The Future Ain't What It Used to Be

October 20, 1988, 35 years ago: The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-2 in Game 5 of the World Series at the Oakland Coliseum. This gives the Dodgers the World Championship in a tremendous upset, sparked by Kirk Gibson's home run that won Game 1.

Now, imagine that you could go back to that night, and that you could tell someone that, eventually, the following things will have happened:

* Kirk Gibson will never appear in another World Series.

* Mark McGwire and José Canseco of the defeated A's will appear in the next two World Series, but that will be it for them.

* The next time Orel Hershiser, the pitching hero of this World Series and, indeed, of the entire season, appears in a World Series, it will be as a Cleveland Indian.

* The next time Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden of the Mets win a World Series, they will be playing for the Yankees.

* The next time the Yankees win a Pennant and a World Series, not only will they have Darryl and "Doc" on their roster, but they won't have Don Mattingly on it. But they will have Wade Boggs on it. And their manager will be Joe Torre. And George Steinbrenner will be cheered at the subsequent ticker-tape parade.

* Bo Jackson will never play football again after the 1990 Playoffs.

* Pete Rose will be banned from baseball.

* Boggs and Torre will get into the Baseball Hall of Fame. None of the other guys I mentioned will ever get in.

* Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Troy Aikman (then in his senior year at UCLA), Bill Walton, Charles Barkley and John Davidson will all become better known as broadcasters in their respective sports than they are as players. Same with Jimmy Johnson, Digger Phelps and Barry Melrose as coaches.

* Within 9 years, Major League Soccer and the Women's National Basketball Association will be founded, and New York will be among the founding teams in both, but, through the 2023 season, neither will have yet won a single league title. (UPDATE: The New York Liberty won the 2024 WNBA Championship).

* Rose, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson and Bill Cosby will all go to prison. (I could add Martha Stewart, but she wasn't all that famous yet.)

* Betty White, 48 years older than River Phoenix, will outlive him by 28 years. She is 36 years older than both Michael Jackson and Prince, and will outlive the former by 12 years and the latter by 5 years. She is 28 years older than Tom Petty, and will outlive him by 4 years. She is 25 years older than David Bowie, and will outlive him by 5 years. She is 20 years older than Muhammad Ali, and will outlive him by 5 years.

* Keith Richards, 13 days older than John Denver, who had a much cleaner image, will outlive Denver by at least 26 years.

* Gay people would get the right to serve in the military and get married. 

* A Governor of Arkansas would get elected President -- as a liberal Democrat. And get impeached over a sex scandal. And be acquitted.

* Not only would Vice President George Bush win the upcoming election, but he would lose the next election, to the aforementioned Governor, and then that next President would be succeeded by Bush's son, who didn't go to Vietnam, but would bring America its next "Vietnam," and would bring its worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

* That President's replacement would be a black man with an Arabic name.

* Rudy Giuliani, who made his name prosecuting organized crime bosses under the RICO Act in federal court, would be indicted under the RICO Act in federal court.

* Al Sharpton would become a respected elder statesman of civil rights.

* New York City would elect a Mayor who was both black and a former cop.

* Arnold Schwarzenegger would get elected Governor of California. Twice. And would get the Delegates at the Republican Convention to do something they hadn't done since 1972: Cheer the mention of Richard Nixon.

* Great Britain would have a Prime Minister who was both Indian and Muslim.

* Prince Charles would both get divorced and remarried, and would still be allowed to become King.

* Israel would have a Prime Minister who could, in terms of governing style if not in terms of the number of people he killed, legitimately be compared to Adolf Hitler. And he had gone to the same high school, at the same time, as Reggie Jackson.

* Within 2 years, on back-to-back days, Yankee Stadium will be sold out -- by Nelson Mandela and then Billy Joel. Remember: Mandela was still in prison in 1988, and the Reagan Administration had been treating him as a Communist, a terrorist, and a pariah. Congress had passed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid government, Reagan had vetoed them, and his veto was overridden. And the Yankees, in 1988, were not in the habit of hosting standalone concerts at The Stadium. (Only the occasional postgame show.)

* Joel would release albums in 1989 and 1993, and would live at least another 30 years, but, in that time, never release another album of new music.

* Donald Trump will soon go bankrupt, and go on to recover; host a game show; become President without previously holding any public office, elective or appointive; crash the economy, let over one million people die because he threw away a contingency plan because it was written by the previous President, who was black, cave in to the Russian dictator, get impeached (but not removed) because of it; and lose his bid for re-election, send terrorists to invade the Capitol to try to overturn the result, fail, and still be allowed to run again.

* And he would lose that disputed election to Joe Biden, a guy who had to drop out of this year's race because of his health and a minor scandal -- and would now be President of the United States at the age of 80, and have at least a 50-50 chance of being re-elected.

* And, by the way, in 2023, we still don't have flying cars!

Your man on the street in 1988, especially if he's a New Yorker and a sports fan, won't believe any of that.

As Yogi Berra put it, "The future ain't what it used to be."

Top 10 Athletes From Alabama

December 14, 1819: Alabama is admitted to the Union as the 22nd State.

July 13, 1868: Alabama is readmitted to the Union after having seceded for the Civil War.

December 12, 1819: Alabama really rejoined the Union, rejecting Roy Moore for the U.S. Senate, and electing Doug Jones.

Top 10 Athletes From Alabama

Note: While Paul William Bryant is the person best known for being associated with sports in Alabama, and he was a good football player at the University of Alabama in the 1930s, he was from Arkansas. And, besides, this is about athletes, with what they may have later done as coaches and executives being irrelevant. Therefore, the Bear will not be on this list.

Bryant was "the other end" when 'Bama had the great Don Hutson. But he, too, was born and raised in Arkansas. Joe Louis and Evander Holyfield were born in Alabama, but learned to box elsewhere. Same with Jesse Owens and running.

