Eloquence

I'm going to let Ted Williams' words speak for themselves. His speech, accepting his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, is the gold standard for speaking from the heart at such a special time.

"I guess every player thinks about going into the Hall of Fame. Now that the moment has come for me I find it difficult to say what is really in my heart. But I know it is the greatest thrill of my life. I received two hundred and eighty-odd votes from the writers. I know I didn't have two hundred and eighty-odd friends among the writers. I know they voted for me because they felt in their minds and in their hearts that I rated it, and I want to say to them: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Today I am thinking about a lot of things. I am thinking about my playground director in San Diego, Rodney Luscomb, my high school coach, Wos Caldwell, and my managers, who had so much patience with me--fellows like Frank Shellenback, Donie Bush, Joe Cronin, and Joe McCarthy. I am thinking of Eddie Collins, who had so much faith in me--and to be in the Hall with him particularly, as well as those other great players, is a great honor. I'm sorry Eddie isn't here today.

I'm thinking of Tom Yawkey. I have always said it: Tom Yawkey is the greatest owner in baseball. I was lucky to have played on the club he owned, and I'm grateful to him for being here today.

But I'd not be leveling if I left it at that. Ballplayers are not born great. They're not born great hitters or pitchers or managers, and luck isn't a big factor. No one has come up with a substitute for hard work. I've never met a great player who didn't have to work harder at learning to play ball than anything else he ever did. To me it was the greatest fun I ever had, which probably explains why today I feel both humility and pride, because God let me play the game and learn to be good at it.

The other day Willie Mays hit his five hundred and twenty-second homerun. He has gone past me, and he's pushing, and I say to him, 'go get 'em Willie.' Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as anybody else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given the chance.

As time goes on I'll be thinking baseball, teaching baseball, and arguing for baseball to keep it right on top of American sports, just as it is in Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, and other Latin American and South American countries. I know Casey feels the same way. . . . I also know I'll lose a dear friend if I don't stop talking. I'm eating into his time, and that is unforgivable. So in closing, I am grateful and know how lucky I was to have been born an American and had the chance to play the game I love, the greatest game."

Ted Williams
July 25, 1966
Cooperstown, New York

Upset

This column is one of my winding detective adventures about the olden days in sports. There is no fantasy anything here. This is about a great upset in the world of sports.

Do you know where the term upset as in a sports’ upset came from? Man O’War won 20 of 21 races. He lost to a horse named Upset. Until that time, upset meant you had an upset stomach or you were upset with something. Thereafter, a surprise win by an underdog was an upset.

I was chatting with a client today who mentioned that his two daughters were both about to graduate from Iowa State University. I responded that I was pretty sure that was where Dan Gable had gone to college. Not being a sports fan, he had never heard of him. If you’re under 45, you’ve also probably never heard of him.

I consider him one of the greatest American athletes ever.

In 1999 ESPN Sportscentury ran a series of the 100 greatest North American athletes of the 20th Century. Each week they did a retrospective on one or two athletes in reverse order of the list. When they had finished the countdown from 100-21, Mr. Money A.H. Bags shot me an email, asking me to list what I thought would be the top 20 to compare it to his top 20. Here is 21-100 according to ESPN:

