The San Francisco Bay Area's 10 Greatest Athletes
As is the case everywhere else, but it seems especially so here, I'm only counting what the athlete did in the metro area in question. What Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Rickey Henderson did in New York, what Orlando Cepeda did in St. Louis, what Joe Montana did in Kansas City, and so on, does not matter here.
Honorable Mention to San Francisco Giants in the Baseball Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make the Top 10: Orlando Cepeda and Gaylord Perry. Buster Posey may join them someday.
Honorable Mention to Oakland Athletics in the Baseball Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make the Top 10: Jim "Catfish" Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley.
The A's are particularly hurt by the splitting of careers between teams and cities, as Catfish, Reggie and Rickey Henderson did big things with the Yankees; Fingers with San Diego and Milwaukee; Eck with Cleveland, Boston and the Chicago Cubs; and later A's stars Mark McGwire with St. Louis and Jason Giambi with the Yankees. (This was also true of their Philadelphia years, and for the same reason: Money. Only, while Charlie Finley was merely cheap, Connie Mack was actually skint, and needed to sell great players off.)
Honorable Mention to San Francisco 49ers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make the Top 10: Joe Perry, Leo Nomellini, Y.A. Tittle, Hugh McElhenny, Bob St. Clair, John Henry Johnson, Jimmy Johnson, Dave Wilcox, Fred Dean, Charles Haley, Steve Young and Terrell Owens. Roger Craig should be in the Hall of Fame, and good cases can be made for John Taylor, Randy Cross, Guy McIntyre and Harris Barton.
When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, Young was ranked 63rd. When the NFL Network named its 100 Greatest Players in 2010, while Young dropped to 81st.
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Honorable Mention to Oakland Raiders in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make this Top 10: Jim Otto, Fred Biletnikoff, George Blanda, Willie Brown, Art Shell, Ken Stabler, Ray Guy, Dave Casper, Ted Hendricks, Tim Brown, Jerry Rice and Warren Sapp. (Rice and Sapp each played 4 seasons for the Raiders late in their careers, therefore, they qualify here.) Charles Woodson becomes eligible in 2021, and will surely join them. Jack Tatum never will. Chances are, neither will Lester Hayes.
Somebody from the Raiders had to be in my Top 10, but picking the greatest Raider wasn't easy. Al Davis believed nobody should outshine anybody else... especially not outshine him. He never retired a uniform number, not even 00 for Jim Otto (a play on his name: "Aught-Oh"), a number used only that once in NFL history. So it's not like we can say, "He's the only/first Raider to get his number retired."
Complicating things further is the fact that 3 legitimate contenders for the title of "Greatest Raider Ever" played for them all or mostly in Los Angeles: Marcus Allen, Howie Long and Mike Haynes.
When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, Brown was ranked 50th, Shell 55th, Hendricks 64th, Otto 78th, Biletnikoff 94th, and Blanda 98th. When the NFL Network named its 100 Greatest Players in 2010, Otto was ranked 63rd, Brown 66th, Shell 76th, Hendricks 82nd, and Biletnikoff and Blanda had dropped off the list.
Honorable Mention to San Francisco/Golden State Warriors in the Basketball Hall of Fame, who didn't otherwise make this Top 10: Guy Rodgers, Nate Thurmond, Robert Parish, Chris Mullin and Šarūnas Marčiulionis. Kevin Durant will likely join them. ("San Francisco," 1962 to 1971; "Golden State" since moving to Oakland. Their new arena in San Francisco opens next year, but they've chosen to keep the "Golden State" name.)
Very Honorable Mention to Wilt Chamberlain, center, San Francisco Warriors, 1962-65. The absolutely indisputable greatest basketball player who ever lived, he played 3 seasons for the Warriors in Philadelphia, and then 3 in the City By the Bay, before being traded to Philadelphia's replacement team, the 76ers. So I can't put him in the Bay Area's Top 10. But he did get the Warriors to the 1964 NBA Finals. Ironically, when Wilt finally won a title in 1967, it was the Warriors that his Sixers beat in the Finals.
Honorable Mention to San Jose Sharks stars Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton. There are 5 former Sharks players in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but, between them, they played just 9 seasons for the team, and none is thought of mainly as a Shark: Igor Larionov, Sergei Makarov, Ed Belfour, Teemu Selanne and Rob Blake.
