Detroit's 10 Greatest Athletes

Steve Yzerman and Gordie Howe

Tonight, the Yankees begin a series in Detroit against the Tigers.

Detroit's 10 Greatest Athletes

Honorable Mention to Tigers in the Baseball Hall of Fame, who didn't otherwise make the Top 10: Hugh Jennings, Sam Crawford, Harry Heilmann, Heinie Manush, Goose Goslin, Mickey Cochrane, Charlie Gehringer, Hal Newhouser, George Kell, Jim Bunning, Alan Trammell, Jack Morris and Ivan Rodriguez.

Miguel Cabrera will probably join them, and Lou Whitaker should be allowed to. If Cochrane had spent his entire career in Detroit, he'd be in the Top 10.

Honorable Mention to Lions in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who didn't otherwise make the Top 10: Dutch Clark, Alex Wojciechowicz, Doak Walker, Lou Creekmur, Jack Christiansen, Dick Stanfel, Yale Lary, Joe Schmidt, John Henry Johnson, Dick LeBeau, Dick "Night Train" Lane, Lem Barney and Charlie Sanders.

Night Train Lane would be in the Top 10 if he'd spent his entire career in Detroit. These men should be joined by Alex Karras, Wayne Walker, Chris Spielman and Lomas Brown.

In 1999, The Sporting News listed their 100 Greatest Football Players, and Lane came in 19th, Schmidt 65th, Chrstiansen 86th and Barney 97th. But by 2010, the NFL Network completely left Christiansen and Barney off their list of the 100 Greatest Players, while listing Lane 30th and Schmidt 84th.

Honorable Mention to Pistons in the Basketball Hall of Fame, who didn't otherwise make the Top 10: Dick McGuire, Bailey Howell, Dave DeBusschere, Dave Bing, Bob Lanier, Joe Dumars, Adrian Dantley, Dennis Rodman and Grant Hill. They might be joined someday by Bill Laimbeer, Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton.

Honorable Mention to Red Wings in the Hockey Hall of Fame, who didn't otherwise make the Top 10: Marty Barry, Herbie Lewis, Brian Kilrea, Syd Howe, Bill Quackenbush, Jack Stewart, Sid Abel, Harry Lumley, Ted Lindsay, Red Kelly, Alex Delvecchio, Marcel Pronovost, Bill Gadsby, Norm Ullman, Marcel Dionne, Dino Ciccarelli, Viachelsav Fetisov, Mark Howe, Sergei Fedorov, Larry Murphy, Brendan Shanahan, Igor Larionov, Chris Chelios, Dominik Hasek and Brett Hull.

Mark Howe, of course, is Gordie's son. Syd Howe, however, is not related to them. Several of these guys would be in the Top 10 if they'd spent their entire careers with the Wings.

Now, the Top 10:

10. Bobby Layne, quarterback, Detroit Lions, 1950-58. His stats don't look so hot in comparison to quarterbacks of the post-merger era, but he was the original master of the 2-minute drill. He made 6 Pro Bowls, and led the Lions to the NFL Championship in 1952, 1953 and 1957 (although he was injured for the '57 Championship Game, with Tobin Rote filling in.)

The Lions retired his Number 22, and he was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's 1950s All-Decade Team. In 1999, The Sporting News listed him 52nd on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. But by 2010, the NFL Network completely left him off their list of the 100 Greatest Players, the biggest dropoff of any quarterback.

9. Isiah Thomas, guard, Detroit Pistons, 1981-94. His messy personal life and his disastrous runs as an NBA coach and executive are not factors here. This is based solely on what he did as a player.

A 12-time All-Star in his 13 seasons with the Pistons, he led them to the NBA Championship in 1989 and 1990, winning the Bill Russell Award as Finals MVP in 1990. The Pistons retired his Number 11, and he was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.