21 – Gordie Howe
22 – Joe Dimaggio
23 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee
24 – Sugar Ray Robinson
25 – Joe Montana
26 – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
27 – Jerry Rice
28 – Red Grange
29 – Arnold Palmer
30 – Larry Bird
31 – Bobby Orr
32 – Johnny Unitas
33 – Mark Spitz
34 – Lou Gehrig
35 – Secretariat (really!)
36 – Oscar Robertson
37 – Mickey Mantle
38 – Ben Hogan
39 – Walter Payton
40 – Lawrence Taylor
41 – Wilma Rudolph
42 – Sandy Koufax
43 – Julius Erving
44 – Bobby Jones
45 – Bill Tilden
46 – Eric heiden
47 – Edwin Moses
48 – Pete Sampras
49 – OJ Simpson
50 – Chris Evert
51 – Rocky Marciano
52 – Jack Dempsey
53 – Rafer Johnson
54 – Greg Louganis
55 – Mario Lemieux
56 – Pete Rose
57 – Willie Shoemaker
58 – Elgin Baylor
59 – Billie Jean King
60 – Walter Johnson
61 – Stan Musial
62 – Jerry West
63 – Satchel Paige
64 – Sammy Baugh
65 – Althea Gibson
66 – Eddie Arcaro
67 – Bob Gibson
68 – Al Oerter (superb choice)
69 – Bonnie Blair
70 – Dick Butkus
71 – Roberto Clemente
72 – Bo Jackson
73 – Josh Gibson
74 – Deion Sanders
75 – Dan Marino
76 – Barry Sanders
77 – Cy Young
78 – Bob Mathias
79 – Gale Sayers
80 – AJ Foyt
81 – Jimmy Connors
82 – Bobby Hull
83 – Honus Wagner
84 – Man o’War (well there he is!)
85 – Maurice Richard
86 – Otto Graham
87 – Henry Armstrong
88 – Joe Namath
89 – Rogers Hornsby
90 – Richard Petty
91 – Bob Beamon
92 – Mario Andretti
93 – Don Hutson
94 – Bob Cousy
95 – George Blanda
96 – Michael Johnson
97 – Citation (really)
98 – Don Budge (superb choice)
99 – Sam Snead
100 – Jack Johnson

I typed this list for a few reasons. First, in guessing the top 20, you need to see the guys that didn’t make it. It’s a pretty good list, with a few silly entries, mainly the 3 horses. It’s easy to argue with things on this list (Bob Beamon had one incredible day, and to a lesser extent, so did Joe Namath), and I wanted to have the list typed somewhere so I can refer to it again at some time and make those arguments. It’s nice to see Al Oerter and Don Budge on the list, two people I sort of came in contact with in my life. Those stories are for another time.

You’d think that once you have 21-100 listed, the top 20 would be pretty easy. Yes and no. Go make your list before you read on. It’s mostly obvious, but those last few entries weren’t so easy. Really, give it a try. It’s fun. In compiling the top 20, you don’t have to ask “Who are the top 20.” All you have to identify are 20 people who could not possibly be left off the list of the top 100.

Here was my approach: I looked at it by sport.

In baseball, clearly Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams have to be in the top 100 athletes. After thinking a little longer, I added Ty Cobb. So that makes 6.

In basketball clearly Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Bill Russell have to be on the list. That’s 10.

The next five on my list were spread out: in football, Jim Brown; Wayne Gretzky in hockey (remember – North American athletes); Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis are must inclusions from boxing, and if anyone is going to be on the list from golf, it’s got to be Jack Nicklaus.

That was the easy 15, which Mr. Bags and I agreed on. The other 5 was the tricky part, partly because some of the athletes go back a bit.

Jesse Owens and his 4 gold medals in Berlin could not be excluded from the top 100. Thinking of his gold medals reminded me of Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest football players ever, who not only also played major league baseball, but won the gold medals in both the pentathlon and the decathlon in the 1912 Olympics. That extreme crossover made me think that Thorpe could well be at the top of the list (he wasn’t).

Jim Thorpe’s gold medals and multi-sport prowess reminded me of Babe Didrikson, who we don’t remember too much, but who also won Olympic medals (in 1932, gold in the javelin and hurdles, silver in the high jump), was an All-American basketball player, and was the best female golfer of her time. Actually, her athletic resume is outrageous and will be the subject of a future entry here, but here is something on her from Wikipedia that is pretty incredible:

“Representing her company in the 1932 AAU Championships, she competed in eight out of ten events, winning five outright, and tying for first for a sixth. In the process, she set world records in the javelin throw, 80-meter hurdles, high jump and baseball throw in a single afternoon. Didrikson's performances were enough to win the team championship, despite her being the only member of her team.”

Olympic gold also reminded me of Carl Lewis, who won gold medals in 4 Olympics, winning a total of 9 golds in sprints and the long jump. He’d be hard to leave out of the top 20, and impossible to leave out of the top 100.

In retrospect, all 4 of these athletes are pretty obvious. It was that 20th spot on the list that was tricky, and which neither Mr. Bags nor I got right. ESPN included Martina Navratilova. I just did not think of her as North American, even though she’s now an American citizen. No doubt, a great athlete, but we assumed she wouldn’t meet the qualifications.