Honorable Mention to members of the Baseball Hall of Fame who didn't otherwise make the Top 10: Joe Sewell of Wetumpka, Henry "Heinie" Manush of Tuscumbia, Early Wynn of Hartford, Billy Williams of Whistler. Tim Hudson of Phenix City might join them, as he becomes eligible in 2021. Sewell, a graduate of the University of Alabama, was a charter inductee into the recently established College Baseball Hall of Fame.

A Very Honorable Mention to Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige. The age-old questions about him were, "How old was he?" and "What would he have done if he'd been allowed to play in the white major leagues from the beginning?" Since the statistics we have on him are woefully incomplete, I can't honestly put him in the Top 10 -- even though he might be in the Top 4.

Here's what we do know: He first pitched in the Negro Leagues with the 1926 Chattanooga Black Lookouts -- many of the teams in the all-black leagues, even in the South, took on the names of the white team in the same city (including the most absurdly-named one of all, the Atlanta Black Crackers).

He won Pennants with the 1936 Crawfords, and the Kansas City Monarchs in 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1946. He also famously played in the Dominican Republic, for a team sponsored by dictator Rafael Trujillo, in 1937 and in the Mexican League in 1938.

In 1934, Dizzy Dean -- also a rural Southerner who might have been the best pitcher in the world at the time, and who also liked to tell conflicting stories about his background, including his birthdate -- knew he couldn't get Satch for the St. Louis Cardinals, but was enlightened enough to tell him, "Satch, if you an' me was on the same team, we'd have the Pennant wrapped up by the 4th of July, and then I'd take you fishin' until World Series time."

After the 1946 season, knowing the players needed money after World War II, Bob Feller organized a barnstorming tour, leading a team of white players, and hiring Satch to lead a team of black players.

Satch was built like Pedro Martinez, tall and skinny, but could still bring serious heat. And throw some odd pitches, sometimes making them up on the spot, like Luis Tiant (against whose father he'd pitched in Winter leagues in the Caribbean), David Cone and Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez.

He liked to say, "I ain't never thrown an illegal pitch. But, sometimes, I throw a pitch that ain't never been seen by this generation." He called one pitch "Bat Dodger," and it had nothing to do with Brooklyn. But his control was so sharp, he claimed in his 40s that he could still throw a ball over the top of a Coca-Cola bottle.

He was the biggest drawing card in black baseball, and whenever his team would face the Homestead Grays, setting up a battle between him and Josh Gibson, it was the toughest ticket in town. But when it was not he but his 1945 Monarchs teammate Jackie Robinson who was selected by the Brooklyn Dodgers to be the 1st black man in Major League Baseball since 1887, he was hurt. He later admitted that Robinson was the right man, because of his disposition.

In 1948, Bill Veeck, who'd already made Larry Doby the 1st black player in the American League, signed Satch for the Cleveland Indians. Satch had just turned 42 years old, still the oldest "rookie" in MLB history. (Veeck went down to Mobile, bribed who he had to bribe, and got his hands on the elusive birth certificate.) He went 6-1 down the stretch, and he and Doby became the 1st black men to play on a World Series winner.

Satch played on the Indians through 1949, spent the 1950 season with the Negro Leagues' Philadelphia Stars, and when Veeck bought the St. Louis Browns in 1951, signed him again, staying through the end of the franchise in 1953. Despite Yankee manager Casey Stengel liberally using racist language, he named Satch to the AL All-Star Team in 1952 and 1953 -- the latter at age 47.

The Negro Leagues having fallen apart due to the majors having taken their best players, he was still pitching regularly in the minor leagues in 1961, age 55. On September 25, 1965, desperate for attendance, Kansas City Athletics owner Charlie Finley held a Negro Leagues Night, and signed Satch to a contract to once again play in K.C.'s Municipal Stadium. At 59, he was the oldest MLB player ever, tossing 3 scoreless innings, allowing only 1 hit.

He was the 1st player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the special committee looking at Negro League candidates, in 1971. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 19th on their 100 Greatest Baseball Players, the highest-ranking of the 5 players they chose based on their Negro League reputations.

Honorable Mention to James Lamar "Dusty" Rhodes of Mathews. His home run in the 10th inning won Game 1 of the 1954 World Series -- a game I will mention again in this post -- for the New York Giants, and he was given the Babe Ruth Award as the Series MVP.

Honorable Mention to Jimmy Key of Huntsville. He went 186-117 as a major league pitcher, winning World Series with the 1992 Toronto Blue Jays and the 1996 Yankees. He should be in the Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to David Robertson of Tuscaloosa. A graduate of Paul W. Bryant High School, he helped the Yankees win the 2009 World Series, and was the Pinstripes' 1st closer after the retirement of Mariano Rivera. That didn't last long, as Brian Cashman, in another of his rocket-scientist moves, let him go, but he's brought D-Rob back.

Honorable Mention to Johnny Mack Brown of Dothan. Perhaps the 1st in the long line of great football players at the University of Alabama, the running back led them to the 1925 National Championship, before a film career that lasted from the end of the Silent Era in 1927 to the end of World War II in 1945, specializing in Westerns.

Honorable Mention to Pat Sullivan of Birmingham. The quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in 1971. Auburn retired his Number 7. He also played basketball there. His pro career was a bust, but he coached Texas Christian University to the 1994 Southwest Conference title, and he's in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Jameis Winston of the Birmingham suburb of Hueytown. In 2013, he became the 1st Freshman ever to win the Heisman Trophy, and led Florida State University, to the National Championship. He was also a baseball star there. It remains to be seen how well he will do in the pros, as he is now the starting quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Despite all their football glory, the University of Alabama has only had 2 Heisman winners: Mark Ingram Jr., 2009, who grew up in Michigan; and Derrick Henry, 2015, who grew up in Florida. So neither one qualifies here. Cam Newton of Auburn, the 2010 Heisman winner, isn't from Alabama, either, but Georgia. So is Auburn baseball legend Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas.

Honorable Mention to members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame from Alabama, who didn't otherwise make the Top 10: Lee Roy Jordan of Excel, Ken Stabler of Foley, John Stallworth of Tuscaloosa, and Walter Jones of Aliceville. Philip Rivers of Decatur and DeMarcus Ware of Auburn could join them someday.

