muhammed Ali and Jack Tatum and Kenny Stabler and guys like that.]

 

Football

Offense: His Joeliness of course. Montana is always going to be the standard to which I measure all other supposedly great quarterbacks. I know Elway ran better and Marino had a stronger arm and they played longer and put up better numbers. I don't care. Watch Super Bowls 16, 19, 23, and 24. See that? Now you know why I say Joe's the best. And I'd still take him over Marino and Elway and Graham and Stabler and Staubach and Bradshaw and Namath and Unitas and Baugh and Van Brocklin and Favre and any other quarterback you wanna name. Watching him play, it was like you WANTED the 49ers to fall behind in the fourth quarter because you knew with Joe at QB the game was then a lock. [Honorable mention to Walter Payton and Barry Sanders, as well as Roger Craig

 

Defense: Ronnie Lott. Good God, he was amazing. Not just physically [the hits that always seemed so violent and loud and stop you dead] but his psychological impact. He turned a pretty good defense into a REAL good one just by putting his jock strap on. [Honorable mention to Lawrence Taylor and Mike Singletary.]

 

Baseball:

 

position player: Will Clark, all the way. Not just for the attitude, and being "Mr. Giant" for all those years, but basically he was my model for ballplaying myself. First baseman, left handed, not fast but a very smart baserunner, hell, I tried to copy his stance, too. That's who I wanted to be, and when you're a little kid playing ball and you say "okay, I'm so and so" I would always say Will Clark.

 

pitcher: Dennis Eckersley. With one notable World Series exception that still makes me violent and ill whenver they show the clip of it [May God Damn You To Hell, Kirk Gibson], Eckersley was THE closer. It was checkmate when he came in, like Rivera and Gagne in one. Plus his mannerisms were cool, too. He just looked cool, and he always won.

[Honorable mention for Mitch Williams, just because I always felt so bad for him when he took the fall for the Phillies losing in 93. I thought he was a really good closer and he got ran out of baseball unjustly for "choking" that time. Plus Mitch served up a fat one to Will Clark that sent the Giants to the '89 world series, so, thanks buddy.]

 

Hockey:

skater: Wayne Gretzky, duh. Even though he was past his prime when I started watching, Wayne past his prime was still more dangerous than most people out there. And geez, he fuckin' MADE hockey in America. Now whether teams systematically moving out of Canada and into the American sunbelt is a GOOD thing or not, heh, well, we'll debate that. But Wayne made it happen. I don't think anyone had more of a fundamentally re-orienting impact on their sport than Wayne, possible exception being Babe Ruth.

 

Goaltending: Patrick Roy. Guy could just seem invincible. And of course, when it was Wayne's team vs. Patty's team for the Stanley Cup, Patty won.

 

Basketball

I don't feel qualified to answer here. I mean, I didn't really get as into basketball as the others, and I caught Larry Bird and Magic at the tail end. And everyone else is gonna say Mike, just about.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

Mike Tyson.

[King Kamala 0]

George Foreman, transformed from angry young man that just gets in the ring in nearly decapitated you in two minutes to a happy go lucky old guy that takes a lot of shit and always comes back for more. I remember watching him knock out Michael Moorer and going absolutely go ape shit.