My 2 thoughts for that last spot were Dan Gable and John McEnroe. It’s impossible for me to think of either of these guys not in the top 100. McEnroe was not only one of the great singles players, he is generally considered to be the greatest doubles player ever.

Subsequently I have thought Bob Hayes should have been on that list. Is anyone a two sport Hall of Famer? This morning I was thinking about how great it would be to see a race between Hayes and two other multi-sport phenoms on the list, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson. And, as long as I’m fantasizing, let’s throw in the pre-1951 World Series Mickey Mantle. My guess: Mickey wins from the batter’s box to first base. Deion wins from home to third base. Bo Jackson wins the 40 yard dash. And Hayes wins everything over 50 yards.

As for Dan Gable, the boy from Waterloo, Iowa is best remembered as the unbeatable wrestler of the late 60’s and early 70’s. He won the Olympic Gold in 1972 in Munich in freestyle wrestling. His high school and college record was 182-1.

He followed this with one of the greatest coaching careers in all sports. As head coach at Iowa from 1976-1997, Iowa won 15 NCAA championships, 21 straight Big Ten titles and had a dual meet record of 355-21-5. He coached 152 All-Americans. He was also the coach of the American Olympic freestyle team in 1980, 1984 and 2000. I doubt anyone in any sport has ever reached a pinnacle as high as Gable as both a player and a coach.

Finally, finally, I’m getting to what tickled my interest: what’s the story behind that one loss in high school and college? It turns out, it was quite a story.

Back in the day, freshmen could not compete on varsity teams. Gable was undefeated in high school, and he went undefeated as a sophomore, winning the NCAA championship at 130 pounds. He was undefeated as a junior and won the NCAA championship at 137 pounds. He was undefeated as a senior, and reached the finals of the NCAA championship at 142 pounds. So his collegiate record was 118-0 and his high school plus college record was was 182-0 heading into his final match.

And that’s the one he lost.

His name was Larry Owings, a sophomore at the University of Washington. As a high school senior he faced the 2 year older Gable in the 1968 Olympic Trials. Gable smashed him 13-4. In 1970, Owings started the season wrestling at 177.

But he had a Vision Quest – just like the incredible novel of the same name by Terry Davis and the cult movie starring Matthew Modine (if you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, check them out!), and he began to lose weight in order to face Gable one more time. (Much of the following history comes from an SI article by Herman Weiskopf, published in 1970.)

“I weighed 173 last fall, and during the season I wrestled three times in the 177-pound class and won all three. Then I really cut down. I got to 155 easy. I had to work harder and eat less to get to 148, and then I almost had to stop eating completely to make 142.”

While other wrestlers were avoiding wrestling at 142, Owings was killing himself in order to face him. According to an article written by Seattle Times reporter Bob Sherwin, in an interview with a Chicago paper leading to the great matchup, Owings said, “I’m not going to this tournament to be a national champion. I’m coming here to beat Gable.” Gable saw the article and started scouting Owings’ matches. “He noticed the UW wrestler was making “all kinds of mistakes but still ended up pinning his opponent.” The pins were accomplished by Owings’ best move, an inside reverse cradle that left his opponent unable to escape.” So Gable started practicing countermoves to the cradle with his teammates.

At the NCAA tournament at Northwestern, Owings was seeded second, which meant that he would face Gable in the finals if he made it that far. Gable pinned all of his opponents in reaching the finals. Owings pinned four of the five he faced.

The Northwestern Field House was packed as they came out for the final. Owings got off to a fast start, and was up 7-2 when Gable started his comeback during the 2nd period. Going into the third period, Owings led 8-6, with Owings starting on top. Gable got a reversal, and Owings broke free for an escape to bring the score to 9-8 in favor of Owings. However, that was not the true story. Gable had a riding time advantage of over 2 minutes, which was worth 2 points, so Gable actually led 10-9. With 30 seconds to go, in Owings’ words, “I had his arms locked in front of his chest. I looked down and saw his feet, and knew I had to go for them. I tripped him and as he went down, I was on top of him and got his shoulders to the mat.”

It was a four point play – 2 for the take down and 2 for a near fall. It was a move Owings had never even tried before, and because of it, he now led 13-10 with only seconds remaining. Gable escaped, to make it 13-11. With 3 seconds left, he needed an instant takedown. He didn’t get it.

