|
THE IDEA
I
owe the notion of THE SPORTS 100, a ranking of the one hundred
most important people in American sports history, to a book
called simply The
100.
It is a remarkable ranking, by an academic named Michael H.
Hart, of the most influential people in human history. Muhammad
is #1, for instance, followed by Isaac Newton, Jesus Christ,
Buddha and Confucius. Einstein is #10. Aristotle is #14. Freud,
Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler and Shakespeare are
numbers 32 through 36. Thomas Jefferson is #70. Homer is #94.
Fascinating stuff. I thoroughly recommend it.
There have since been several derivative rankings – The
Black 100,
for instance, and The
Latino 100 and The
Jewish 100 and The
Gay 100 and The
Film 100.
There was also a book, by boxing guru Burt Randolph Sugar,
called The
100 Greatest Athletes of All-Time,
a straightforward ranking of athletic ability. His book came out
a few months before mine. About a year later, it was re-printed
as a paperback and renamed The
Sports 100.
Hmmm.
My book judges influence, not athletic prowess. If all you can
say about someone was that he was the best quarterback or hit
this many home runs or won that many games, that isn’t enough.
There are too many stars in the world of sports to have included
people for star power alone. You won’t find Hank Aaron or Walter
Payton or Wilt Chamberlain. But you will find jump shot pioneer
Hank Luisetti and vilified baseball owner Walter O’Malley and
influential bookmaker Charles McNeil. It is an attempt to show
that there are relative unknowns who left more of an imprint
than a great many legends.
Another aim of The
Sports 100 is
to put the games into historical perspective, to show how its
cultural influence often manifests itself in a handful of
significant individuals. The book also highlights the many cases
in which one person was largely responsible for introducing an
eventually monumental element of sports – be it free agency, the
point spread, artificial turf, the minor league farm system or
the forward pass. In fact, it is not only a study of 100
remarkable people, but also of 100 components of sport’s
evolution. It is as much a history of the games as a profile of
the participants.
My hope also is to provide new information to even the already
knowledgeable sports fan. So the reader learns, for instance,
that George Halas was supposed to be on a ship that capsized in
1915, but he missed the boat… that the Nike “swoosh” was
designed by art student Carolyn Davidson for $35… that Vince
Lombardi didn’t coin the phrase “Winning isn’t everything, it’s
the only thing”… and that Abner Doubleday likely never even
witnessed a baseball game.
In the end, The
Sports 100 is
as diverse as sport itself. There are athletes and innovators,
activists and academics, executives and inventors, journalists
and judges, agents and outcasts, pioneers, producers, promoters
and presidents – all of whom made a lasting impact, in one way
or another, on American athletics. Of course, you are bound to
disagree with many of the selections and omissions. But like the
old argument about New York’s greatest centerfielder, it’s all a
matter of perspective. |
“Brad Herzog may not be
one of the 100 most important people in sports, but with this book
he’s off to a great start.”
– Dick Schaap
|