Honorable Mention to Justin Tuck of Rockford, a defensive end who helped the Giants win Super Bowls XLII and XLVI.

Honorable Mention to William "Pop" Gates of Decatur. He starred for one of the early great black pro basketball teams, the New York Renaissance, and was the 1st black player in the National Basketball League, in 1946, for the Moline, Illinois-based Tri-Cities Blackhawks, the team now known as the Atlanta Hawks. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Artis Gilmore of Dothan. A center, he got Jacksonville University into the Final of the 1970 NCAA Tournament, losing to UCLA. With the Louisville-based Kentucky Colonels in the ABA, he was Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in 1972, MVP of the All-Star Game in 1974, and MVP of the Playoffs as he led the Colonels to the 1975 ABA Championship.

He played for the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs after the 1976 merger. He was an 11-time All-Star, 5 in the ABA and 6 in the NBA. He was named to the ABA All-Time Team and the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Honorable Mention to Ben Wallace of Hayneville. He was the defensive rock of the 2004 NBA Champion Detroit Pistons, and is the only undrafted player ever selected by NBA fans to start in the All-Star Game. He will be eligible for the Basketball Hall of Fame next year.

Honorable Mention to Vonetta Flowers of Birmingham. Until the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team, the idea of black performers in Olympic bobsledding events never occurred to most people. After that, black American sprinters, and even football player Herschel Walker, started preparing for it.

The one who did was Flowers, who sprinted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and turned to the Winter Olympics after failing to qualify for the Summer Games. In 2002, in Salt Lake City, she became the 1st black person, of any country, of either gender, to win a Gold Medal in the Winter Olympics, as the brakewoman with Jill Bakken, a white Oregonian, as the driver.

Now, for the Top 10:

10. Junious "Buck" Buchanan of Birmingham. Not that long ago, a guy 6-foot-7 and 270 pounds was considered gigantic in the NFL. Buck came out of a segregated high school in Birmingham, and went to the program that defined football at "historically black colleges and universities" (HBCUs), Grambling State University in northern Louisiana, under coach Eddie Robinson.

Despite Missouri being a quasi-Southern State, and the team's owner Lamar Hunt being a Dallas native, the Kansas City Chiefs had no qualms about drafting black players, including those from HBCUs. Buck was the greatest defensive tackle in AFL history. He made 8 All-Star teams, 6 in the AFL and 2 in the NFL after the merger. He helped the Chiefs win the AFL title in 1966 (losing Super Bowl I) and 1969 (winning Super Bowl IV).

He was elected to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. The Chiefs retired his Number 86, and named him to their team Hall of Fame. He was named to the AFL All-Time Team.

9. Terrell Owens of Alexander City. He played basketball at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, helping them reach the 1995 NCAA Tournament. But his best sport was football. Few players generated as many yards as he did, and few generated as much controversy.

A 6-time Pro Bowler, he caught 1,078 passed for 15,934 yards and 153 touchdowns -- including the fact that he was the 1st, and is still the only, player to have scored a touchdown against all 32 current teams.

But, like some other athletes I could mention -- Cliff Lee, Jaromir Jagr, Zlatan Ibrahimovic -- team after team finally had enough of him and couldn't get rid of him fast enough. He feuded with Jeff Garcia, his quarterback on the San Francisco 49ers.

He was the subject of an arbitration ruling as to where he would go, and it was the Philadelphia Eagles. He helped them reach Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005, and, despite an injury, seemed determined to singlehandedly win it, but it was not to be. He then sought a contract renegotiation, and it got ugly, as he slammed his quarterback again, this time, Donovan McNabb.

Once, as a 49er, he had scored a touchdown, and then ran back to the star logo at midfield at Texas Stadium, and spiked the ball on it. This made Dallas Cowboy fans despise him. But when the Cowboys picked him up in 2006, they loved him. He spent 3 years with them, and then team owner Jerry Jones released him, with no explanation.

He spent a season each with Buffalo and Cincinnati, and then no one would pick him up for 2011. Seattle did so for 2012, but cut him in preseason. He played his last NFL game at age 35. Why? In his last season, he caught 72 passes for 983 yards. Clearly, he wasn't over the hill.

He is now eligible for the Hall of Fame. It may take a lot of guts to elect him. It shouldn't: He has the numbers. How likable he is should not be an issue. (UPDATE: He was elected in 2018.)

After all, this guy made it in his sport:

8. Charles Barkley of Leeds. The forward for Auburn University was named Southeastern Conference Player of the Year for 1984, but wasn't selected for the U.S. team for the Olympics in Los Angeles. The U.S. Olympic Committee would make it up to him once professionals were allowed to compete, as he played on the "Dream Team" in Barcelona in 1992 and "Dream Team II" in Atlanta in 1996, winning 2 Gold Medals.

An 11-time NBA All-Star, "the Round Mound of Rebound" was the MVP of the 1991 All-Star Game. Controversy followed him wherever he went: The Philadelphia 76ers, the Phoenix Suns, the Houston Rockets. He was named NBA MVP in 1993, helping the Suns win the Western Conference title, before losing to Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls in the Finals. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame and, while still active, to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. His Number 34 has been retired by Auburn, the Sixers and the Suns.

He also gained renown as a disciplinary problem. But the media cut him some slack, because he cooperated with them, to the point where he was frequently named to "the All-Interview Team." TNT hired him as an NBA studio analyst, and that's how the generation growing up watching LeBron James and Steph Curry knows him. They should know his playing. To ignore it would be, as Sir Charles himself would say, "Turrible."

7. Ozzie Newsome of Muscle Shoals. Despite being home to only 13,000 people, with a name like "Muscle Shoals," you would expect that this town in the northwest corner of Alabama has produced at least one great football player. In addition to Ozzie, it's produced Jason Allen, Dennis Homan, Leigh Tiffin, and Rece Davis, better known for his work on ESPN.

