Really the Top 10 Greatest Athletes of All-Time (plus one)

Is it just BuckBokai or does this get a chuckle out of other sports viewers as well? We’re talking here about the propensity for hyperbole-addicted commentators and writers to quickly place that season/game/play they’ve just witnessed among the pantheon of “all-time greats.”

Seriously, existentially, think about how silly an accolade like “the greatest right-handed post-season relief pitcher of all-time” is: Even if you ignore the absence of modern-style relief pitching before Joe Page in 1947 and the wider opportunity for earning such a reputation thanks to Selig Era extra playoff series, the truth is that “all-time” in this context becomes a time period measuring 266 or 147 or 134 years long depending on when you personally date the origin of baseball.

“I don’t know about that,” BuckBokai typically cracks to anyone unfortunate enough to be watching the game alongside, “those 4th-century BCE Persians had some nasty junkballers.”

Speaking more soberly, competitions of either straightforward individual athletic sports or more abstract team ball games have been going on in some part of the world for nearly 2,800 years with the Ancient Greeks and possibly 4,500 with the soccer-like tsu chu in China. One Turkish tournament has run for over 640 years … and the baseball dudes are talking about “all-time” American League records? Come on!

As a service to those sports fans who haven’t utterly lost all historical perspective, BuckBokai presents a list of truly the top 10 athletes of all-time, with peak years in parentheses. Let the arguments begin!

• Coroebus of Elis (776 BC?-?), track and field. Coroebus makes this list if only by dint of his status as inaugural recorded sports champion in Western Civilization – he’s listed as the first-ever Olympic champion after winning the “stade” event – but check out his amazing Wikipedia bio: Coroebus of Elis “was a humble Elean baker and athlete who won the stadion race in the first recorded Ancient Olympic Games in 776 BC.” Whoa, now that is the stuff of pulp sports legend.

Coupled with the facts that before him Greek sports history consisted entirely of highlights from metamortals like Hercules and that he plied his athletic trade naked – which surely none of the others on this list would have – and Coroebus of Elis definitely deserves eternal fame.

• Gaius Appuleius Diocles (c.118-c.142), chariot racing. In a Roman “bloodsport” wherein the only apparent rule was that drivers had to spur on their auriga to complete seven laps around the track, most tended to last about two or three years. In dramatic contrast, Doicles was a combination of Gordie Howe, Satchel Paige, George Blanda, and Michael Schumacher multiplied by your basic general badass Roman gladiator in taking bodily punishment until retiring at the age of 42.

And Diocles has certainly racked up the most impressive stat line in any sport: In a reported 4,257 races, he won 1,462 – for a ridiculous winning percentage of .343 in a sport that was team-based roughly in the fashion of modern Formula One – and placed in 1,437. Even more mind-numbing in the 21st-century are Diocles’ other statistics: the financial ones.

According to Professor Peter Struck of the University of Chicago, “Twenty-four years of winnings brought Diocles – likely an illiterate man whose signature move was the strong final dash – the staggering sum of 35,863,120 sesterces (equivalent to roughly $15 billion in modern currency, no joke) – in prize money.

“His total take home [pay] amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period – enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year.”

• Flamma (before 200 AD), gladiator. The other high-level ancient Roman spectator sports were of course the arena combat games made famous in approximately three zillion Hollywood films. Though the name Spartacus has become directly related in the public consciousness with gladiatorial sport, one of the most impressive careers on record appears to belong to Flamma.

More important than Flamma’s 21-4-9 mark, however, was his four-time reception of the “rudis.” Extremely few gladiators received more than one rudis, for such a prize allowed the awardee to walk through “the gate of life,” i.e. to exit the stadium with all the rights of a free man. Despite racking up these passes, Flamma persisted in fighting until his death at 30 years old – and if he didn’t die in an arena, you can bet thoughts of the bloodsport weren’t far from Flamma’s mind in his last moments.

• Two unknown players (c.1200 BC?-c.1520), Mesoamerican ball game variants. One of the first ball game team sports was created in Olmec culture probably around 1500 B.C. While morphing somewhat as it was passed around to cultures which were basically cut off from one another, descendants of the Olmec’s game lasted 2,700 years – some claim it’s up to 300 years older.

