October 21, 2009

• Top 5 Favorite Professional Athletes (in my lifetime anyway)

  
  Brett Favre – let’s forget this recent annoyance about his retirement indecision.  that will be forgotten completely in the next ten years.  when you talk about enthusiasm for the game, this is it.  if love of football took human shape and pumped red blood, it would have no choice but to become Brett Favre.  there are countless stories and stats.  he threw a last second, game-winning touchdown with an injured finger on his throwing hand.  he’s started the most games since Moses.  i remember watching him get creamed once, absolutely smeared across the turf, and he immediately jumped back up and slapped the offender in the head.  out of anger?  nope.  to congratulate him for a great hit.  over the past few decades i’ve watched this excitement that bordered on insanity and let it infect me.  i wish all football players loved playing as much as he does.

  
  Lawrence Taylor – possibly the anti-Favre.  he really doesn’t give a shit about football anymore, which makes me wonder if he ever did.  he’s a notorious druggie and quite unapologetic about it all.  but back in the day…  when he was in college, they polled all the NFL head coaches at the time and asked them who they absolutely wished they could land in the draft.  around 90% said Lawrence Taylor.  everyone says he was a game-changer.  he revolutionized the game of football.  i could always catch on little bits about what that meant but i never knew exactly how he did it.  he’s a strong, crazy motherfucker who runs after the quarterback like a wild jackass.  revolutionary enough.  then i read Michael Lewis’ excellent book called The Blind Side and learned exactly what happened.  read the book.  the original LT was a force that the NFL had to conform around.  and he was a New York Giant! 

  
  Charles Oakley – everyone remembers Patrick Ewing when the New York Knicks were good in a previous life, but to me he never mesmerized like the don’t-you-even-fucking-look-at-me-or-i’ll-fucking-kill-you presence that was Charles Oakley.  Oakley’s numbers aren’t legendary as far as i know, but he dove for loose balls, rebounded, boxed out and owned the paint essentially by being a menacing dark shadow of malevolence.  i’m a sucker for unsung heroes, and this guy never got his due as the wind beneath Ewing’s wings. 

  
  Derek Jeter – i feel like a little girl cheering for Jeter just because he’s the easy one to cheer for, the one EVERYone knows to cheer for, even the little girls.  he’s that easy to pick out for a reason: he’s fucking amazing.  people say he’s a clutch player.  true, he has come through in some tight, pressure-cooker situations before, but he’s just doing what he always does.  he’s a consistent performer and that means he’s performing similarly when things are ho-hum uneventful and when things are so tense the planet might spontaneously explode from the compressed energy and anticipation.  clutch?  that implies he might not perform otherwise.  consistent?  a grinder?  yes and yes, and the ridiculously high level of play that he plays at everyday is why he’s the king.  

  
  Paul O’Neill – a Charles Oakley, quiet force, grinder type for the Yankees, but this is really less about O’Neill than it is about the championship teams that he was a part of.  Jeter was a rising star back in the late ’90s, but the team was dominated by unflashy grinders that just produced well together.  Brosius, Posada, Knoblauch (throwing issues aside), Tino, Bernie, Mariano.  Paul O’Neill is just my favorite — besides Jeter — of them all and my chosen ambassador for those glory days of the team that played so well together.  he never put up flashy numbers, but he hit well consistently kind of like Matsui does now, and he was a notoriously grumpy perfectionist, often throwing gloves, bats, helmets, etc. when he struck out.  he was a bona fide nutcase, but the anger was always directed at his own performance.  it would always crack me up when he threw his helmet after a strike out.  such anger!  he loved baseball and he loved playing it well. 

  ***

  click here for a funny take on Oakley by Bill Simmons.  scroll down to the John Shaft Award section with the MJ pic.  yes, The John Shaft Award goes to Charles Oakley.  because he’s a baaaad man.  “For God’s sake, everyone in the league is still afraid of him, personified by the one-sided Tyrone Hill/Oakley and Jeff McInnis/Oakley feuds, as well as the famous story of Oak slapping Barkley hard across the face during a ’99 lockout players-only meeting, which became his signature “Here’s why you don’t mess with Oakley” moment.”

  • 1:58 pm
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