An All-American and a 3-time SEC Champion at the University of Alabama, Ozzie made 3 Pro Bowls with the Cleveland Browns, catching 662 passes for 7,980 yards and 47 touchdowns. These were fantastic numbers for a receiver in the era. He was a tight end, for which these numbers were unheard-of.

He is a member of the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, the NFL's 1980s All-Decade Team, and the Browns' Ring of Honor. He was in their front office when they moved to become the Baltimore Ravens after the 1995 season, receiving a ring for their win in Super Bowl XXXV. In 2002, he was named their general manager, the 1st black man to hold that office with any NFL team, and built the squad that won Super Bowl XLVII.

6. Vincent Edward "Bo" Jackson of the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer. There haven't been many 2-sport athletes since Bo knew baseball and Bo knew football. Bo also knew track, as a sprinter, long jumper and high jumper, although he never competed in it beyond his sophomore year at Auburn University.

In football, he helped Auburn win the 1983 Southeastern Conference Championship and the 1984 Sugar Bowl -- and they should also have been awarded the National Championship. (They went into that game Number 3 in the nation, and Number 1 Nebraska and Number 2 Texas both lost.) He was injured for most of 1984, but won the Heisman Trophy in 1985. Auburn retired his Number 34. In 2008, ESPN named ranked him 8th on their list of the Top 25 College Football Players of All Time.

A bureaucratic screwup resulted in his refusal to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, even though they held the top pick in the 1986 NFL Draft. They drafted him anyway, and he sat out the year to sign with baseball's Kansas City Royals, who had also drafted him. The Bucs' draft rights ran out, and he was then drafted by the Los Angeles Raiders.

He played parts of 4 seasons for the Raiders, missing the early part due to baseball (Raiders owner Al Davis was fine with that), rushing for 2,782 yards. In 1990, the Raiders won the AFC Western Division title, but in a Playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals, his hip was dislocated, ending his football career. (The Bengals haven't won a Playoff game since. The Curse of Bo Jackson, anyone?)

In baseball, he starred for the Royals, making the All-Star Game in 1989 and hitting a 475-foot blast to the football bleachers at Anaheim Stadium (perhaps appropriately). They cut him after his injury, though. He got a hip transplant, becoming the 1st athlete to play any sport at the major league level after such a surgery.

He played the 1993 season with the Chicago White Sox and the 1994 season with the California Angels, before realizing that it wasn't going to work out. He played his last major league game in any sport at the age of 32. Not quite as depressing as Gale Sayers or Bobby Orr, but then, Sayers and Orr, however superbly, only played 1 sport.

Bo knew baseball, and Bo knew football. But we only know a small part of what Bo would have done after January 13, 1991. That day changed sports history, and we can only speculate as to how.

5. John Hannah of Albertville. The son of Herb Hannah, who played for the NFL Giants in 1951, John followed his father onto the University of Alabama football team, helping them win SEC titles in 1971 and 1972. Bear Bryant later said he was the greatest lineman he ever coached.

He was drafted by the New England Patriots. On August 3, 1981, at the start of his 9th season, Sports Illustrated put him on its cover, with the legend "THE BEST OFFENSIVE LINEMAN OF ALL TIME." Hannah knew of "The Dreaded SI Cover Jinx," and, in their next week's issue, quoted him in their "They Said It" feature: "Lord, help me: This is going to be a long year." He was right: They went 2-14.

There would be better times. He made 9 Pro Bowls, and helped the Patriots win the AFC Eastern Division title in 1976, and the AFC Championship in 1985, although they lost Super Bowl XX. He was elected to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, making him the 1st player to spend all or most of his career as a Patriot enshrined in Canton.

The Patriots elected him to their team Hall of Fame and retired his Number 73. He was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary All-Time Team, and he and Walter Payton were the only players elected to the All-Decade Team for both the 1970s and the 1980s. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 20th on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the highest-ranking guard, and 2nd to Anthony Munoz among offensive linemen. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked him 24th on their list of the 100 Greatest Players.

His brother Charley Hannah and David Hannah also made All-SEC at Alabama, and Charley was a member of the Los Angeles Raiders team that won Super Bowl XVIII in 1984.

4. Willie McCovey of Mobile. The best lefthanded hitter, and the best infielder (1st base), to come from Alabama, is "Stretch." But he's only the 2nd-best Giant from Alabama, and the 2nd-best baseball player from Mobile!

A 6-time All-Star, he was NL Rookie of the Year in 1959, and MVP in 1969. His lifetime batting average was only .270, but his OPS+ was a mighty 147. He hit 521 home runs, and hit line drives that could have taken an infielder's head off.

Unfortunately for him, his only trip to the World Series, with the 1962 San Francisco Giants, ended with him hitting a line drive that could have gotten the tying and winning runs in Game 7 home, but Bobby Richardson of the Yankees caught it. The Giants also came close to the Pennant in 1964, 1965 and 1966, and won the NL Western Division in 1971.

The Giants retired his Number 44, dedicated a statue to him outside AT&T Park, named the part of San Francisco Bay right outside the park "McCovey Cove," and since his 1980 retirement, have annually presented the Willie Mac Award to their "most inspirational player." In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 56th on their 100 Greatest Baseball Players. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986, and I was at the induction ceremony.

(A word of advice: If you want to go to the Hall of Fame, I say, Absolutely, do it, but not for Induction Weekend. Cooperstown, New York held 2,500 people at its peak, and it was not designed to hold the 100,000 people who descend on it on that weekend every year -- which is about double what it was when I first went! When I went back in 1994, for Phil Rizzuto, it was nuts!)

3. Bart Starr of Montgomery. After an injury-plagued collegiate career at the University of Alabama -- before Bear Bryant got there -- the school's basketball coach, Johnny Dee, told his friend Jack Vainisi, personnel director for the Green Bay Packers, about Starr. He split time with Babe Parilli until Vince Lombardi arrived in 1959, and made Starr a starter, and a star.

