Top 10 Athletes From Georgia
Remember: Golf is not a sport. This eliminates Bobby Jones and Larry Mize from consideration. Jones did, however, win the 1st James E. Sullivan Award for America's most outstanding amateur athlete, in 1930.
And auto racing is not a sport. This eliminates Bill Elliott, a.k.a. "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville."
Remember also: It's where the person was trained to play his sport that matters, not where he was born. Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, but became an athlete in Pasadena, California.
Honorable Mention to Baseball Hall-of-Famers Bill Terry and Luke Appling, both of Atlanta. Although Terry was nicknamed "Memphis Bill," and Appling was born in North Carolina, they both grew up in Georgia.
Terry joined the New York Giants in 1923, and was the 1st baseman on their National League Pennant winners in 1923, 1924, 1933 and 1936, also managing them to Pennants in 1933, 1936 and 1937, including winning the 1933 World Series.
He batted .341 lifetime, including a .401 in 1930, making him still the last NL player to bat at least .400. He was the NL's starting 1st baseman in the 1st 3 All-Star Games (1933-35), and was named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players. The Giants retired his Number 3.
Luke Appling batted .310 lifetime, including .388 in 1936, an American League record for shortstops. He won the AL batting title that year, and in 1943. He was a 7-time All-Star, and collected 2,749 hits. The Chicago White Sox retired his Number 4, and dedicated a statue of him at Guaranteed Rate Field. Both he and Terry are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Honorable Mention to Spurgeon "Spud" Chandler of Commerce, who helped the Yankees win 6 World Series and was the 1943 American League Most Valuable Player.
Honorable Mention to Donn Clendenon of Atlanta and Ray Knight of Albany. The Mets once had a rivalry with the Atlanta Braves, which is odd, because they've only won 2 World Series, and, each time, the Series MVP was from Georgia: Clendenon in 1969, and Knight in 1986.
Honorable Mention to the Heisman Trophy winners from Georgia: George Rogers of Duluth, 1980; Herschel Walker of Wrightsville, 1982; Charlie Ward of Thomasville, 1993; and Cam Newton of Atlanta, 2010. Newton still might make the Top 10 if I do this list again in a few years.
Honorable Mention to Super Bowl MVP Winners from Georgia: Jake Scott of Athens (1973), Richard Dent of Atlanta (1986), Deion Branch of Albany (2005), and Hines Ward of Forest Park (2006).
Honorable Mention to Pro Football Hall-of-Famers from Georgia who did not otherwise make the Top 10: Dent, Rayfield Wright of Griffin, Ray Guy of Thomson, and Shannon Sharpe of Glennville. Herschel Walker is in the College Football Hall of Fame. So is Sharpe's brother, Sterling Sharpe. Walker, Sterling Sharpe and Hines Ward are eligible for the Pro Football Hall, but none of them is in it yet.
Honorable Mention to Theresa Edwards of Cairo. A guard, she helped the women's basketball team at the University of Georgia reach the NCAA Final Four in 1983 and 1985, and her Number 5 was retired. She later played in the WNBA for the Minnesota Lynx. She won Olympic Gold Medals with the U.S. team in 1984 in Los Angeles, 1988 in Seoul, 1996 in Atlanta and 2000 in Sydney, and the Bronze Medal in 1992 in Barcelona. She has since gone into coaching, and has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Honorable Mention to Linda Hamilton of Atlanta, who played on the U.S. team that won the 1st Women's World Cup in 1991.
Honorable Mention to Kelley O'Hara of Peachtree City and Morgan Brian of St. Simons, who played on the U.S. team that won the 2015 Women's World Cup.
Honorable Mention to Theodore "Tiger" Flowers of Camilla. He was the 1st black fighter to win the Middleweight Championship of the World, knocking out Harry Greb to do it and holding it through most of 1926, before losing it to Mickey Walker. Oddly, he died in 1927 due to complications from surgery, only a year after Greb also had. He was posthumously elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Honorable Mention to Sidney Walker, a.k.a. Beau Jack, of Waynesboro. He was twice Lightweight Champion of the World from 1942 to 1944, and The Ring magazine named him Fighter of the Year for 1944.
