| | From Jack Johnson to Magic Johnson, from Red Grange to the Big Red Machine, sports in the 20th century have given generations of fans one lasting memory after another.
In one truly unique book, ESPN SportsCentury has captured the most significant moments and athletes from the last 100 years of sports. ESPN SportsCentury features comprehensive essays from elite sports writers, famous photographs and recollections from your favorite ESPN personalities.
The following are excerpts from ESPN SportsCentury, which will be available September 22.
The Best Ever?
Hall of Famers John McGraw and Branch Rickey, whose combined baseball experience extended from before the turn of the century to after the erasure of the color line, both flatly stated that Honus Wagner was the best baseball player they had ever seen.
Ty Cobb, Wagner's AL counterpart as a hitting machine and terror on the basepaths, was also his rival for the title of baseball's best. But when they met in the 1909 World Series, Wagner had the upper hand. Cobb, 13 years younger than Wagner, boasted, taunted and threatened throughout the Series, while the folksy, easygoing Wagner just went about his business. In the end Wagner led the Pirates to victory, stealing six bases to his two, and, according to legend, finally answered Cobb's taunts with a hard tag to the face that left Cobb with a cut lip and two loose teeth. In the aftermath, Cobb said Wagner was "the only man in the game I can't scare." Cobb's teammate "Wahoo" Sam Crawford simply said, "Wagner is the greatest player who ever lived." --Michael Point
Jack Dempsey: The Gentleman Pugilist
Rising out of Colorado mining camp brawls and hobo jungles into the rough-and-tumble prizefighting world of the 1920s, Jack Dempsey became a superstar of the Jazz Age. The scowling heavyweight held the title from 1919 to 1926, participated in boxing's first million-dollar gate and transformed its dominant style. In the 1930s, remembered trainer Eddie Futch, "the gyms were full of fighters bobbing and weaving like Dempsey." The 6-foot-1 inch, 185-pounder retired with a 64-6-9 record, and a 1950 AP poll named him the greatest fighter of the half century. --David Zivan
The Swing
Across generations, golfers might disagree about who was the greatest player ever, but from Grantland Rice to Lee Trevino, they've agreed on one thing: No one ever swung a club better than Sam Snead. "I think Sam Snead had the best golf swing of anyone I have ever had the pleasure of playing with," said Trevino. It was an absolutely flawless swing."
There have been other great ones, but none of them produced a record 81 PGA victories, like Snead. He won seven major titles -- the Masters and PGA Championship three times each and the British Open once.
Snead's career spanned four decades; then he spent two more decades on the seniors tour. He played with an intimidating combination of power and grace. A multi-sport athlete in high school, the 5-foot-11 inch, 175-pound Snead had a natural, fluid swing. While some top players favored the arms or legs in their swings, Snead made good of both. --Mark Rosner
Mr. Hockey
The seemingly indestructible son of the Saskatoon prairies, Gordie Howe, known as "Mr. Hockey" to one and all, was the dominant figure on the violent front lines of the hockey wars for decades, reaffirming with each passing year that, while the ice was graced by many superstars, it had seen only one true superman in the pre-Gretzky era. As Detroit Red Wings coach Jack Adams put it in the late '60s, "There is Gordie Howe and there are other hockey players who are merely great."
A smooth and deceptive swift skater with long, gliding strides, Howe never looked rushed, and his confident composure unnerved goalies almost as much as his incredibly powerful wrist shots. Wayne Gretzky, whom Gordie Howe befriended as an 11-year-old and mentored in his early professional days, always admired the ease with which he worked his wonders. "He was in control of the whole game," said Gretzky. "He seemed to do everything so gracefully." --Michael Point
The Mick
With his power, self-effacing manner, and perennial championships, Mickey Mantle perfectly embodied that time when anything seemed possible in America. At the middle of this American Century, he captured the imagination of baby boomers, who carry that image into the millennium. There was little doubt or dissent in the Fifties, as the Cold War cast life in simple and stark terms. Mantle's Yankees did the same for sport. Octobers were spent watching No. 7 patrol sacred ground. I was four years old in 1959, determined to hit left-handed. Because, as a switch-hitter, the Mick often did. Even though he sold his celebrity and his signature, when we later discover that Mickey had human frailities, he was immediately forgiven and embraced. Hey, he's the Mick. No other recent death drove so many middle-aged men to tears. A mourner outside the memorial service spoke for millions: "I feel as if my childhood just ended." --Bob Ley
Sweetness
With tremendous muscle control and balance -- he could walk the width of a football field on his hands -- Walter Payton ran like a drum major, straight-legged and on his toes, and used the phenomenal strength in his buttocks, thighs and hips to make percussion his instrument.
Given a choice between running out of bounds or turning into a defender, the man whose gloved-fit CB handle was "Mississippi Maniac" would never lower his shoulder and play demolition derby. "Why let the guy who's going to hit me get the easiest and best shot?" Payton rationalized.
It often wasn't a fair exchange, even against 300-pound defensive linemen, because few football players were ever more physically gifted than Payton, Chicago Bears running backs coach Fred O'Connor once took a look at the 5-foot-10-inch, 205-pounder and said, "God must have taken a chisel and said, 'I'm gonna make me a halfback.' --Mark Wangrin
Jordan & Iverson
The decade ended like the decade began. The best one-on-one player in basketball, the guy who could take anyone on the planet off the dribble, being the most prolific scorer in the NBA. