Houston's Greatest Athletes

Rip Van Rocket · Jul 28, 2013

I guess no one has ever heard of A.J. FOYT

DaonlyLA · Jul 28, 2013

Thurman Thomas

Dr of Dunk · Jul 28, 2013

lol @ some of these names you guys are pulling out of the blue ... yeah, some of those guys bring back great memories, but no way should they replace anybody on that list. The only name I think I've seen so far that is a big omission is Carl Lewis, although, I guess even that is debatable since he ran with Santa Monica most of his career and only went to college in Houston from what I remember.

Shroopy2 · Jul 29, 2013

They actually have this same article on regular NBA Yahoo front page now

Dream team: Can Olajuwon win Houston?
Hakeem Olajuwon faces stiff competition from Nolan Ryan and Earl Campbell.

Yao doesnt belong on the list over Bagwell. By prestige, yes. By performance and accolades, no. Yao is a perfect honorable mention or top 15.

NON-team sports athletes are harder to figure in, sports like boxing, tennis, golf, track, racing, etc. Just how it goes.

Dr of Dunk said: ↑

lol @ some of these names you guys are pulling out of the blue ... yeah, some of those guys bring back great memories, but no way should they replace anybody on that list. The only name I think I've seen so far that is a big omission is Carl Lewis, although, I guess even that is debatable since he ran with Santa Monica most of his career and only went to college in Houston from what I remember.
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I'm easing back on the Carl Lewis selection a little. For the individual sport athletes, what constitutes being officially part of "the city"? It is nice that Houston can be an ADOPTED hometown. But if you didnt grow UP in the town, or didnt work EXTENSIVELY within town, its harder to make a strong case.

I see the Kansas City list has Maurice Greene, which specifically says he was BORN AND RAISED there. (And it has golfer Tom Watson. Which opens it up for the AJ Foyts and George Formans) Lewis did do damage at UH, but after that he's seemingly been all over the place.

linvetb6 · Jul 29, 2013

Jeff Bagwell

tinman · Jul 29, 2013

Jose Cruz
Ralph Sampson
Ernest Givens

VonWafer#1Fan · Jul 29, 2013

sealclubber1016 said: ↑

Any Houston list without Bagwell is meaningless.

He should be in ahead of Yao, Murph, Dre, Nolan and Matthews.

I love him, but Yao should be bumped off. This is a played in Houston pro list, so no Carl Lewis
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100% Agree. Bagwell was better than Biggio, he just didn't have the longevity. Love both those guys though.

Precision340 · Aug 1, 2013

Glenn Davis not on the list?! My favorite Astros of all times!!

Houst0ne · Aug 1, 2013

Alvin Choo said: ↑

George Foreman
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Was going to say this

kevC · Aug 1, 2013

Ryan Bowen?

j3i · Aug 1, 2013

Brian Ching!

legacygt777 · Aug 1, 2013

foreman in his sport accomplished more than half of this list

jimmyv281 · Aug 2, 2013

Booker T suckas..... " can you dig it"

Pipe · Aug 2, 2013

Lewis should be on the list. If you count Port Arthur/Beaumont as being "Houston" also missed Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

Pipe said: ↑

Who was a Hall of Fame golfer, set 5 world records in track and field in one afternoon, All-American basketball player, and accomplished diver, bowler and pool player?
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Best female athlete? No one's ever beaten Babe
Much more to Zaharias than golfing Grand Slam

By David Barron
7:32 AM

In 1950, there were three major women's golf tournaments - the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship and the Western Open - and Babe Didrikson Zaharias won them all.

If South Korean golfer Inbee Park wins the women's British Open at St. Andrews this week, she will top the late Babe Didrikson Zaharias as the only player to win four of women's golf's major events in the same calendar year.

When Zaharias, born in Port Arthur and raised in Beaumont, won the Grand Slam in 1950, it was just three events - the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship and the Western Open. For Park, it will take five wins in the modern LPGA. She's already won the Kraft Nabisco, the LPGA Championship and the U.S. Open. After the British Open, September brings the newly designated major, the Evian Championships.

But if Park wishes to match Zaharias across the board, she has a few other things to accomplish even if she completes the Grand Slam, starting with the basics: five more LPGA majors, 31 more tournament championships and six women's Athlete of the Year awards.

She'll need Olympic medals for running, jumping and throwing plus championship skills in basketball and competitive competence in tennis, swimming, diving and billiards. She must punt, pass and kick, since Zaharias scrimmaged with the 1932 SMU Mustangs, and pitch, hit, catch and gun the ball from deep right field to home plate on one bounce to match Babe in baseball.

Babe played the harmonica and worked the vaudeville circuit after winning two gold medals in the 1932 Olympics, so Park needs to brush up her one-liners. She also must master the fine art of trash talking to the point she can, as did Zaharias, walk into an LPGA locker room and announce, "I'm here. Which of you ladies is playing for second place?"

It won't happen, of course, because no one in this era of athletic specialization will ever emulate the Babe, who 80 years from her Olympic prime and almost 60 years after her death remains one of the greatest athletes and one of the most outsized personalities of all time.

She was almost too much for this world even when she bounded across hedges along Doucette Street in Beaumont as a child and ran exuberantly roughshod over the genteel world of women's golf as an adult. And it boggles the mind to imagine a 21st-century, 140-character universe in which Babe Didrikson Zaharias also could hold electronic court as @TheBabe.

"If Babe were alive today, she would have her own sneaker line," said Don Van Natta Jr., author of a 2011 Zaharias biography. "She would have her own TV show. For someone who could play every sport as she could, the sky would be the limit.