Gable had lost his only collegiate match, his last.

Owings said later: “He (Gable) was dazed and confused. He was stunned he had lost. We were on our knees at the end of the match. We got up, and he offered me his hand and we shook… It was bedlam. They shut down the tournament for 15 minutes. The roar of the crowd was unbelievable.”

Weiskopf’s article continues: “Fifteen minutes later Gable mounted the victory platform beside Owings and accepted something he had never received before – a second-place medal. As he took it, 8500 people rose to applaud. Gables chin was on his chest. He bit his lips. The applause continued. Thirty seconds. Forty five. It lasted another half-minute and during that time Gable slowly raised his head until it was erect. Even in victory he had never been so honored nor received the tribute of a crowd that expressed itself more eloquently.”

There is a video of this match on Youtube. The quality sucks. There is no audio. But it’s a true record of one of the great upsets of all time. Check it out.

They met one more time – at the 1972 Olympic Trials. Gable beat him 7-1, though if it is any consolation, it was the only point Gable allowed during the trials, and in the Olympics in Munich, he did not give up a single point on his way to winning the gold.

Owings finished his collegiate career in 1972 with a record of 87-4, but that was his only NCAA crown. He lost in the finals as a junior and as a senior. He is not in the US Wrestling Hall of Fame (in Stillwater, OK), though hope is not lost yet. “Probably some day,” according to the President of the museum. “You can’t put someone in there because of one match. If he had won two national championships it would be easier, but he never went to the Olympics and didn’t do much international wrestling.”

Owings considers his huge upset to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. Despite a fine career, he is remembered only as “the man who beat Dan Gable.” As for Gable, he said of Owings decades later, “I don’t think he’s out of my head even today.”

According to Sherwin, “Owings has not talked to Gable since 1980, and that was a brief conversation to ask him to consider looking at a wrestler in his district. During the conversation, neither mentioned the match. They haven’t talked to each other since.”

Pretty Good. Pretty Good.

Rule #1 – you become a better writer by writing. I’ve written a lot since college, a lot more than I suspected I would after losing most of my confidence in senior English as the whuppin’ boy for Gracie Sullivan. She caused me to stop reading novels. I didn’t read a novel after high school until Xmas vacation in my senior year at Brandeis.

I did, for some strange reason, join the school newspaper, and I started writing if not reading. In addition to writing regularly, I did a lot of editing – I know I’m a better editor than a writer, partly because I get so much practice editing my own stuff.

I get a lot of compliments from the BABI crowd on this blog. I used to get a lot of compliments from the PEFA boys when I published for about 15 years the weekly PEFANews (well, weekly during the fantasy football season). Compared to most people, I’ve had a lot of practice writing, and I’ve gotten fairly good at it.

Good at it in the way I’m a pretty good singer. Yeah, I sing a little. I was in the college choir in those years long ago when I could squeeze out a high G (those were the days). And when I have an opportunity to sing, I get a lot of compliments.

What I really get are compliments from musically challenged people. Good singers know better. Hell, I know better. Good ear, not so good voice. I’m better than the clowns who really are clowns on American Idol. But I’m not as good as the singers who make it into the top 24*, and I’m not as good as most of the singers on Idol who sound pretty good during Hollywood week, and you’re surprised when they kick them out. I’m good if you don’t know any better.

*I’m probably as good as Sanjaya. And I used to have hair as long as his.

I think that’s the kind of writer I am. I’m practiced, and pretty funny, but not great. Good enough if the price is FREE.

I forget that sometimes. And then I read someone like Joe Posnanski, who has way more practice and he also has way more talent. Kind of like the big slugger in the slow pitch softball league watching Al Pujols lash a double. The big slugger looks pretty good when everyone is pulling a beer out of the ice tub after the game, but he’s not Good.

Joe is Good.

There is a link on the left to his blog. There is another link to his columns at the Kansas City Star. Everyone should spend some time with Joe. That is real writing.

I’ve killed some time today reading Joe’s blog. Hey, anything except real work!

There is this beautiful piece about Stan Musial.

And this hilarious piece about the longest day in his life.

And this tribute to Evel Knievel after he died.

OK, back to work. And my next piece will be our analysis of the 2009 keeper list of the Cartel.

Sigh.