Honorable Mention to Alice Coachman of Albany. A star in basketball and track at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, she lost her chance at Olympic glory in 1940 and 1944 due to World War II. But in 1948 in London, she won the high jump to become the 1st black American woman to win a Gold Medal.
Honorable Mention to Roger Kingdom of Vienna. He went to the University of Pittsburgh on a football scholarship, but was better at track & field, excelling in the high jump and the discus throw. But his specialty became sprint hurdles. He could have been an Olympic decathlon contender, but that event was dominated by Britain's Daley Thompson in the 1980s.
Still, Roger won the 110-meter hurdles in Los Angeles in 1984, and repeated his Gold Medal in Seoul in 1988. To this day, he and Lee Calhoun (1956 and 1960) are the only men to have successfully defended that title.
After Bob Hayes in 1964, there was a trend of pro football teams hiring sprinters to be receivers, and aside from Hayes, it didn't work. But Renaldo Nehemiah, whom Kingdom succeeded as the best American sprint hurdler (as opposed to Edwin Moses, who specialized in the 440-meter hurdles), did have a decent career as a receiver with the San Francisco 49ers. In 2014, Roger Kingdom finally reached the NFL -- as the strength and conditioning coach of the Arizona Cardinals.
Now, the Top 10:
10. Gwen Torrence of Decatur. At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, she won 2 Gold Medals and a Silver Medal. At the 1996 Olympics in her home State, she won another Gold and a Bronze. Total: 5 Medals, 3 of them Gold.
9. Wyomia Tyus of Griffin. She followed Wilma Rudolph as one of Tennessee State University's track "Tigerbelles," and won the 100 meters at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, succeeding Rudolph herself as the winner of that event. Tyus was succeeded by... herself, as she won it again in 1968 in Mexico City, becoming the 1st person, male or female, to repeat as the 100-meter winner. In the 4x100-meter relay, she won Silver in 1964 and Gold in 1968.
8. Johnny Mize of Demorest. To look at "The Big Cat" (a nickname also given to one of my Honorable Mentions, Rayfield Wright), you'd have sworn he was a football player. Actually, football wasn't even his 2nd-best sport: Tennis was. He was connected to possibly the 2 best players in baseball history: He was a distant cousin of Ty Cobb, and his 2nd cousin, Claire Hodgson, became the 2nd Mrs. Babe Ruth.
But with the way he hit, Big Jawn didn't have to take a back seat to anyone. He batted .312 lifetime, with 359 home runs -- 2 less than Joe DiMaggio and 1 more than Yogi Berra. He was a 10-time All-Star, won the National League batting title in 1939 with the St. Louis Cardinals, whom the NL home run title 4 times and the NL RBI title 3 times, although he just missed the Triple Crown with the New York Giants in 1947.
In 1949, the Giants thought he was washed up. The Yankees didn't, and traded for him. He helped them win the next 5 World Series. In 1952, his home runs earned him the Babe Ruth Award as World Series MVP. It took a long time, but he was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981. The Cardinals have also elected him to their team Hall of Fame.
7. Frank Thomas of Columbus. Not to be confused with the 1960s slugger known as Big Donkey, this man had the best nickname in his era of baseball: The Big Hurt. Fortunately, much like earlier sluggers Harmon "the Killer" Killebrew and Frank "the Monster" Howard, he's actually a nice guy.
Born on May 27, 1968, the same exact day as fellow Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jeff Bagwell (and during Don Drysdale's then-record streak of 58 2/3rds consecutive scoreless innings), Frank was a 5-time All-Star, the American League MVP in 1993 and 1994, and a batting champion in 1997. He is 1 of 9 players to have a .300 lifetime batting average (in his case, .301) and 500 career home runs (in his case, 521). The others are Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols and, dubiously, Manny Ramirez.
He appeared in the postseason with the Chicago White Sox in 1993 and 2000, and with the Oakand Athletics in 2006. But he was robbed of a shot at playing on a World Series winner in 1994 because of the strike and 2005 because of injury. (He was given a ring in 2005, though.) The White Sox retired his Number 35, and dedicated a statue to him at Guaranteed Rate Field.
6. Maya Moore of Suwanee. She is practically the Bill Russell of women's basketball. She won 3 national player of the year awards at the University of Connecticut, the 2009 and 2010 National Championships, and the 2010-11 Honda-Broderick Cup as the nation's outstanding female collegiate athlete of the schoolyear.