Honorable Mention to the San Jose Earthquakes' greatest player to play for them, Landon Donovan; and the greatest player for the franchise, Chris Wondolowski. (Donovan played a lot longer for their arch-rivals, the L.A. Galaxy.
10. Rick Barry, forward, San Francisco Warriors 1965-67, Oakland Oaks 1968-69, Golden State Warriors 1972-78. The details of where he played, when, and didn't play, and why, aren't relevant here. Here's what's relevant:
He led the NBA in scoring and was named All-Star Game MVP in 1967, having been named Rookie of the Year the season before. He helped the Warriors win the 1967 NBA Western Division title, but lost the Finals. He became the 1st NBA star to bolt for the ABA, crossing the Bay and winning the 1969 ABA Championship with the Oakland Oaks, and the 1972 Eastern Division title with the New York Nets.
He then returned to his former team, now in Oakland and calling themselves the Golden State Warriors. He was a 12-time All-Star, 8 times in the NBA and 4 in the ABA. In 1975, he led the NBA in steals, and helped the Warriors win their 1st title since moving from Philadelphia in 1962, and won the Finals MVP.
He closed his career in 1980 with the Houston Rockets. The year before, he set an NBA record with a .947 free throw percentage. One of the last players to make free throws underhanded, he retired with a career percentage of .900, then the all-time leader. (Both records have since been broken.)
The Warriors retired his Number 24. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and named to the ABA All-Time Team and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players, 1 of 5 players so honored. His sons Brent and Jon also played in the NBA.
9. Gene Upshaw, guard, Oakland Raiders, 1967-81. You might have expected the greatest Raider ever to be a defensive back, a position Al Davis liked to have great players in: Willie Brown, Jack Tatum, Lester Hayes, Mike Haynes, Charles Woodson. Or a maniac defensive lineman, such as Ben Davidson, Otis Sistrunk, John Matuszak or Lyle Alzado.
But there's something weirdly poetic about it being an offensive lineman. A whole side of the Raider line made the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Center Jim Otto, guard Gene Upshaw, and tackle Art Shell. Known as Highway 63 for his uniform number and the "road" he cleared for Raiders to run on, Upshaw made the 1968 AFL All-Star Game, and then 6 NFL Pro Bowls, for a total of 7 such games. He was a rookie on the 1967 AFL Champions, losing Super Bowl II, and won Super Bowls XI and XV with the Raiders. He is the only man to make the Super Bowl in 3 different decades with the same team (1967-68, 1976-77, 1980-81).
From 1983 until his death in 2008, he served as executive director of the players' union, the National Football League Players Association. Ironically, it was right after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987 that he led the last players' strike.
In addition to the Hall, he was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team and its 1970s All-Decade Team. When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, Upshaw was ranked 62nd. When the NFL Network named its 100 Greatest Players in 2010, Upshaw had actually gained in appreciation, ranked 56th.
8. Willie McCovey, 1st base, San Francisco Giants, 1959-73 and 1977-80, plus Oakland Athletics 1976. A 6-time All-Star, he was NL Rookie of the Year in 1959, and MVP in 1969. His lifetime batting average was only .270, but his OPS+ was a mighty 147. He hit 521 home runs, and hit line drives that could have taken an infielder's head off.
Unfortunately for him, his only trip to the World Series, with the 1962 Giants, ended with him hitting a line drive that could have gotten the tying and winning runs in Game 7 home, but Bobby Richardson of the Yankees caught it. The Giants also came close to the Pennant in 1964, 1965 and 1966, and won the NL Western Division in 1971.
The Giants retired his Number 44, dedicated a statue to him outside AT&T Park, named the part of San Francisco Bay right outside the park "McCovey Cove," and since his 1980 retirement, have annually presented the Willie Mac Award to their "most inspirational player." In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 56th on their 100 Greatest Baseball Players. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986, and I was at the induction ceremony.
7. Steph Curry, guard, Golden State Warriors, 2009-present. Since he is still with the team, he could rise higher. Already a 5-time NBA All-Star, he is 1 win away from being a 4-time NBA Champion. Still, 3 is more than most guys get: 2015, 2017 and 2018. Indeed, it's as many as LeBron James has, and as many as Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry, the previous 2 contenders for the title of the Warriors' greatest player ever, combined.