The Mayans are said to have invented the hoop aspect of the game, both in terms of its placement high above the court and the tradition that one score ends a game; the popularity of tlachtli in the Aztec world between 1200 and the Spanish conquest cannot be underestimated, however, with each city and major township fielding teams.

As far as the whole sacrifice-the-losing-team’s-captain (and thus, as more than one wag has commented, creating the first supporters of sports league expansion) in concerned, no one can really say for sure how often such a thing occurred or even whether winners or losers were sacrificed; artifacts portraying the ritualistic sacrifice of ballplayers have been found, but no matter. This game was dangerous enough before time expired, with bruises huge enough to require lancing and blows from the ball to the head or midsection were also known to kill.

BuckBokai will choose one ball player from Mayan and Aztec culture each; though unknowns, you can bet that when Nezahualpilli and Montezuma II staged a best-of-five series to settle a bet over the fate of the Aztec Empire in 1516 or so, that there were at least one Jordan-level tlachtli player out there.

(Nezahualpilli and Texcoco defeated Montezuma’s Tenochtitlan team and thus the former king had the satisfaction of being “proven” correct. Unfortunately, his satisfaction was short-lived as his prediction had a foreign invader laying waste to the Aztecs and filling Mexico from coast to coast.)

• Raiden Tameemon (1790-1811), sumo wrestling. Within the longest continuous written history of any sport, Raiden still stands out in sumo 220 years after his debut. Aside from his record, Raiden is most often noted as never having been awarded the top rank of “yokozuna.” While such a promotion was rare in the late 18th/early 19th century – only three had been awarded before the 1780s and no such award was bestowed from 1798 until 1828, when Ōnomatsu Midorinosuke became the sixth-ever yokozuna – experts still disagree as to why the great Raiden was ever denied the honor.

No matter, Raiden’s records still stand, albeit many unofficially, as pre-organized competitions are not recognized by today’s Japan Sumo Association. After getting training from all-time great Tanikaze Kajinosuke, Raiden would go on to achieve notable stats like:

– won every tournament in which he participated between November 1793 through April 1800;

– won 28 of 35 tournaments lifetime, including seven in which he finished 4-0 for the competition;

– compiled a streak of 11 straight tournament wins; and

– compiled a lifetime .962 winning percentage.

• Koca Yusuf (1885-1898), Turkish oil wrestling. Now mostly relegated to Asia Minor, this form of wrestling has remained the staple of a great sports culture for as long as modern Turkish culture itself. Standardized oil wrestling began in ancient Egypt and tournament rules were created in the Persian Empire in about 1065 BC. Turkey’s national “Kırkpınar” oil-wrestling tournament has been running annually since 1346, a clear record for longevity.

Even though Gaddar Kel Aliço, who also reportedly bore a killer nickname roughly translated as “Ruthless Bald Aliço,” was champion for an incredible 26 years, BuckBokai’s going with the guy who took the oil wrestling belt from Aliço in 1885. After winning at Kırkpınar, Koca Yusuf went on keep the title for 13 years; more importantly, Yusuf secured wins over top wrestlers throughout Europe and, after defeating American champion Dan McLeod in May 1898, became the undisputed world titleholder.

Unfortunately, Yusuf wouldn’t get a chance to defend the title, as on his return voyage on La Bourgogne, the ship sank off Nova Scotia. Circumstances surrounding his drowning death are sketchy and both versions are ignominious. Wikipedia notes that “It is said that Koca Yusuf tried to get on piece of floting debris with other survivors, but they refused to let him board for fear an additional person would cause it to capsize. They repeatedly beat at his hands as he tried to grasp the float and pull himself aboard; finally, one of the passengers hacked at his hands with a sharp object, whereupon Yusuf ceased his efforts to board and was left to drown.”

A second, more oft-repeated story, contains some of all of this retelling’s elements: “The survivors remember Yusuf acting like a wild beast. With a dagger in his hand, he forced his way through the frightened crowds waiting to board the lifeboats. By the time he reached the rails, a fully loaded boat was already being lowered. Ignoring the shouts of the crew, he jumped into it. His huge weight, together with the violence of his leap, overturned the boat and all its occupants were thrown into the sea. Yusuf, although a good swimmer, was dragged down the weight of his $10,000 gold belt and drowned.”