8. Hank Greenberg, 1st base and left field, Detroit Tigers, 1930-46. He won AL MVP awards in 1935 and 1940 – the former at 1st base, the latter in left field, becoming the 1st player to win MVPs at 2 different positions. (Only one has done it since, Robin Yount.)

In 1934, he hit 63 doubles (2nd-highest total in MLB history), and helped the Tigers win their 1st Pennant in 25 years, despite missing a key game down the stretch because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. (This was a year before Sandy Koufax was born, and 31 years before Koufax would do the same on the day of Game 1 of the World Series.)

In 1935, he won the AL MVP and led them to their 1st World Championship, although he was injured during the World Series. In 1937, he had a whopping 183 RBIs, 1 off Gehrig's AL record. In 1938, he hit 58 home runs, and for a while it looked like he might break Babe Ruth's record of 60. In 1940, he won the MVP and led the Tigers to another Pennant.

Then he became the 1st baseball All-Star to enlist in the armed forces, in anticipation of World War II. Discharged in the middle of the 1945 season, he rejoined the Tigers, and hit a grand slam on the last day of the regular season to win the Pennant, and the Tigers won the World Series as well.

A bad back led him to retire after 1946, but the Pittsburgh Pirates talked him out of it by offering him baseball's 1st $100,000-a-year contract. The original "Hammerin' Hank" walked away after the 1947 season, with a .313 batting average, a 158 OPS+, and 1,628 hits and 331 home runs, despite having played only enough games to add up to 10 full seasons

He was elected to the Hall of Fame, and the Tigers retired his Number 5 and dedicated a statue to him outside Comerica Park. The Sporting News ranked him 37th on their list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players.

7. Terry Sawchuk, goaltender, Detroit Red Wings, 1950-64. Well, more accurately, 1950-55, 1957-64, and 1968-69. Until Patrick Roy and then Martin Brodeur came along, Sawchuk was on the short list for the title of greatest goalie in hockey history, along with Jacques Plante.

An 11-time All-Star, he won the Calder Memorial Trophy as Rookie of the Year in 1951; and the Vezina Trophy as best goalie in 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1965. He helped the Wings win 3 Stanley Cups, and the Toronto Maple Leafs win 1 more. For a long time after he retired, his 447 wins and 103 shutouts were all-time records.

He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Wings retired his Number 1. In 1998, The Hockey News ranked him 9th, the highest-ranking goalie, on their list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players. In 2010, THN ranked him the greatest goalie ever. In 2017, he was named to the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players.

6. Nicklas Lidström, defenseman, Detroit Red Wings, 1991-2012. It wasn't easy to succeed Steve Yzerman as the Wings' Captain, but no one was better suited to it. A 12-time All-Star, he won 7 Norris Trophies as the NHL's best defenseman, including in 2001, when he became the 1st player born or trained in Europe to win it; and in 2011, when he became the oldest man to win the award, 41.

No European-born player has played in as many games as Lidstrom, 1,564. That number also marks the most games played for only 1 NHL team. He played in a record 900 winning regular-season games. His 263 postseason games are the most with a single team. And his +61 is the highest postseason plus/minus rating.

He won the Stanley Cup in 1997, 1998, 2002 (the 1st European winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as Playoff MVP) and 2008 (the 1st European Captain of a Cup winner). The Wings retired his Number 5, and he was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame and the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players.

5. Al Kaline, right field, Detroit Tigers, 1955-74. An 18-time All-Star, in 1955 he became the youngest player ever to win a major league batting title. He collected 3,007 career hits, including 399 home runs, and won 10 Gold Gloves. He led the Tigers to win the 1968 World Series. His Number 6 was the 1st number retired by the team, and they dedicated a statue to him at Comerica Park. He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame and The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players, coming in 76th.

He remains the most popular athlete in Detroit history, ahead of Ty Cobb, Doak Walker, Barry Sanders, Isiah Thomas, Gordie Howe and Steve Yzerman.