She was just getting warmed up. In the WNBA, she can count among her honors the 2011 Rookie of the Year, 5 All-Star Game appearances including 2 MVPs, the league's 2014 scoring title and regular-season MVP, and 4 league championships including the Finals MVP in 2013. She was named to their 20th Anniversary 20 Greatest Players. She's also won Olympic Gold Medals in 2012 in London and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. And she's only 28 years old. Barring injury, she is far from done.
5. Mel Blount of Lyons. Today, approaching his 70th birthday, Mel usually appears clean-shaven, wearing a sharp suit, a cowboy hat, and a big smile. He looks like a black man who beat the white oilmen at their own game. But as a Pittsburgh Steeler cornerback, sitting on the sideline with his helmet off, with his big black bald head, a thick beard, and a scowl, he looked like the last man a wide receiver wanted to meet.
You know an athlete is effective when a new rule is added and his name is attached to it. In 1972, Mel played every game, and didn't allow a single receiving touchdown. He was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1975.
His size and speed allowed him to specialize in bump-and-run coverage. This was banned in 1978, and became known as the Mel Blount Rule. It's one of the reasons the passing and receiving yards records up to that point now seems small and quaint. Did the rule stop the man for whom it was nicknamed? Before it, Blount made 2 Pro Bowls and won 2 Super Bowls. After it, he made 3 Pro Bowls and won 2 Super Bowls. So, in total, 5 Pro Bowls and 4 Super Bowl wins. So, no.
He was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Pittsburgh Steelers' All-Time Team, the NFL's 1980s (but, oddly, not the 1970s) All-Decade and 75th Anniversary All-Time Teams, The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Football Players and the NFL Network's 100 Greatest Players. The Steelers generally don't retire uniform numbers, and his 47 is not one of those considered to be "unofficially retired," but no current Steeler wears it.
4. Fran Tarkenton of Athens. He grew up in the town that is the seat of the University of Georgia, and quarterbacked them to the 1959 Southeastern Conference Championship, at a time when LSU and Ole Miss might have been better than they've ever been. Then he went to the Minnesota Vikings, then to the Giants, and then back to the Vikings, making 9 Pro Bowls, and being named NFL MVP in 1975.
By the time he retired, he held most of the major NFL passing records, including most passes, most completions, most passing yards, and most touchdown passes. But he couldn't win the big one: He helped the Vikings win the NFC Championship in 1973, 1974 and 1976, but they lost all 3 Super Bowls. (He was with the Giants when they reached their 1st Super Bowl, which they also lost.)
The Vikings retired his Number 10, and named him to their Ring of Honor. He was elected to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, and was named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999 and the NFL Network's 100 Greatest Players in 2010.
3. Walt Frazier of Atlanta. He led Southern Illinois University to the 1967 NIT Championship at the old Madison Square Garden, and was named the Tournament's MVP. The Knicks took notice, and drafted him, and he became the greatest sports star of the new Garden. Yes, greater than Mark Messier. Certainly, greater than Patrick Ewing.
Nicknamed Clyde because his teammates thought he dressed like Warren Beatty in the film Bonnie and Clyde, he was a 7-time All-Star, including a 2-time All-Star Game MVP. He was a 7-time All-Defensive First Teamer. While Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals is remembered for Willis Reed limping onto the court and psyching the Los Angeles Lakers out with just 2 baskets, it was Frazier's greatest game, and the Knicks won their 1st NBA Championship. He would lead them to another in 1973.
His Number 52 was retired by SIU, and his Number 10 by the Knicks. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. He is the greatest player ever to play for an NBA team in the New York Tri-State Area -- yes, better than Julius Erving or Jason Kidd as a Net.
He became a Knick broadcaster, and also runs a restaurant near the Garden. And he has kept his reputation as the coolest athlete in New York history, despite playing at the same time as Joe Namath.
2. Ty Cobb of Royston. This isn't about how nice a guy he was. This is about him being the best baseball player in the world pretty much continuously through the entire Presidencies of William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson.