In his 1st title season, 2015, he won the NBA All-Star Game Three-Point Contest. In 2016, the 1 year since 2014 that he didn't win the NBA title, he led the NBA in scoring and steals, guiding the Warriors to a single-season record 73 regular-season wins. He has surpassed not only his father, Dell Curry, who was a pretty good player in his time, but every player the Bay Area version of the Dubs has ever had -- though not Wilt for an entire career.
6. Juan Marichal, pitcher, San Francisco Giants, 1960-73. He's no longer the winningest Hispanic pitcher in major league history, having been surpassed by Dennis Martinez and now (with pharmaceutical help) Bartolo Colon. But he's begun to get the recognition he was frequently denied in the 1960s, a decade in which the high-kicking Dominican won more games than any other pitcher, including Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson.
A 10-time All-Star, he helped the Giants to the 1962 National League Pennant and the 1971 NL Western Division title, although they fell just short a few other times while he was there. He finished with a career record of 243-142. They have retired his Number 27, and dedicated a statue to him outside AT&T Park. He was the 1st Dominican player, and the 1st Hispanic pitcher (aside from Negro League star Martin DiHigo, who was not strictly a pitcher), elected to the Hall of Fame.
5. Rickey Henderson, left field, Oakland Athletics, on and off from 1979 to 1998. I'm not sure if he's the greatest player to have played for the Oakland A's, but he's the greatest player in the franchise's 1st half-century in Oakland, where he grew up after having been born in Chicago.
He had a career OPS+ of 127. He set records, unlikely to ever be broken, for stolen bases in a season, 130 in 1982, and in a career, 1,405 -- no one else is even over 1,000. He had 6 .300 seasons. He hit 297 home runs, including the most leadoff homers. An 11-time All-Star, he only won 1 Gold Glove, but he was also named the 1990 American League Most Valuable Player. He is the all-time leader in runs scored with 2,295. Briefly, before being surpassed by Barry Bonds, he was also the all-time leader in walks with 2,190. He is a member of the 3,000 Hit Club.
He reached the postseason with the A's in 1981, '89, '90 and '92, the Toronto Blue Jays in '93, the San Diego Padres in '96 and the Mets in '99 (infamously playing poker in the dugout during the clinching Game 6). He won the World Series with the '89 A's and the '93 Jays.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The A's not only retired his Number 24, but named the playing surface at the Oakland Coliseum after him, Rickey Henderson Field, making him the only person so honored in any of the "big four" North American major league sports. (This has happened many times with football fields and basketball courts in college, but not in the majors.) When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Baseball Players in 1999, Rickey, still active, was ranked 51st.
He is perhaps the most egotistical ballplayer of all time. Yet as Bill James, King of the Statheads, says, "If you could split him in two, you'd have two Hall-of-Famers."
4. Ronnie Lott, safety, San Francisco 49ers, 1981-90. It says something about the dynasty that Bill Walsh built that the 49ers not only have the Numbers 1, 2 and 4 players on this list, but that these men could be, respectively, the greatest receiver, quarterback and defensive back who ever lived.
A 10-time Pro Bowler, Lott made 63 interceptions, returning them for 730 yards. He forced 16 fumbles in his career, and scored 5 touchdowns -- as a defensive player.
He helped the 49ers win Super Bowls XVI, XIX, XXIII and XXIV. He was named to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, and the NFL's 75th Anniversary, 1980s and 1990s All-Decade Teams. The 49ers retired his Number 42. When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, Lott was ranked 23rd. When the NFL Network named its 100 Greatest Players in 2010, he rose significantly, to 11th.
3. Willie Mays, center field, San Francisco Giants, 1958-72. Remember: What he did in New York doesn't matter -- and even if it did, he might not be ahead of the 2 guys in front of him. But...
Say, hey, do you know of any other athlete who's enough of a cultural icon that his name has been worked into The Honeymooners, Peanuts and Star Trek? Nope, not even Babe Ruth, the one and only player selected ahead of Mays in The Sporting News' 1999 list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players.