4. Barry Sanders, running back, Detroit Lions, 1989-98. He played 10 seasons with the Lions, and made the Pro Bowl in all of them. He was NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 1989, and MVP in 1991 and 1997. He rushed for 15,269 yards and 99 touchdowns, and added 352 receptions for 2,921 yards and 10 touchdowns.

And then, in 1999, just 1,457 yards short of Walter Payton's all-time record, and about to turn 31 so he was in his prime and could've broken the record that year, he retired. Maybe it was the right decision: We've seen so many players suffer from arthritis due to the constant pounding their bodies took, and from dementia from blows to the head, including the aforementioned Sayers.

The Lions retired his Number 20 (a joint ceremony with Lem Barney and Barry's fellow Heisman Trophy winner, Billy Sims of arch-rival Oklahoma). He was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- making him the shortest player in Canton -- and the NFL's 1990s All-Decade Team. In 1999, The Sporting News listed him 12th on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked him 17th on their list of the 100 Greatest Players.

3. Steve Yzerman, center, Detroit Red Wings, 1983-2006. In 1986, he was named the Wings' Captain. He was just 21, and, at the time, the youngest Captain in NHL history. But he had already broken a record, which he still holds, of youngest All-Star ever: 18 in 1984. It was the 1st of 10 All-Star appearances. His 19 years and 1,303 games as an NHL team Captain are unlikely ever to be surpassed.

But he arrived in the middle of the "Dead Things" era, and it took years to clean up the damage left by the Bruce Norris regime. Finally, Mike Ilitch came in, and built one of the great teams in NHL history around him. They finally reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1995, and won the Cup in 1997. Gordie Howe then said of Stevie Y, "I'm just so dang happy for the kid, it's unbelievable." The "kid" was 32, but, to Gordie Howe, pretty much everybody was a kid.

Yzerman would also lead the Wings to Cups in 1998 (winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as Playoff MVP) and 2002. He finished with 692 goals and 1,755 points, got his Number 19 retired, and was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame and the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players.

2. Ty Cobb, center field, Detroit Tigers, 1905-26. This isn't about how nice a guy he was. This is about him being the best baseball player in the world pretty much continuously through the entire Presidencies of William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. That's 12 full seasons.

The Georgia Peach won 12 American League batting titles, 4 RBI titles, and the home run title in 1909, making him the AL's 1st Triple Crown winner. He led the Tigers to Pennants in 1907, 1908 and 1909. Under the old system, he was named AL MVP in 1911.

He was once recognized as having held the records for stolen bases in a season (96) and a career (892), although checks of 19th Century totals have thrown those marks into question. He once held the record for most runs scored in a career, 2,245. He once held the record for most hits in a career, 4,191, although that was later revised to 4,189. He still holds the record for highest career batting average, the revision bringing it from the old familiar .367 to .366.

Since he played before the era of uniform numbers, the Tigers dedicated a plaque in his memory, and placed it on the outer wall of Tiger Stadium. They have since added his name, but no number, to the retired number wall at Comerica Park, and dedicated a statue to him as well. (Footage of him at Yankee Stadium for Old-Timers' Day 1947 shows him wearing a Tiger uniform with the Number 25 on it. There is no known explanation for the number.)

When the 1st election for the Baseball Hall of Fame was held in 1936, Cobb got the most votes, which, in a manner of speaking, makes him the 1st person elected to the Hall of Fame -- in any sport. In 1999, The Sporting News listed him 3rd on their 100 Greatest Baseball Players, behind only Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. That same year, he was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

1. Gordie Howe, right wing, Detroit Red Wings, 1946-71. Say what you want about Wayne Gretzky, but Gordie Howe is the greatest hockey player of all time. He remains Mr. Hockey. Put it this way: At age 38, in 1999, Gretzky had to retire due to a bad back; at the same age, in 1966, Howe was still putting the Wings on his back, to the Stanley Cup Finals, and was still 1 of the top 5 players in the game.