He made 4 Pro Bowls, despite playing in the same league at the same time as Johnny Unitas, Bobby Layne, Y.A. Tittle, Sonny Jurgensen, John Brodie, Don Meredith and Fran Tarkenton. The Packers reached the 1960 NFL Championship Game, and then won 5 titles in 7 years, including the 1st 2 Super Bowls, of which Starr was named the MVP. He remains the only man to quarterback a team to 5 NFL Championships -- without cheating, anyway. He was named NFL MVP in 1966, and his quarterback sneak for a touchdown won the 1967 NFL Championship Game, a.k.a. "The Ice Bowl."

He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's 1960s All-Decade Team. The Packers elected him to their team Hall of Fame and retired his Number 15. In 1999, The Sporting News
ranked him 41st on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked him 51st on their list of the 100 Greatest Players.

2. Hank Aaron of Mobile. He was a guest on the TV show Home Run Derby, filmed at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles before the 1960 season, and with the home runs he hit, he won more money on it than any other player.

Having said that, he wasn't then thought of as a power hitter. He had already won batting titles in 1956 and 1959, but, at that point, he seemed a better candidate for a .400 batting average on a season (which he didn't do) or 3,000 career hits (which he did) than he was for breaking Babe Ruth's still-standing records of 61 home runs in a season (he topped out at 47) and 714 home runs in a career.

From 1958 to 1962, there were 2 All-Star Games every year. That's how Hammerin' Hank played in 24 All-Star Games in 23 seasons. He won 3 Gold Gloves as a right fielder, led the National League in home runs and RBIs 4 times each, and in 1957 led the Milwaukee Braves to their city's only World Championship, hitting an extra-inning home run to win the Pennant clincher and winning the MVP. He also played on their 1958 Pennant team, their 1959 Playoff team, and, after the move to Atlanta, their 1969 NL West Champions.

In 1968, he hit his 500th career home run, and people realized he had that many despite being only 34 years old. Until then, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were considered the likeliest to surpass Ruth's 714. In 1970, Aaron got his 3,000th hit, becoming the 1st man to reach both major hitting milestones, beating Mays to it by a few weeks. In 1972, he passed Mays. As he approached the milestone all through 1973, he got more mail than anyone in America except President Richard Nixon -- some of it dreadfully racist, but the vast majority of it supportive.

On April 8, 1974, he hit his 715th home run to surpass Ruth. He would finish with 755, an all-time record that lasted until 2007... and is still the most among honest men. He also set records with 2,297 RBIs, 1,477 extra-base hits, and 6,856 total bases. He had a .305 lifetime batting average and a 155 OPS+. He finished with 3,771 career hits. Think about that for a moment: If you don't count any of his home runs, he would still have over 3,000 hits! He is up there with Mays, Stan Musial and Rogers Hornsby as the best hitter in National League history.

This is why the award given to the best hitter in each league, a relatively new award, is called the Hank Aaron Award. Both the Braves and their replacements in Milwaukee, the Brewers, for whom he played his last 2 seasons, retired his Number 44. The address of Turner Field, the Braves' former ballpark, was filed with the U.S. Postal Service as 755 Hank Aaron Drive. It has a statue of him outside, as does Miller Park in Milwaukee. The minor-league ballpark in his hometown, home of the Class AA Mobile BayBears, is Hank Aaron Stadium.

He and Ruth are the only individual players to have an exhibit all to themselves at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, to which he was elected in his 1st year of eligibility. He came in 5th on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was easily elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2002, George W. Bush awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1. Willie Mays of the Birmingham suburb of Fairfield. Say, hey, do you know of any other baseball player who's enough of a cultural icon that his name has been worked into The Honeymooners, Peanuts and Star Trek? And was on What's My Line? Twice?

Nope, not even Babe Ruth, the one and only player selected ahead of Mays in The Sporting News' 1999 list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players.

Willie, Hank, and Stan Musial share the record of appearing in the most All-Star Games, 24. He was named NL Rookie of the Year in 1951, and the MVP twice, in 1954 and 1965, and probably should have won at least 1 more. He won 12 Gold Gloves, and would have won more had the award been established earlier than 1957. He led the League in batting average once, home runs 4 times and stolen bases 4 times.

No, the uniforms don't look right.

But 7,054 hits, 1,415 of them home runs, don't lie.

From 1954 to 1965, he was 1 of the top 3 players in baseball every year, and was still one of the top 10 as late as 1971, when he was 40 years old. He batted at least .300 and had at least 100 RBIs 10 times each. His lifetime batting average was .302, he had a 156 OPS+, his 3,283 hits included 523 doubles, 140 triples and 660 home runs, and he had 1,903 RBIs. He also had 338 stolen bases, making him the only guy with 500 homers and 300 steals until Barry Bonds came along.

He was less lucky in the team achievement department. In his 1st 2 full seasons -- he missed most of 1952 and all of 1953 serving in the U.S. Army in the Korean War -- he helped the New York Giants win the 1951 Pennant and the 1954 World Series, including making the most famous defensive play in the history of sports, "The Catch," in Game 1. After that, there was a Pennant with the San Francisco version of the Giants in 1962, a Division title in 1971, and he closed his career with the Pennant-winning 1973 Mets, looking like he should have retired at least a year earlier.

The Giants retired his Number 24, filed the street address for their new AT&T Park as 24 Willie Mays Plaza, and dedicated a statue of him outside it. Back in New York, a playground built at the Polo Grounds Towers housing project was named Willie Mays Field. He was brought back to the Mets because owner Joan Payson had been a Giants part-owner, and the Mets have unofficially retired 24 for him.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2015, Barack Obama awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Because he started out as a center fielder in New York, he would be forever compared to his contemporary, Mickey Mantle; and Mantle's predecessor, Joe DiMaggio -- compounded by the Giants moving from New York to San Francisco, DiMaggio's hometown. Mantle vs. Mays was the ultimate New York playground argument, more than Rizzuto vs. Reese, Berra vs. Campanella, or Ford vs. Newcombe -- and would remain so well after the Dodgers and Giants skipped town.

