The Nine

    My all-time favorite athletes

 

 

 

Introduction

     I’ve been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. Professional sports, mostly. Team sports, always. Golf and tennis held no interest for me. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t hold certain individual athletes in higher esteem than others.

     Favorite players.

     Growing up, everybody in my neighborhood had favorite players. Guys you rooted for above everyone else on the field, court, rink, or diamond. You collected their trading cards, hung their posters on your bedroom wall and defended them in all debates. You wore their jerseys. You mimicked the way they swung the bat, passed the ball and shot the puck. They became an extension of you in that they represented the qualities you held dear in terms of competition and, more importantly, the person you thought you were, and hoped to become. When they succeeded, you celebrated with them, feeling somehow empowered by having chosen them. And when they failed, you felt it deeply, as if you yourself had come up short. If they left town, you felt betrayed. And when they retired, you hoped they did so as a member of the team you had always associated them with. That way, they always remained yours.

     My brothers and our friends and I always rooted for Boston teams, but sometimes we’d sprinkle in an out-of-town team as a sort of secondary affiliation. This was almost always brought about by the discovery of a new favorite player. There were some unwritten rules in place when it came to choosing favorite players. Members of the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox were always up for grabs. For example, it was perfectly acceptable for you and your neighbor to both have Carl Yastrzemski as a favorite baseball player. But if you chose Johnny Bench, and chose him before anyone else, you could expect exclusive rights to him—sort of finder’s keepers—and you might even start rooting for the Reds as a result. It could get complicated.

     When I set out to compile this list, I envisioned it as a Top Ten, but then discovered there were only nine athletes whom I could truly count as favorites. After writing them down, I looked at the list, and wondered, “Why these guys?” All but two of them are Hall Of Famers. And all but two were members of at least one championship team in their respective sports. Between them, they’ve scored 1366 goals, accounted for 239 touchdowns, hit 635 homeruns and grabbed 22,793 rebounds. Heck, two of them even got thrown out of a game for fighting...with each other. Their greatness and competitiveness is undisputed. But why them and not nine other athletes? So I started writing; started with number one and worked my way down. Some of what I discovered was expected, some surprising, but each one makes perfect sense to me now.