He played in 22 All-Star Games for the Wings -- plus 2 more for the Houston Aeros and 1 more for the Hartford Whalers. He won 6 Hart Memorial Trophies as NHL MVP, and 6 Art Ross Trophies as leading scorer. He led the Wings into 10 Stanley Cup Finals, winning in 1950, 1952, 1954 and 1955. Nobody played more regular season games, 1,767. His 801 career goals (786 with the Wings) have been surpassed in NHL history only by Gretzky.

The Wings retired his Number 9, and dedicated a statue to him. He was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame, The Hockey News' 100 Greatest Players (3rd), and the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players. He lived long enough to learn that the new bridge over the Detroit River, connecting Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, would be named the Gordie Howe International Bridge.

Top 10 Athletes From Kansas

January 29, 1861: Kansas is admitted to the Union as the 34th State.

Top 10 Athletes From Kansas

From here on out, "KCK" means "Kansas City, Kansas." Residents of the area use that for the Kansas version, and "KCMO" when they mean "Kansas City, Missouri."

Honorable Mention to Dean Smith of Emporia. As a player, he helped the University of Kansas win the 1952 National Championship, but went right into coaching. He coached the University of North Carolina for 36 years, winning the Atlantic Coast Conference 17 times in the regular season, 13 times in the ACC Tournament, and both 7 times. He reached 11 Final Fours, and won the National Championship in 1982 and 1993, the NIT in 1971, and the Olympic Gold Medal coaching the U.S. team in Montreal in 1976.

He won more games than any college basketball coach before him, 879, and after retiring with another Final Four berth in 1997, Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year. North Carolina's arena, the Dean E. Smith Student Activities Center (a.k.a. the Dean Dome), was named for him not just while he was still alive, but while he was still coaching. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Somewhat Honorable Mention to Adolph Rupp of Halstead. Like Dean, he learned his basketball from University of Kansas coach Forrest "Phog" Allen (who I made an Honorable Mention for his home State, Missouri). He played on Kansas' 1922 and 1923 National Championship teams, and was just getting warmed up: It was his 876 coaching wins that was the all-time record until Dean surpassed it.

At the University of Kentucky, "the Baron of the Bluegrass" won the Southeastern Conference Championship 28 times in the regular season, 13 times in the SEC Tournament, and all 13 times, he'd also won it in the regular season. He got the Wildcats to 6 Final Fours, and won 4 National Championships: 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958.

"Somewhat Honorable" because, whether intentionally or not, he became a symbol of the white South's refusal to integrate, as his all-white team faced Texas-El Paso (then Texas Western) with an all-black stating five in the 1966 NCAA Final, and lost. But he did integrate before his mandated (by State law) retirement, and is rightly in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Harold E. "Bud" Foster of Newton. He coached the University of Wisconsin to 3 titles in the league now known as the Big Ten, and won the 1941 National Championship. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Paul Endacott of Lawrence. The best player on that Kansas team that won the 1922 and 1923 National Championships, his Number 12 was retired, and he's in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Ernest Schmidt of Nashville. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for starring for what's now named Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg (no H), Kansas in the 1930s, winning 47 straight games.

Honorable Mention to Dean Kelley and Allen Kelley of Dearing. Both guards, the brothers were members of the University of Kansas team that won the 1952 National Championship. Dean was a member of the U.S. team that won the Gold Medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, and Allen of the U.S. team that won the Gold Medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, and was collectively elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Charles Wilbur "Bullet Joe" Rogan of KCK. Negro League records are woefully incomplete, but his pitching helped the Kansas City Monarchs win Negro League Pennants in 1923, 1924, 1925, 1929 and 1937 -- including as player-manager in 1929. He is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Steve Little of Overland Park. In 1977, playing for the University of Arkansas, he kicked a 67-yard field goal, tying the record set just 2 weeks earlier by Russell Erxleben of Texas.

