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When it comes to sports
immortals, think Bobby
of TheColumnists.com
Lance Armstrong
won his seventh straight Tour de France and Tiger Woods won his
13th pro or amateur title a couple of weeks back at St. Andrews
in Scotland at the British Open.
Joe Louis won 25 straight heavyweight championship fights from
1937-1949 and Martina Navratilova won six straight Wimbledon
titles from 1982 through 1987.
The Yankees won five straight Series titles from 1949-1953, the
Boston Celtics won eight championships from 1959-1966, UCLA won
seven straight NCAA basketball crowns from 1967-1973 and the
Montreal Canadiens won five NHL titles from 1956-1960.
Now, with a new book, there is another nomination for most dominant
athlete in American sports history. I don’t know which way
I’m voting but after reading “The Immortal Bobby”
by Ron Rapoport (John Wiley and Sons, $27.95) about golfer Bobby
Jones I have to lean to that handsome Atlantan who awed America
in the 1920s and 1930s.
This was at a time when Babe Ruth was setting home run records,
when Red Grange was racing across football fields, when Jack
Dempsey and Gene Tunney were thrilling boxing fans, when Bill
Tilden was bringing tennis out of the fancy clubs in mainstream
America, when Charles Lindbergh was flying across the Atlantic
with a sandwich and a prayer.
They were all great American heroes, names that have lasted as
significantly into the 21st century for what they did maybe 80
years ago.
Yet, Rapoport makes a strong argument that Jones topped them
all with his triumphs, his loyalty to pure amateurism on the
courses around the world, his Grand Slam in 1930, the only time
done in a single year, his persona and his undying devotion to
the game. The fans felt the same way about him.
Only Bobby Jones got two tours down Broadway in ticker tape parades,
a feat not even heroes like Lindbergh, Ruth, Eisenhower, MacArthur
or the astronauts with the right stuff could accomplish.
What seems to be the most unique aspect of his history, as recreated
by this graceful Chicago Sun-Times writer in this epic biography,
is that Jones turned his back on fortune, if not fame.
He played his entire career as an amateur though money was starting
to motivate many of the other stars of his time, especially in
other sports. When Babe Ruth got his $80,000 salary after his
record breaking 1927 season he was reminded that he was making
more money than the President of the United States, Herbert Hoover.
Ruth quickly replied to the suggestion that he might be a tad
overpaid by suggesting, “I had a better year than he did.”
Rapoport’s report suggests that money, though important
to Jones via other sources such as his own legal career, was
not the factor in getting him out there despite the heat, the
wind, the rain, the fierceness of competition and his own standing
in the game.
After some time he was not playing his opponent, he was playing
against the standing he had reached in the game.
Some years back I wrote a book about Joe DiMaggio, who retired
at the age of 37 when still in reasonable baseball condition.
I asked his brother Tom, who ran DiMaggio’s Fisherman’s
Wharf restaurant in San Francisco why Joe retired relatively
early. “Don’t you know?” he said. “He wasn’t
Joe DiMaggio any more.”
Jones was still Bobby Jones when he retired just two months after
accomplishing the legendary golf feat of winning the United States
Amateur, the United States Open, the British Amateur and the
British Open titles in one calendar year, a feat Tiger Woods
almost equaled over two years.
Jones was born in 1902 and retired from competitive golf in 1930.
He really only dominated the game from 1926 through 1930, sort
of equaling in that game what Sandy Koufax equaled in baseball
when he dominated pitching from 1961 through 1966.
“The pressure to win,” Rapoport writes, “was getting
worse and worse, the pleasure he took from the game growing smaller
and smaller. He could see where this led, he thought, and he
wanted nothing to do with it.”
So he left the competition of the game and played for fun the
rest of his life. He died in 1971 after serious spinal problems
which forced him into a wheelchair in the later stages of his
life.
With the Woods win at St. Andrews and a good bet now that he
will catch the 18 titles of Jack Nicklaus and with Armstrong’s
clearly untouchable seven in a row on his bike in France, they
have claim to the standing as America’s greatest athlete
ever.
It almost comes down to an old line by a great sportswriter of
the past, Jimmy Cannon, who once wrote that any game in which
a 70-year-old man could beat a 20-year-old man “could never
be considered a sport.”
No 70-year-old could beat Armstrong while some 70-year-old might
beat a neighborhood 20-year-old golfer.
So who’s the best?
Is it Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Bill Tilden
or Martina Navratilova?
Maybe if you love the game of golf it simply has to be Bobby
Jones. “The Immortal Bobby” makes a good case for Bobby
Jones. It also makes for a great sunny summer afternoon beach
read.
©2005 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The book cover is courtesy of John Wiley &
Sons. This column first posted on July 27, 2005.
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