The Georgia Peach won 12 American League batting titles, 4 RBI titles, and the home run title in 1909, making him the AL's 1st Triple Crown winner. He led the Detroit Tigers to Pennants in 1907, 1908 and 1909. Under the old system, he was named AL MVP in 1911.
He was once recognized as having held the records for stolen bases in a season (96) and a career (892), although checks of 19th Century totals have thrown those marks into question. He once held the record for most runs in a career, 2,245. He once held the record for most hits in a career, 4,191, although that was later revised to 4,189. He still holds the record for highest career batting average, the revision bringing it from the old familiar .367 to .366.
Since he played before the era of uniform numbers, the Tigers dedicated a plaque in his memory, and placed it on the outer wall of Tiger Stadium. They have since added his name, but no number, to the retired number wall at Comerica Park, and dedicated a statue to him as well. (Footage of him at Yankee Stadium for Old-Timers' Day 1947 shows him wearing a Tiger uniform with the Number 25 on it. There is no known explanation.
When the 1st election for the Baseball Hall of Fame was held in 1936, Cobb got the most votes, which, in a manner of speaking, makes him the 1st person elected to the Hall of Fame -- in any sport. In 1999, The Sporting News listed him 3rd on their 100 Greatest Baseball Players, behind only Ty Cobb and Willie Mays. That same year, he was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Tyrus Raymond Cobb was difficult to like, and impossible to put up with -- but you had to admire him.
But even he is not the greatest athlete from Georgia. He excelled for 24 years, but this man actually held World Championships, 15 years apart:
1. Evander Holyfield of Atlanta. A lot of people, himself included, thought he was robbed in his Semifinal fight at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. That U.S. boxing team produced 9 of the Games' 12 Gold Medal fighters, including Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker and Mark Breland. None of them went on to anywhere near the professional success of "The Real Deal."
He won the WBA Cruiserweight Championship in 1986, the IBF version in 1987, and unified the titles by taking the WBC version in 1988. He was supposed to fight Mike Tyson for the undisputed Heavyweight Championship in 1990, but Tyson's loss to James "Buster" Douglas, and then his arrest and imprisonment, sidetracked that. Holyfield fought Douglas instead, and won the title.
He then lost the title to Riddick Bowe in 1992, regained it from Bowe in 1993 (the only pro fight Bowe ever lost), then lost it a few months later to Michael Moorer. He fought Bowe a 3rd time, with neither man as Champion, and lost.
Holyfield was, at the time, the only man ever to knock down Ray Mercer (but not the only one to beat him), and the only man to knock down Riddick Bowe (and remained the only one to beat him). He had also beaten Dwight Muhammad Qawi (twice), his fellow 1984 Olympian Henry Tillman, James "Quick" Tillis, Pinklon Thomas, Michael Dokes, Alex Stewart (twice), Buster Douglas, the older but still very potent George Foreman, and the aging Larry Holmes. But the 3rd Bowe fight looked to have finished him as a heavyweight contender.
Bert Sugar, the sportswriter and sports historian who probably knew more about boxing than any other human being who has ever lived, went on the Sunday night sports-wrapup show on WCBS-Channel 2 in New York. He rightly pointed out Holyfield's statuses (stata? statii?) in regard to Mercer and Bowe. He had seen boxers such as Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson do big things when considerably older than 33, Hoylfield's age at the time. But he concluded by saying, "In boxing terms, Holyfield is a very, very old man."
Holyfield didn't listen. Like Yankee star Paul O'Neill, he was called "The Warrior." He picked himself up, and knocked out Bobby Czyz, setting up, at long last, a fight with Tyson. Iron Mike was 45-1, and the Douglas fight was now seen, in Sugar's words, as "a blip on the radar screen." He was invincible.
Holyfield disagreed, and, on November 9, 1996, changed boxing history, taking the WBA title by clobbering Tyson to the point that referee Mitch Halpern stopped the fight in the 11th of the intended 12 rounds. This was a methodical destruction, made possible because, as Sugar rightly pointed out, Holyfield knew that Douglas won was because he wasn't afraid of Tyson, thus taking away Tyson's greatest weapon: Fear. "This is the end of the Tyson legend," Sugar said. 'The Baddest Man On the Planet' ain't, no mo'!"
The Ring magazine named him Fighter of the Year in 1987, 1996 and 1997. He has been elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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