From left, Babe Didrikson Zaharias competes in the 1932 Olympics, where she won gold in the 80-meter hurdles and the javelin; pitches for a New Orleans pro baseball team in 1934; and poses in boxing trim in 1933.

"She was 13 years old when she declared to her family and friends that she would be the greatest athlete of all times. My oldest daughter is 14. Can you imagine your daughter making that kind of declaration? And what I really love is that she didn't say she would be the greatest woman athlete. She said 'greatest athlete.' "

Zaharias' feats in the decades surrounding World War II are an afterthought to most today. A few recall the mid-1970s Emmy-winning TV movie "Babe" or her selection in 1999 by ESPN's SportsCentury panel as the 10th-greatest North American athlete of the century and the only woman in the top 10.

Her legacy remains on display, however, at the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum along Interstate 10 northwest of downtown Beaumont. The museum contains photos, relics and trophies, including replicas of her Olympic medals, plus a film that features legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice touting the Babe's prowess in 20 sports.

"She is beyond all belief until you see her perform," Rice wrote of her in 1952. "Then you finally understand that you are looking at the most flawless section of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical coordination, the world of sport has ever seen."

The museum's most valuable asset, however, is the enduring devotion and ambition of W.L. Pate Jr., a Beaumont City Council member who succeeded his late father as executive director of the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Foundation.

From left, Babe Didrikson Zaharias competes in the 1932 Olympics, where she won gold in the 80-meter hurdles and the javelin; pitches for a New Orleans pro baseball team in 1934; and poses in boxing trim in 1933.

Pate can and will talk for hours on Babe lore.

"I'm not related to her, but when people hear me talk, they think I'm talking about my grandmother … and she could bake a cherry pie," Pate said.

"Just try to imagine being born in 1911 and deciding you want to be the best athlete in the world. She didn't have anybody to look up to or pattern herself after. She just wanted to be the best, and she was."

Born in Port Arthur to Norwegian immigrants, the Babe dropped out of Beaumont High School in 1930 to join an Amateur Athletic Union basketball team in Dallas sponsored by Employers Casualty Insurance Co.

She led her team to a national championship and, as the only Employers Casualty representative at the 1932 AAU track and field championships, won five of the eight events in which she competed and tied for a sixth title to win the championship as a one-woman team, outdistancing the 22-member Illinois Women's Athletic Club.

The Babe won gold medals in the 80-meter hurdles and javelin and silver in the high jump at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. A day later, she played a round of golf with a group of sportswriters that included Rice and Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News. The former became her greatest admirer; the latter marred her image, referring to her as a "girl-boy child" and "muscle moll."

In reply, she told one writer, "I know I'm not pretty, but I do try to be graceful."

After the Olympics, she tried vaudeville, barnstormed with the bearded House of David baseball team, and in 1934 turned her focus to golf. Denied amateur status by the U.S. Golf Association and limited to the few pro tournaments of the day, she dabbled in tennis and bowling, worked to change her image, and was married in 1938 to professional wrestler George Zaharias.

Reinstated in 1943 by the USGA, she continued barnstorming, teaming up in the mid-1940s with a 16-year-old Arnold Palmer, who said in a 2011 interview that Zaharias "talked to me like a buddy and a friend," and won 14 consecutive tournaments in 1946.

A year later, she became the first U.S. player to win the women's British Amateur. She added the U.S. Open title in 1948 and in 1950, as one of 13 founding members of the LPGA, won all three majors - the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship and the Western Open.

"She transformed the expectations of what a woman athlete could do," said Marilynn Smith, a founding member of the LPGA and a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

"She was a power hitter, a swashbuckling kind of player, and she was quick with a quip. She would say to the crowd, 'Now I'm going to loosen my girdle and let it fly.' She was always on stage."

She had her critics. She was not universally popular, according to interviews with her competitors by ESPN in 1999. Some chafed at her competitive nature, others said she was prone to lenient interpretation of the rules, and all agreed she was prone to such comments as, "I happen to be the star, and you folks are the chorus."

Others whispered about her relationship with golfer Betty Dodd, her companion on the LPGA tour. Some contemporaries have hinted of a sexual relationship; Van Natta said he searched for details, but "the women who knew Babe that I interviewed didn't believe" such a relationship existed.

Diagnosed in 1953 with colon cancer, she underwent surgery and returned to the LPGA tour in 1954, wearing a colostomy bag. She won the U.S. Open, which in those days featured 36 holes on its final day, by 12 strokes.

"It was only after she got cancer that she began to think of others," Van Natta said. "She had been all about herself. Only after the 1954 Open did she grow up, thanking her doctors and serving as an inspiration" as one of the first to speak openly of cancer at a time when the disease was generally relegated to whispers.

The Babe died on Sept. 27, 1956, at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston at age 45. Over the next two decades, a group of Beaumont business leaders raised money for the one-woman museum, which was filled by a collection of items that had been on display at a Finger's furniture store in Beaumont.

Park's bid for the Grand Slam this week likely will bring Zaharias' name to the forefront for some, and Pate hopes the USGA will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Babe's 1954 U.S. Open win next year. With Van Natta now working for ESPN, he hopes the company someday will name its annual women's athlete of the year award in Zaharias' honor.

The foundation annually endows six women's athletic scholarships at Lamar University, and Pate said there is enough money on hand to fund what he hopes will be a six-figure upgrade, perhaps as early as next year, that could increase the museum's size by 75 percent for exhibits and video displays.

The Babe, Pate said, deserves the best.

"You can come up with the best quarterback in the NFL," he said. "You can come up with the best center fielder, the best forward in the NBA, but when you come to the best female athlete ever, you start with the Babe, and then you ask who is No. 2? Who even gets close?"

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...athlete-No-one-s-ever-beaten-Babe-4694572.php
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