Honorable Mention to Joe Williams of Wichita. In 1978, playing for Wichita State, he kicked a 67-yard field goal to tie the NCAA record. He never played in the NFL, but the other 2 who kicked a 67-yarder should have been so lucky: Both flopped in the NFL, Erxleben is now in prison for securities fraud for the 2nd time, and Little was paralyzed in a 1980 car crash and died in 1999.

Honorable Mention to Jim Bausch of Wichita. At the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, he won the Gold Medal in the decathlon, and received the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award as the nation's outstanding amateur athlete.

Honorable Mention to Glenn Cunningham of Elkhart. He won the 1933 Sullivan Award. In 1934, he set a world record in the mile run: 4 minutes, 6.8 seconds, helping to popularize the idea that it could be done in under 4 minutes. Although his record stood for 2 years, it would not be until 1954 that the 1st sub-4 mile would be achieved. His only Olympic Medal was Silver, in the 1,500 meters in Berlin in 1936.

Honorable Mention to Jackie Stiles of KCK. In the 2000-01 season, playing at the school now known as Missouri State University, she became the 1st women's college basketball player to score over 1,000 points in a season. She was thus awarded the Honda-Broderick Cup as the outstanding female collegiate athlete of the schoolyear.

She was a WNBA All-Star as a rookie with the 2001 Portland Fire, and is now back at Missouri State, as head coach.

Honorable Mention to Yankee World Series Winners from Kansas: Ralph Houk of Lawrence (backup catcher 1947, 1952 and 1953; coach 1958; manager 1961 and 1962), Mike Torrez of Topeka (1977) and Paul Lindblad of Chanute (1978, also won with the 1973 Oakland Athletics).

Now, the Top 10:

10. Joe Tinker of KCK. The shortstop is one of the most dubious elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame, elected with his double-play partners, 2nd baseman Johnny Evers and 1st baseman Frank Chance, in the only multiple entry in Cooperstown history.

However, he did succeed Honus Wagner as the best shortstop in baseball, helping win 5 Pennants for Chicago: The National League with the Cubs in 1906, 1907, 1908 and 1910; and the Federal League with the Whales in 1915.

9. Jim Ryun of Wichita. In 1966, he set the world record for the mile run: 3 minutes, 51.3 seconds. That year, he won the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award as the outstanding amateur athlete in America, and Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year award. A year later, he lowered the record to 3:51.1, and continued to hold the record until 1975. He also held the world record for 1,500 meters from 1967 to 1974. However, his only Olympic Medal was a Silver in the 1,500 at Mexico City in 1968.

8. Jess Willard of St. Clere. He was 6-foot-6 1/2 and about 270 pounds. Certainly, a heavyweight. Had he fought Jack Johnson before April 5, 1915, he surely would not have beaten him to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. But, by that point, Johnson was 37, and tired of running from American law, and ready to give up, and "The Pottawatomie Giant" fulfilled the dream of American racists, becoming "The Great White Hope."

World War I meant that he had only 1 official title defense before Jack Dempsey destroyed him in Toledo on the 4th of July 1919. And he probably wouldn't have been able to handle any of the great heavyweights who followed Dempsey, either. Nevertheless, he was the Heavyweight Champ for 4 years, and was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

7. William Roy "Link" Lyman of McDonald. A 2-way tackle, standing 6-foot-2 and weighing 233 pounds, he was a huge University of Nebraska lineman long before that was cool. To put it another way: He was about the same size as Bronko Nagurski, but reached the NFL a few years earlier.

A 5-time All-Pro, he helped the Canton Bulldogs win 3 straight NFL Championships, in 1922, 1923 and 1924. He also played for the Chicago Bears, along with Nagurski and Red Grange, and won another Championship in 1933.

