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November 4

GOATs

Men's tennis has the top two or three candidates for greatest of all time playing at the same time at or near their peaks. Has this ever happened in any other sport? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:21, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I thought Rod Laver retired a long time ago. HiLo48 (talk) 06:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And the boy gets a cigar! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nice one HiLo48 :-) This is such a subjective question and tends to be skewed to recentism. Many things need to be taken into account not the least of which is the technology changes in equipment. Just to stick with tennis Connors, Borg and McEnroe could fit this debate. Then Borg's insistence on staying with a wooden racket caused him to lose tournaments he might otherwise have been competitive in. In golf Nicklaus career spanned a few different sets of GoaT players but I found the years that he was competing against Watson and Trevino to be amazing. I suspect you are going to get a wide range of answers. MarnetteD|Talk 06:40, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In hockey, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were contemporaries. For a more historical example, in baseball Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth were all active around 1915 (although Wagner was on his decline by the time Ruth showed up, and Ruth was still a pitcher until 1918). And Cy Young, possibly the greatest pitcher of all time was a contemporary of Wagner, albeit a decade earlier. --Xuxl (talk) 11:16, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ruth, Cobb and Wagner were all in the first Hall of Fame class in 1936. Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson were likewise in that class, and their careers overlapped each others' and Cy Young's. In the NBA there were Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, whose careers overlapped. In the NHL, there was good overlap in the careers of Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:28, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still playing when Magic and Bird were transforming the NBA. MarnetteD|Talk 13:42, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not to forget Michael Jordan, who also has a claim on the title of greatest ever. --Xuxl (talk) 17:08, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In cricket, both Chris Gayle and Nathan Lyon are still active, and they've probably played each other in some T20 franchise match somewhere. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:11, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Twenty20 cricket is an easy suggestion to make as that format of cricket has only been played at international level for 14 years, so if everyone could agree who the three GOATs are, they did probably overlap (I'd query Lyon and suggest Malinga the Slinger as a GOAT, but that's an aside).

In terms of the sport of cricket more generally, the answer is almost certainly no. Narrowing focus just to the 20th century, the Wisden Cricketers of the Century, which had a good methodology, found two candidates for that list who stood out head and shoulders ahead of the others, Donald Bradman and Garfield Sobers, whose careers didn't overlap, and also didn't overlap with any cricketers who appeared in international cricket in the 19th or 21st centuries. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bit of a cheat, but mixed martial arts certainly would qualify. Virtually any way you break down the GOATs, you'll find a high percentage of them were active at the same time as the sport (sanctioned version) is relatively young and even some early stars are still hanging around. On some of the big Pride Fighting Championships shows, it was possible that perhaps the top four or five would all be on one card. Matt Deres (talk) 15:34, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Invincibles in cricket contained a fair few stars. This, of course, was in 1948, and some of you may not remember. Some, from that continent between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, may not understand at all, and will declare it a minor sport. HiLo48 (talk) 20:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Invincibles have a great claim for being the greatest team of all time, but no-one would make a serious claim for any of that side being GOATs, other than Bradman, who's in most people's opinions (outside of Indian fans), the absolute greatest, and Keith Miller who you could perhaps make a weak claim for. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:18, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In American football, we are currently in the Era of the Quarterback. Statistically speaking, there are arguments to be made that Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees are basically the top three quarterbacks in history. With the usual caveats of trying to make comparisons across eras, the numbers on these three basically speak for themselves. They each have at least 4-5 good years left in them (possible 7-8 for Rodgers), and they basically are leapfrogging each other on every major statistical category every year. There are cogent arguments to be made for each of them as the best football player ever. I'd argue against the Gretzky/Lemieux comparison above, however. Gretzky is so far-and-away better than every other hockey player ever, it's just stupid. If you look at the numbers, it isn't even close. --Jayron 32 13:26, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your point on Gretzky is interesting. I know very little about ice hockey. I could name far more international field hockey players. But I do know that Gretzky is the ultimate stand-out, pretty much the equivalent of Bradman in cricket. That doesn't mean, though, that we can't go beyond them when looking at great players. HiLo48 (talk) 22:31, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to me I've heard Bradman described as the Babe Ruth of cricket. And you subtly bring up an important point: That there's more than just stats to define the greatest players of all time. It's hard to define one player as being absolutely "the greatest", but there can be a short list of "top tier" Hall-of-Famers. And the subtle factor is name recognition. Anyone who knows almost nothing about baseball or hockey would still likely recognize the names Babe Ruth and Wayne Gretzky. So an interesting study would be worldwide fame. At the peaks of their careers, guys like Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan were among the most widely recognizable athletes in the world. The question is, who else were? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:27, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Worldwide fame depends hugely on the popularity of the sport. There may be more people who know a dozen tennis players than one squash player or one wheelchair tennis player. Winning streak (sports)#Longest streaks says: "The longest recorded winning streak in any professional sports is Pakistan's Jahangir Khan's 555 consecutive wins in squash from 1981 to 1986. In 2013, the Dutch wheelchair tennis player Esther Vergeer retired with an active 10-year-long winning streak of 470 matches, including a streak of 250 consecutive sets won." All tennis players are losers in comparison. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:35, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]