Greatest athlete of all-time

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Posted By: Bryan

that no one should be told to "get a clue" on an opinion topic. That is pretty ignorant in itself but you can only take so many off-color, off the wall, or completely pointless comments before they get annoying.

Guess I need to find a couple people from my home state to compare to a couple college no namers. Probobly not. No place to hold a pissing contest. At least throw out Bob Feller. Best thing that ever came from Iowa.

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Posted By: JudgeDred2

The tough part about baseball/football players is the overlapping seasons. Bo Jackson had a pretty good year in 1989 (950 yards rushing in 11 games and 105 RBIs). He was definitely exciting to watch when he was handed the football. In 1989 he struck out over 170 times but was a 30+HR/20+SB player. It's too bad that his sports career was cut short by a debilitating hip injury.

There will always be a debate on this subject. It's fun to read the positive posts about why someone should be included on the list.

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Posted By: Scott Forrest

the sports various posters consider valid for someone to be considered a great athlete. Anyone who ever saw Eric Heiden or Dan Jansen skate certainly would consider them great athletes - same for Carl Lewis. BTW - I heard that Dan Jansen later trained and ran his first marathon (26.2 miles) in under 3 hours. If you don't think that involves athleticism.

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Posted By: JudgeDred2

Scott,

You must have been reading my mind because I was going to comment on distance runners and triathletes. Those are truly "grueling" sports.

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Posted By: dennis

bo jackson could also throw a ball from the warning track to home plate on the fly. maybe the strongest/accurate arm in baseball history?

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Posted By: jay behrens

Adam, does the name Clyde Wright ring a bell? High sports is meaningless. An outstanding college career, such as Bo Jackson's counts for a lot, especially since he won a Heisman. His dominance at the college level carried over to to his pro career in both baseball and football. If I remember right, so you ssaid you are 24. Given that fact, you weren't old enough to appreciate just how great Bo Jackson really was. I know that I saw a lot of sports before I was 10 years old, but I had no clue just how great Clememte, Mays, Chamberlain and other stars of the day really were until I got older.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: Anson

With the success Babe Ruth had while abusing his body, it makes you wonder what today's training programs and a healthy diet would do. He was a HOF pitcher as well as a HOF hitter. Even Ty Cobb said he ran well for a fat guy.

There are a lot of athletes who wouldn't make the list, simply because they had to choose one sport over another. While players like Frank Thomas, Tony Gwynn, Danny Ainge, John Elway, etc had successful careers, they also were able to play other sports at a high level. However, it's pretty tough to play more than one. Bo Jackson and Deion had many run ins with their respective teams, simply for the overlap of seasons.

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Posted By: Mike McGrail

Eddy belongs in the top 10 of any list of great athletes.

Think of how dominant Gretzky was in hockey. Multiply that by 10. That is how good Eddy was.

Ciao for now,

Mike

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Posted By: Scott Forrest

a few mods, in no particular order: Jim Thorpe, Lance Armstrong, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Carl Lewis, Babe Didrickson.

It's tough to have such a list without a decathlete (Rafer Johnson, etc.)