And in his prime, too.

• Jim Thorpe (1907-1928), several sports. The biggest scam in all that 1999/2000 hype on “Greatest Athlete of the Century” (yes, BuckBokai holds a grudge)? The exclusion of multi-sport master Thorpe from no. 1, without a question. As though it weren’t bad enough that many an outlet placed Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth in the top spot, Thorpe’s underrating by the general populace was yet another slap in the face for indigenous peoples.

Look, we’re talking about a guy who excelled in the decathlon, pentathlon, and American football. He was at least a competent Major League Baseball player, as evidenced by his .327 batting average at .787 OPS at the age of 32 mostly with the Boston Braves in 1919. Modern historians have discovered that Thorpe won a national ballroom dancing competition and went on at least one national basketball barnstorming tour.

Modern training and prejudices to the present-day aside, BuckBokai reckons that the ever-worsening apathy toward Thorpe’s all-time status can be attributed to the simple dearth of video clips. I mean, it couldn’t be because he was a Native American (most likely the reason the Olympic Committee stripped his medals from the 1912 Games), could it?

• Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1931-1955), basketball, golf, track and field, others. Certainly the greatest female athlete of the 20th century, Didrickson dominated the women’s side in two sports and probably could have tromped through a nice career in professional hoops, had such a thing been viable in the first half of the 20th century.

Didrikson seemingly picked up sports like we mere mortals pick up bad habits. After graduating high school, Didrikson joined the amateur basketball team sponsored by her Dallas employer, the Employers Casualty Insurance Company. In 1931, she led the team to the American Amateur Union (AAU) basketball championship; Didrikson was named all-American. The following year, she played in the AAU Championships, a track-and-field competition, and won eight of the ten offered events. Her team of one won the championship at the ’32 AAUs.

Didrikson parlayed this performance into a trip to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympic Games, where she won two gold medals and a silver in track and field. In 1935, she got into golf; at first denied amateur status, Didrikson became the first woman (and last for 65 or so years) to golf on the men’s side of the PGA tour. Going back to the ladies’ side in 1942, Didrikson would go own to win 82 amateur or professional tournaments, including five majors and 17 straight amateur tourneys, before retiring in 1955 due to terminal cancer.

• Pelé (1956-1977), soccer. Though Edson Arantes do Nascimento, a.k.a. Pelé, would surely be dwarfed by any of the other names on this list (though at 5’8”, he was three inches taller than Didrikson, she probably would still make the Brazilian look small), there’s no doubting his greatness at the world’s most popular sport ever.

Still the top scorer of all-time by FIFA standards, Pelé unofficially scored 1,281 goals in 1,363 career appearances, for an incredible ratio of one score every 1.064 games; not including exhibition and amateur-level matches, these numbers go up to 1,201 goals in 1,276: one goal per *1.062* matches. The combination of longevity (21 seasons pro plus 92 caps earned in 14 years with Team Brazil) and consistency added to his presence on three World Cup-winning teams earns “The King” a spot on this list.

Despite the literal billions of kids playing soccer today, it is unlikely The Beautiful Game will ever see another on the level of Pelé.

• Special mention: Bo Jackson (1982-1994), American football and baseball. Look, statistics and history aside, ultimately the individual’s perception of sporting achievement will be subjective. But anyone who saw Bo’s incredible prowess, speed and strength in either field of his excellence knows – just *knows* – that he was the greatest athletic specimen in our lifetime.

If Bo hadn’t met with the crippling hip injury that so tragically cut short his sports career (though Jackson’s comeback to the MLB with a *plastic hip, for Doubleday’s sake* would return Bo to the sports world in a miracle of technology and literally awesome athletic achievement), he’d most likely be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He’d be in the Baseball Hall of Fame for his 1989 All-Star Game homer alone if the ball weren’t still approaching Pluto at approximately 3/8c. But fate has strange ways of toying with us and Bo will have to settle for his 1998 induction into the College Football Hall – and a prominent place in the memories of anyone who ever witness his – yes – all-time greatness.

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