At the time of his retirement, his 286 games played was a record -- and he played nearly every minute of all of those games. He later served as an assistant coach at Nebraska, and was an early inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

6. Maurice Greene of KCK. At the 1999 World Championships of Track & Field, he set a new record for the 100 meters: 9.79 seconds, cleanly matching the drug-aided time of Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he won Gold Medals in the 100 meters (making him the unofficial "Fastest Man Alive" and anchoring the 4x100-meter relay. He won a Silver Medal in the relay and a Bronze Medal in the 100 at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. For 20 years now, he has held the world record in the 60-meter dash.

5. Lynette Woodard of Wichita. The all-time leading scorer in the history of women's college basketball, she was the 1st female basketball player at the University of Kansas to get her number retired, 31. She won the 1980-81 Honda-Broderick Cup.

She had no WNBA at that point in her career, and the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. But she was a member of the team that won the 1984 Gold Medal in Los Angeles. Still with no U.S. league to play in, she played in Italy, until nepotism worked in her favor: A cousin of their former star Geese Ausbie, in 1986 she became the 1st woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.

She played for them until 1993, then began playing in Japan. When the WNBA was founded in 1997, despite being nearly 38 years old, she signed with the Cleveland Rockers, and played for the Detroit Shock in 1998. She is now a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and the head coach of the women's basketball team at Winthrop University in the Charlotte suburb of Rock Hill, South Carolina.

4. Mike McCormack of KCK. An 8-time All-Pro, he won NFL Championships with the Cleveland Browns in 1954 and 1955. His coach, Paul Brown, said, "I consider McCormack the finest offensive tackle who ever played pro football." He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Browns Ring of Honor.

He went into coaching, and although he failed as a head coach in Philadelphia in Baltimore, he helped the Washington Redskins win the 1972 NFC Championship. He was named the 1st general manager of the Carolina Panthers, and in just 5 years of work -- 2 seasons on the field -- he got the expansion team into the NFC Championship Game. He lived long enough to see a statue of him dedicated outside the Panthers' Bank of America Stadium.

3. John Riggins of Centralia. He wasn't pretty. He wasn't graceful. He wasn't tactful. He was just a great fullback. He helped the University of Kansas win the 1968 Big Eight Championship, then played 5 seasons for the Jets, and 4 for the Washington Redskins.

Then he held out for the entire 1980 season, and returned, saying, "I'm bored, I'm broke, and I'm back." Good thing he did, because, 2 years later, he was named Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XVII, the Redskins' 1st NFL Championship in 40 years.

He only played in 1 Pro Bowl, in 1975, but in 1983, he set an NFL record with 24 rushing touchdowns, and won the Bert Bell Award as NFL MVP, helping the Redskins get into Super Bowl XVIII, although they lost. He rushed for 11,352 yards and 104 touchdowns. He was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Redskins Ring of Fame, and the NFL's 1980s All-Decade Team.

But he's not the best running back from Kansas. This guy might've been the best running back from anywhere:

2. Barry Sanders of Wichita. Red Grange played his last game in 1934, Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch his in 1957, Frank Gifford in 1964, and Gale Sayers in 1971. I can watch film of these twisting, turning, seemingly impossible-to-catch running backs, and marvel at their feats, but I was not contemporary to their feats.

In contrast, I saw Barry Sanders' entire career as it unfolded, and I'm not sure he was human. What Bill Cosby -- back when we still liked and admired him -- said of Sayers, I say of Sanders: He seemed to be an amoeba, splitting in two when a tackler went after him, and coming back together to finish his run.

He was only 5-foot-8, but he won the 1988 Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma State University. In 2008, ESPN named ranked him 2nd only to Grange on their list of the Top 25 College Football Players of All Time. He played 10 seasons with the Detroit Lions, and made the Pro Bowl in all of them. He was NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 1989, and MVP in 1991 and 1997. He rushed for 15,269 yards and 99 touchdowns, and added 352 receptions for 2,921 yards and 10 touchdowns.