Mays and Mantle were the opening guests on Home Run Derby, and Mays took an 8-2 lead, but Mantle won 9-8. Willie was invited back, and beat 3 Washington Senators (soon to be Minnesota Twins), Bob Allison, Harmon Killebrew (who had previously dethroned Mantle on the show) and Jim Lemon, before being defeated by his fellow New York-to-California transplant, Gil Hodges.

Indeed, when Allen Barra, who's also written biographies of Yogi Berra and Bear Bryant, went back to Birmingham, where his journalism career started, and wrote a book about their minor-league ballpark, Rickwood Field, which was Willie's 1st pro home, with the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, he learned so much about Willie, who had been his favorite player, that he decided to write a biography -- and came to the conclusion that, while there had been good biographies of both Willie and Mickey, one thing seemed to be missing from them: The comparison with each other, and their relationship. So he expanded his idea, and the result was the fantastic Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age.

The greatest center fielder who ever lived.

And another pretty good player.

Mays also had the greatest song any athlete's ever had. It came out during the title season of 1954, and you can almost hear the Big Band Era phase out, and the Rock and Roll Era take over.

Was Willie Mays the greatest ballplayer who ever lived? I've argued that, because he was a great pitcher, Babe Ruth's ability to prevent runs was greater than Mays'. And I've also seen numbers -- including some posted by Barra, who, predisposed to prefer Mays, was forced to reconsider -- that show that Mantle wasn't just a better peak hitter, but a better all-around player.

But "suggesting" and "showing" aren't necessarily proving. Willie was one of the top players in baseball from Harry Truman's 2nd term to Richard Nixon's 1st. At the release of Destination Moon and at Neil Armstrong's one small step and one giant leap 18 years later. Through the eras of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley through the entire run of the Beatles. That's plenty to "Say Hey" about.

I'll let Ted Williams have the last word: "If there was a guy born to play baseball, it was Willie Mays."

Top 10 Footnote Guys In Sports History

Thanks for nothing, Mo.

Before I begin, let me eliminate from consideration a guy who you might have heard of, and might have put on this list.

Charlie Caldwell (1901-1957). Best known as the head coach at Princeton from 1945 to 1956, including coaching Heisman Trophy winner Dick Kazmaier, he briefly pitched for the Yankees in 1925. And, while pitching batting practice, a pitch got away from him, and hit 1st baseman Wally Pipp in the head.

Pipp complained of a headache to manager Miller Huggins, who told him to take the day off, and put young Lou Gehrig in at 1st. Pipp never played for the Yankees again, and the rest is history.

Except that's not what really happened. Yes, Caldwell accidentally beaned Pipp in batting practice, but it was on July 2, a month after Gehrig became the starter. Pipp -- and also catcher Wally Schang, and 2nd baseman Aaron Ward, and, ironically, the man whose record for consecutive games played Gehrig would break, shortstop Everett Scott -- were all benched on June 2, because they weren't hitting. Pipp, who'd led the American League in home runs 4 times, was now batting .244, on-base .295, slugging .372 -- terrible.

And he did play for the Yankees again, returning on August 7, but, from that point onward, only as a pinch-hitter. He was sold to the Cincinnati Reds, and played 3 more seasons. The story that he'd been replaced only because of a beaning -- quoting him, perhaps falsely, as saying, "I took the 2 most expensive aspirins in history" -- and saying anyone replaced due to an injury has "gotten Pipped" never appeared in the press until Gehrig finally stepped out in 1939.

By which point, Caldwell was the head football coach at Williams College -- later to be the alma mater of George Steinbrenner -- and was on his way to fame at Princeton, and the public forgetting who it was that beaned Wally Pipp. And when. And why Gehrig was really put into the lineup.

Top 10 Footnote Guys In Sports History

10. Don Young (born 1945 and still alive as of this writing). He played just 2 seasons in the major leagues, both for the Chicago Cubs, 4 years apart: 1965 and 1969. But on July 8, 1969, he changed baseball history by mishandling 2 balls hit to center field by Ken Boswell and Donn Clendenon of the Mets.

The Mets won the game, and it is seen as having turned the tide in the National League Eastern Division race. Manager Leo Durocher said, "My 3-year-old could have caught those balls." Team Captain Ron Santo yelled at Young in the clubhouse.

The next day, Santo apologized to him, and apologized again during a press conference. Durocher never apologized, and mismanaged the Cubs the rest of the way, as they went from 9 1/2 games up on the Mets on August 16, and half a game up as late as September 9 (the day of the Black Cat Game), to 6 games back when the Mets clinched on September 24, to 8 games back when the regular season ended on October 2.

Most people blame Durocher for the "September Swoon," which really began earlier. That, or they simply credit the Mets for taking advantage of the opportunity. Which is why this one is only Number 10.

(UPDATE: Young died in 2024.)

9. George Trafton (1896-1971). He had helped Notre Dame win the 1919 National Championship, their 1st under Knute Rockne. He joined the Chicago Bears, and was one of the 1st NFL stars. He was the 1st center to snap the ball with one hand, enabling him to get a good block up sooner.

He was mean. How mean was he? He was so mean, was said to be "strongly disliked in every NFL city" except in the homes of the Bears' natural rivals, Green Bay and Rock Island. In those cities, he wasn't strongly disliked, he was hated. But he was respected: He was named to 6 All-Pro Teams. He was an early inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was named the center on the NFL's 1920s All-Decade Team.

He was an assistant coach for the Green Bay Packers when they won the NFL Championship Game in 1944, and for the Rams when they won it for Cleveland in 1945 and lost it for Los Angeles in 1949. In 1953, he was the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and won the Grey Cup, in the last year before the Canadian Football League was founded.

So he should be more than a "footnote guy," right? Well, he did something that's been almost forgotten, but may have had a tremendous effect upon the history of his sport.

Trafton's 1925 Bears teammate Red Grange, and Grange's manager C.C. Pyle, had founded the 1st league to bear the name of the American Football League, in 1926. Wanting the biggest market, Pyle put Grange in the biggest city, naming the team the New York Yankees. In 1927, after the league folded, he convinced the NFL owners that Grange was still a valuable commodity. So the Yankees were admitted.