Get Out the Pick-Axe

Our keeper list was decimated this season. It began with Jason Bay’s trade to the Red Sox last summer. It continued when Florida traded Mike Jacobs to KC. And then our best keeper, $3 Kerry Wood, signed with the Indians. It didn’t leave much.

The Pickled Pecklers are going to rebuild. We’re waiving the white flag. We’re dumping it all except for the obvious keepers:

Soto 11-2010
Pence 5-2009F
Maholm 2-2010
Lidge 26-2010

We haven’t decided on one more guy. We have Eric Byrnes on a contract at 18. It’ll cost us a Benji to dump him. There are rumors he’ll be the Dbacks’ #4 outfielder. We don’t know about his physical condition, having torn his hamstring.

On the other hand, he had a couple of incredible seasons in 2006 and 2007. In 2006 he had 26 homers and 25 steals. He followed that up with 21 homers and 50 steals in 2007. That’s a lot of stats for $18. Of course, with his suspect hammys, he probably won’t steal quite like that again, but if he went 15-15, wouldn’t that justify his $18?

Boof asked me 4 times in an email conversation if we were throwing him back. I told him 4 times we had plenty of time to decide, that we didn’t know. But it’s an interesting question, worth a discussion of the ground rules. Is it worth $100?

That $100 is our profit from last year, give or take. We played hard, made some good moves and made some mistakes and ended up with the thinnest keeper list in BABI. I hate to give it away.

Clearly if he hasn’t recovered, we’ll toss him. He’s got to get us SOME stats, and if he’s hurt, he’ll be much cheaper in the auction.

What if his role is undefined coming out of spring training. What if it looks like he’ll be splitting time with Conor Jackson in left, with Jackson moving to first against lefties, and Byrnes getting some extra playing time backing up Young and Upton? And throw in some extra playing time when Arizona plays in AL parks.

He seems sure to get 250 at bats. How about 350? Clearly if we think he’ll get 450 at bats, it’s worth keeping him. What do we do if we don’t think he’ll reach that 450?

The problem, of course, is we may not be sure on cutdown day what his status will be. Personally, I think they love Byrnes in Arizona. They gave him $30 million and he has a no-trade clause. He’s only one season away from his career year. I think it’s all BS. Of course, I WANT to think it’s all BS. How can they bench the highest paid player on the team who is also their heart and soul?

I really don’t want to pay that $100. This is a game about money, and the $100 counts. We worked hard for that $100, and didn’t sell Manny Ramirez and Brandon Webb last year so we could finish 4th.

Plus, we love Eric Byrnes. He’s what we all love about baseball. He’s us. He loves the game, he respects the game. He’s becoming a media talent, but he’s too young for that yet. He needs to have a chance at one more big year. And we’ve got just the team for him to do it on – the Pickled Pecklers.

I’m going to call him in March and ask him what I should do. Really. I’ve got a personal connection – I’ve known his aunt for 30 years. We were both at her wedding many years ago, although he was probably about 7 years old. I’m sure he’ll remember me, though.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in him, or any of the other guys on our roster not listed above, they are available cheap. We want to get younger – hey, don’t we all?

PS – This is our 400th post. Whoodathunkit? I’m happy to have Byrnesey be the subject of #400. I’m sure glad it’s not about Boof or Mr. Leaguer, or any of you mooks.

Guns

I was looking at the list of players nominated for the Hall of Fame who did not get the required 27 votes (5%) necessary to get on the ballot again next year. This is usually a group of pretty good players who you would NEVER think of as hall of fame material.

Of course, there are always a few names that are intriguing.

This year the most intriguing name was Mark Grace. He was a pretty good ballplayer for a pretty long time. His lifetime batting average was .303. He was a 3 time all-star and a 4 time gold glover. He got a ring in 2001 with the Dbacks.

And he had that outrageous series in the 1989 NLCS against the Giants. He was 11 for 17, with 3 doubles, a triple, a homer and 8 RBIs. His slugging percentage was 1.118. He went mano-a-mano with Will Clark, who was 13 for 20, with 3 doubles, 1 triple, 2 homers and 8 RBIs, slugging 1.200. It was a truly memorable series, climaxed by Clark’s hit up the middle off Mitch Williams. Clark, too, did not receive enough votes in his first pass a few years ago, and is off the HOF ballot forever.