And then, in 1999, just 1,457 yards short of Walter Payton's all-time record, and about to turn 31 so he was in his prime and could've broken the record that year, he retired. Maybe it was the right decision: We've seen so many players suffer from arthritis due to the constant pounding their bodies took, and from dementia from blows to the head, including the aforementioned Sayers.

The Lions retired his Number 20 (a joint ceremony with Lem Barney and Barry's fellow Heisman Trophy winner, Billy Sims of arch-rival Oklahoma). He was named to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame -- making him the shortest player in Canton -- and the NFL's 1990s All-Decade Team. In 1999, The Sporting News listed him 12th on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked him 17th on their list of the 100 Greatest Players.

1. Walter Johnson of Humboldt. Although he went to high school in Fullerton, Orange County, California, the family was 14 when it left Kansas, so, clearly, he learned to play baseball in that State on the Great Plains. And he's on the short list for the title of Greatest Pitcher Who Ever Lived.

This photo has been colorized. As far as I know,

no originally-color photo of the Big Train exists.

As Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig put it in their 1981 book The 100 Greatest Players In Baseball History, "He had only one pitch, a fastball -- but what a fastball!" He used it to build statistics that simply don't look real, and to build a reputation such that, in a 1916 game, Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians, doomed to become the only MLB player to die as a result of an on-field injury, walked away from an at-bat. The umpire told him he had 1 strike left, and he said, "Take it. I don't want it."

"The Big Train" debuted in 1907, and won 417 games, 2nd-most behind Cy Young, and the most in American League history. And he did this for the Washington Senators, who, even in his day, were known as "First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." He had a 2.17 career ERA, a 147 ERA+ -- so his greatness wasn't just a result of the Dead Ball Era -- and a 1.061 WHIP.

He had 3,508 strikeouts. Not only did that stand as a record from 1921, when he surpassed the 2,803 of Cy Young, until 1983, when Nolan Ryan surpassed him, but, from July 22, 1923, when he surpassed the 3,000-strikeout barrier, until July 17, 1974, when Bob Gibson also did, he was the only member of the 3,000 Strikeouts Club. While his strikeout record has now been surpassed by 8 pitchers, his record of 110 shutouts has never been approached. (Grover Cleveland Alexander is next-best with 90.)

He led the AL in wins 6 times, ERA 5 times, and strikeouts 12 times. He led the League in all 3 -- the Pitching Triple Crown -- in 1913, 1918 and 1924. In 1913, he went 36-7, with a 1.14 ERA -- an ERA+ of 259, meaning he was 159 percent better at preventing earned runs than the average pitcher that season. He pitched a no-hitter in 1920. It took until 1924 for the Senators to win a Pennant, and, after losing 2 games in the Series, he came on in relief in Game 7 and was the winning pitcher. He won another Pennant with the Senators in 1925.

His last game was on September 30, 1927. It was the game in which Babe Ruth set a new record with his 60th home run of the season. Oddly, Johnson came on as a pinch-hitter. He was a decent hitter by pitchers' standards, batting .235 with 24 home runs and 255 RBIs in 21 seasons.

In 1936, he was 1 of the 1st 5 players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Sadly, his wife Hazel died of heatstroke in 1930, and he died of a brain tumor in 1946, only 59 years old. A monument to him was erected outside the Senators' Griffith Stadium, and moved to Walter Johnson High School when it was established in 1956 in the suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, where Johnson lived. A statue of him stands outside Nationals Park in Washington.

In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 4th on their list of the 100 Greatest Players, 1st among pitchers, and trailing only Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Ty Cobb among all players. That same year, 82 years after he threw his last professional pitch, he was still familiar enough to fans for them to vote him onto the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

Washington Post baseball columnist Thomas Boswell said it best: "We live in a disposable society. But we don't dispose of Babe Ruth. We don't dispose of Walter Johnson. We view these men as friends, and as contemporaries though they are dead."