On October 16, 1927, Trafton tackled Grange, and wrecked his knee. "After that," the Galloping Ghost said, "I was just another straight-ahead runner, and the world is full of straight-ahead runners." The greatest player in the game missed the rest of the 1927 season and all of 1928, before going back to the Bears in 1929, and, like many great athletes forced to go both ways, changed his focus and improved his defense, making a game-saving tackle at the end of the 1933 NFL Championship Game.

But Grange played his last game at age 31, and was essentially done as a superstar at 24. And the reason was a bad tackle by George Trafton. To be fair, while Trafton was considered a dirty player, no one has ever suggested that this tackle was dirty, only that it had an awful result.

If Grange had failed in his rookie season of 1925, the NFL might well have folded. But, going in the other direction, if Grange had been able to do in New York what he'd done in Chicago, the NFL might have gotten much bigger much sooner.

8. Chris Harker (1937-2014). I will bet that not one American in a million knows this name. Maybe one in a thousand knows the name of the man whose playing career he virtually ended, in much the same way that Trafton curtailed Grange's.

On December 26, 1962, Harker was playing for Bury Football Club, of Greater Manchester, away to Sunderland AFC, in the North-East of England, in a driving rainstorm in very cold weather. By modern standards, this game would have been postponed.

But it wasn't. Sunderland's star striker, who had already scored 24 goals that season, was through on goal, with only Harker to beat. But they collided, and the striker's knee was torn up. As with Grange, it was the kind of knee injury which, today, could have been surgically repaired. You would have missed the rest of the season, but at the beginning of the next season, you would have been ready to go. Instead, the striker missed 2 years, got into only 3 more games, and retired before he was 30, effectively done at 28.

Sunderland offered him the job of coaching their youth team, and the rest is history. His name was Brian Clough, and he would manage Derby County to the 1972 Football League title, and manage Nottingham Forest to the 1978 League title and the 1979 and 1980 European Cups.

If that collision hadn't happened, he might have played a few more years, and might not have gone into management, changing the history of English soccer in ways we cannot yet imagine.

Then again, his great rival, Don Revie, a fellow Middlesbrough native and former Sunderland player, went from being a great striker to being a great manager. So they both belied my theory that most great players, whatever the sport, don't become great head coaches.

7. Norm Sherry (born 1931). He was born in New York but moved to Los Angeles, then repeated this process by signing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and moving with them to L.A. He was a catcher, but not much of a hitter, batting .215.

He and his brother Larry Sherry became the 1st all-Jewish battery (pitcher-catcher combination) in MLB history, and were members of the Dodgers' 1st West Coast title-winners in 1959, but while Larry was named the Series' Most Valuable Player, Norm was really a footnote player.

After the 1962 season, his hitting completely gone, the Dodgers sent him home, trading him to the Mets. He played the 1963 season with them, while the Dodgers won another World Series.

He went back to the Dodgers and managed in their organization, was hired by the nearby California Angels, and in 1976 he was named their manager, lasting under a year. He never managed again, although he was over .500 (76-71). He later coached under his former Angels boss, Dick Williams, in Montreal and San Diego, and under his former Dodger teammate Roger Craig in San Francisco.

But his best coaching job came in Spring Training in 1961. He was catching a wild lefthander, also a Jewish New Yorker, and told him to stop trying to strike everybody out, and work on his curveball more. Result? He found his control, and struck everybody out anyway. His name was Sandy Koufax.

(UPDATE: Sherry died in 2021.)

6. Kevin Walker (born 1965). A native of West Milford, Passaic County, New Jersey, he played linebacker on the University of Maryland's Atlantic Coast Conference Champions of the mid-1980s, with quarterbacks Boomer Esiason and Frank Reich. Esiason recommended him to the Cincinnati Bengals, and he played 5 seasons with them.

On January 13, 1991, a crowd of 92,045 jammed into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to see the Los Angeles Raiders play the Bengals in the AFC Divisional Playoff. The Raiders won, 20-10, but the fans walked away troubled, because Walker tackled Bo Jackson in such a way that Jackson's hip was dislocated. In spite of the Raiders' nasty reputation, it wasn't a dirty play. No penalty was called. It was just a freak thing.

Jackson never played football again, and his baseball career was sabotaged as well. Only 28 years old, the most sensational 2-sport athlete since the days of Jim Thorpe was done with one sport and pretty much done with the other. And Walker's career would end with a knee injury in 1992.

5. Walt Kiesling (1903-1962). Like Trafton, Kiesling was an offensive lineman who was named to the NFL's 1920s All-Decade Team. He was a guard and a tackle, mostly for the Chicago Cardinals, and won a title with the Packers in 1936. In 1937 and '38, he played for the football version of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and his playing career came to an end.

He then went into coaching in 1939, with the Pirates. The next season, 1940, was the team's 1st with the name "Pittsburgh Steelers." He was essentially their head coach from 1939 to 1944, and again 1954 to 1956. He was kept on because Steelers' founding owner Art Rooney liked him. If Rooney liked you, you had a job for life, no matter how bad you were at your job.

And Kiesling was terrible at his job, mainly because he didn't understand how throwing the football was changing the game. He let 3 great quarterbacks go in the latter half of the 1950s alone.

One was Jack Kemp, who led the Buffalo Bills to 2 AFL titles. One was Len Dawson, who led the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs to 3 AFL titles and the 1969 World Championship (Super Bowl IV in 1970). And one was Johnny Unitas, who led the Baltimore Colts to 3 World Championships and became perhaps the greatest quarterback who ever lived -- at the very least, the one against whom all quarterbacks were measured until Joe Montana came along.

4. Miguel Uline (1874-1959). He owned a minor-league hockey team in the nation's capital, the Washington Lions, and in 1941 built Uline Ice Arena behind Union Station. In 1946, he became a charter owner in what later became the NBA, with the Washington Capitols. In 1950, he became the 1st NBA owner whose team fielded a black player, as Earl Lloyd took the court for them.