Grace and Clark’s good buddy Matt Williams only got 7 votes, and is also off the ballot forever. Matt finally learned to deal with the curveball, and ended up with 378 homers and over 1200 RBIs. He made 5 all-star teams and and won 4 gold gloves, and did the world’s greatest imitation of Babe Ruth.

David Cone didn’t make it either. I’m surprised to see that he didn’t win 200 games, no less 300. He had a nice ERA, and struck out over 2600, but he never quite fulfilled the promise of that phenomenal 1988 season, his first full season in the majors, when he went 20-3 for the Mets with a 2.22 ERA. Believe it or not, he finished 3rd in the Cy Young voting that season behind Orel Hershiser and Danny Jackson. Cone was a money pitcher – he was 15-3 in post-season games.

Of course, it’s really nice to see Mo Vaughn on any list except a list of obituaries. Apparently he retired from the Cal’s girls softball team.

But here is my favorite name, a guy The Doc and I picked on our first joint fantasy baseball team on Compuserve in 1988: Ron Gant. Gant turned out to be a pretty damned good player, finishing his career with 321 homers and 243 steals. He went 30-30 twice, and almost a third time (27-36).

But most of all, Gant had guns. Check him out!

The top 10 BR comparisons to Gant were all pretty good players with one probable HOFer:

Reggie Sanders
Jeromy Burnitz
Jimmy Winn
Andruw Jones
Bobby Bonds
Roy Sievers (led the AL in HRs & RBIs in 1957)
Greg Vaughn
Darryl Strawberry
Bobby Thompson
Frank Thomas (521 Homers, 1700+ RBIs)

You wonder if Andruw will finish ahead of Gant or behind him. He could go either way at this point.

Anyway, here’s to Ron Gant, who always has a seat of honor in the Pickled Pecklers’ clubhouse. And if you’re interested in acquiring his rookie cards, we’ve got about 5,000 of them you could purchase cheap.

The World's Fastest Man

Bob Hayes finally, finally, finally was voted into the NFL Hall of Fame. It is a shame he's not here to enjoy it.

Only us old guys remember him. First he changed track and field forever. Then he changed the game of football.

Here is a link to my clearest memory of Bob Hayes. It's a horrible print. You can ignore the last couple of minutes, which is a retrospective of the 1964 Olympics. Hayes had already tied the world record in winning gold in the 100 meters in 10 flat. But this was the race which has been burned into my brain for 45 years: the 4x100. Hayes ran the anchor. Check it out.

Secretariat at the Belmont. They say it was the fastest 100 ever. I'm convinced the phrase "The World's Fastest Man" was invented for him based on this race.

Ralph Wiley wrote this post on ESPN.com after he died in 2002. It does justice in a way I can't. He's a real writer, I'm just a fan. Here's a sample, about that magical day in Tokyo:

"The Bullet Man was behind five relay teams when he got the baton on the anchor leg of the 4 x 100-meter relay final in Tokyo. He made up nine meters on the field. Nine meters! He ran his leg in 8.6. That's not running. That's teleportation. That's Star Trek."

As a football player, zone defenses were introduced to try to stop him. Like the 3 second rule introduced to stop Wilt underneath, the league had to find something to slow him down.

Here is Wiley again:

"For his career, he averaged a neat 20.0 yards per touch, including punt returns, including seasons of playing with leg injuries. One year, 1970, he averaged 26.1 yards per catch. The next year, he averaged 24.0 per catch. That's a quarter of the length of the field, every time he touched it.

That, my friends, is the full-blown Wrath of God, in cleats.

Why, numbers can't begin to describe the fear he put in the NFL .

Like pitchers fear Barry Bonds today, defenses feared Bob Hayes then. Then knew they couldn't handle him one-on-one, not unless they were on a motorcycle, or in a jet pack. Even today, a former Cowboys receiver like (Pete) Gent, who watched him in the passing line, in practice, and in games, says nobody was like Bob Hayes."

Bruce Jenkins says you can ignore stats and just look a player and know he's a HOFer. Bob Hayes' stats were pretty good, but who cares? All you had to do was see him play. Staubach to Hayes. Special.

Hall of Fame. Finally. One of my few sports heroes.