Willie, Hank, and Stan Musial share the record of appearing in the most All-Star Games, 24. He was named NL Rookie of the Year in 1951, and the MVP twice, in 1954 and 1965, and probably should have won at least 1 more. He won 12 Gold Gloves, and would have won more had the award been established earlier than 1957. He led the League in batting average once, home runs 4 times and stolen bases 4 times.
From 1954 to 1965, he was 1 of the top 3 players in baseball every year, and was still one of the top 10 as late as 1971, when he was 40 years old. He batted at least .300 and had at least 100 RBIs 10 times each. His lifetime batting average was .302, he had a 156 OPS+, his 3,283 hits included 523 doubles, 140 triples and 660 home runs, and he had 1,903 RBIs. He also had 338 stolen bases, making him the only guy with 500 homers and 300 steals until Barry Bonds came along.
He was less lucky in the team achievement department. In his 1st 2 full seasons -- he missed most of 1952 and all of 1953 serving in the U.S. Army in the Korean War -- he helped the New York Giants win the 1951 Pennant and the 1954 World Series, including making the most famous defensive play in the history of sports, "The Catch," in Game 1. After that, there was a Pennant with the San Francisco version of the Giants in 1962, a Division title in 1971, and he closed his career with the Pennant-winning 1973 Mets, looking like he should have retired at least a year earlier.
The Giants retired his Number 24, filed the street address for their new AT&T Park as 24 Willie Mays Plaza, and dedicated a statue of him outside it. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2015, Barack Obama awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
2. Joe Montana, quarterback, San Francisco 49ers, 1979-92. Is he the greatest quarterback who ever lived? For me, it's a tough call deciding between Joe and Johnny Unitas. The difference between them is a hair -- and not one of Joe's long blond hairs, but one of Johnny's short black crewcut hairs.
He led the San Francisco 49ers into Super Bowls XVI, XIX, XXIII and XXIV, winning them all, making them NFL Champions for 1981, 1984, 1988 and 1989. He was named MVP of Super Bowls XVI, XIX and XXIV, and Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year for 1990. (An SI cover at the end of 1989 seemed to unofficially award their Sportsman of the Decade to Montana, Magic Johnson and Wayne Gretzky.)
An 8-time Pro Bowler, he was named NFL MVP in 1989 and 1990. An injury led the 49ers to think of his age and his health, and they released him in favor of Steve Young. The Kansas City Chiefs signed him, and he got them to the 1993 AFC Championship Game, still their best performance since Super Bowl IV after the 1969 season.
The 49ers retired his Number 16. He was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame (but not the College Football Hall), and the NFL's 1980s All-Decade and 75th Anniversary Teams. And while Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania changed its name to Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the town of Ismay, Montana changed its name to Joe, Montana.
1. Jerry Rice, receiver, San Francisco 49ers, 1985-2000. The Sporting News named him Number 2 among all players, behind Brown. And he still had several good years left. When the NFL Network did its 100 Greatest Players 11 years later, they listed Rice as Number 1.
In 1989, the year he was named MVP of Super Bowl XXIII, Don Hutson, then on the short list for the title of greatest receiver ever, said Rice was better than he was -- and this was after Rice had just 4 full seasons in the NFL.
Herewith the evidence, and the numbers are staggering. He made 13 Pro Bowls, the 1st at age 23, and the last at age 39. A receiver making the Pro Bowl at thirty-nine years old! He was named NFL Offensive Player of the Year in 1987 and 1993. He won Super Bowls XXIII, XXIV and XXIX with the San Francisco 49ers, being named MVP in XXIII.
Career receptions: 1,549 -- he was the 1st man with 1,000, and the next-best is Tony Gonzalez with 1,325. Receiving yards: 22,895 -- next-best is Terrell Owens with 15,934, nearly 6,000 less! All-purpose yards: 23,546 -- slightly ahead of Brian Mitchell with 23,330. Receiving touchdowns: 197 -- next-best is Randy Moss with 156. Overall touchdowns: 208 -- next-best is Emmitt Smith with 175. In other words, he was not only great, but the numbers suggest he was insanely great.
The 49ers retired his Number 80. He was elected to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, and to the NFL's 1980s and 1990s All-Decade Teams and its 75th Anniversary Team.