The Capitols reached the NBA Finals in the 1949 season, losing to the Minneapolis Lakers. But the 1949-50 season was not a good one, and Uline's coach said he needed money to make deals. Uline, whose ice business allowed him to build a hockey arena next-door, refused. Maybe if he'd had an NHL team, he might have done it. But he wouldn't, and the coach resigned. A year later, the Capitols went out of business.

The coach's name? Arnold Jacob "Red" Auerbach. By the time Uline died, Auerbach had led the Boston Celtics to 2 NBA Championships, with many more to come. That dynasty could have been built in D.C., but Uline was too stubborn and too cheap to accept the possibility.

Uline's nickname, by the way, was Uncle Mike, which I didn't know until I began the research for this post. The arena he built would be renamed the Washington Coliseum. It would host the Beatles' 1st full U.S. concert in 1964, and the Washington Caps of the ABA in the 1969-70 season. It still stands, and is being redeveloped for office and retail space.

3. Fred Saigh (1905-1999). A lawyer and real estate investor, Saigh (pronounced like "sigh") bought the St. Louis Cardinals in 1947, as they were coming off their greatest period (1942-46). But he had to work a tax scheme to afford it. In 1953, he plead no contest to tax evasion, and was sentenced to prison.

He was told he would be banned from baseball for life, even after getting out of prison, if he didn't sell the Cardinals. And he nearly sold them to a group from Houston, whose minor-league club was part of the Cards' farm system. It would have been the 1st move in baseball since 1902 -- ironically, the survival of the St. Louis Browns, whose long-term future, very shaky for a generation, would be assured if the Cards left town. There was also a rumor that the Cards -- or, failing them, the Browns -- would move to Milwaukee.

But a local buyer was found: August Anheuser Busch Jr., a.k.a. Gussie Busch, the beer baron. Once he bought the Cards, the Browns were doomed. And when the Boston Braves pounced and moved to Milwaukee, whose territorial rights they owned, that forced the Browns to move instead to Baltimore (at the time, America's 3rd-largest brewing city, behind Milwaukee and St. Louis), where they became the Orioles.

The Braves' move to Milwaukee inspired Walter O'Malley to move the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, and Horace Stoneham to move the New York Giants to the city where his Triple-A team was, Minneapolis, until O'Malley convinced him to move to San Francisco instead, although Minnesota was moved up as a possible expansion location, as was Houston.

Had Saigh sold the Cards to the Houston group, baseball history might be very different. But his own history recovered: He was released from prison early for good behavior, and worked with Busch again, becoming Anheuser-Busch's largest individual stockholder outside the Busch family, though he and Gussie clashed on how the Cardinals should be run. When he died in 1999, Fred Saigh's reputation was restored, and his fortune was $500 million.

2. Mo Lewis (born 1969). For 13 years, he was a linebacker for the Jets, including 3 Pro Bowl seasons. His sons have turned to basketball instead: Mo Lewis IV plays at the Naval Academy, and Chris is a high school senior accepted to Harvard, where he is expected to play on their team.

Mo Lewis was perhaps the best athlete on this list. But he'll forever be remembered for September 23, 2001, when his hit on New England Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe knocked him out for most of the season, leading to backup Tom Brady coming in. If Mo hadn't made that hit, Bledsoe could have been the Pats' quarterback for the next 5 years, and who knows what would have happened to Brady.

One thing is for sure: Brady and head coach Bill Belichick wouldn't have cheated their way to 5 wins in 7 Super Bowls. So, thanks a lot, Mo.

1. Carl Mays (1891-1971). Pitching for the Yankees on August 16, 1920, he hit Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians in the head with a pitch. Chapman died the next day, the only on-field fatality in Major League Baseball history. For the rest of his life, Mays insisted that he hadn't hit Chapman on purpose.

He would help the Yankees win their 1st 3 American League Pennants, and their 1st World Series in 1923. He finished with a career record of 207-126, which might have been enough to get him into the Hall of Fame if he hadn't hit Chapman.

But that's not why he's on this list. In 1919, he was pitching for the Boston Red Sox, whom he had helped win the World Series the year before. But it had been a bad year: Not only was he not pitching well, but his house had burned down under suspicious circumstances. After a particularly frustrating game on July 13, he walked off the field, changed, and left the team. He said he wanted a fresh start, since the team wasn't winning with him, and said he didn't care where he went.

On July 30, the Sox traded him to the Yankees for Bob McGraw, Allen Russell and $40,000. AL President Ban Johnson tried to block the trade, because he'd suspended Mays for jumping the club, and it was illegal to trade a player who was under suspension. Three teams -- the 2 involved and the Chicago White Sox -- defied Johnson. The end result was that those clubs held a majority of the League's board of directors, and Johnson was overruled.

This had 3 major effects on the history of baseball. One was that the National Commission -- the League Presidents and an allegedly impartial 3rd man -- was replaced with a single Commissioner, federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who ruled the game with an iron hand, for both good and ill, from 1921 until his death in 1944.

Another is that the 5 teams that remained loyal to Johnson refused to make deals with the Yanks and the 2 Sox-named teams, so those 3 could only make deals with each other. This led to Red Sox owner Harry Frazee making the deals that wrecked the Boston dynasty of the 1910s and made the New York dynasty of the 1920s, including the sale of Babe Ruth, possible. If Frazee could have traded with the rest of the League, and spread those ex-Sox around, who knows if the Yankees would have developed their 1st dynasty?

And, once the Mays deal was completed, it led to the death of Chapman, which led to new rules: Fresh balls always to be put into play, so they'd be clean and white and easier to see; and no tampering with the balls, including foreign substances (resulting in several pitches that would fall under the category of "spitballs"). This helped make the Lively Ball Era possible.

And it was all because Carl Mays was having an uncharacteristic lousy season, 98 years ago. Or maybe this Number 1 "Footnote Guy In Sports History" should actually be the arsonist Mays always said set fire to his house, but could never identify or prove.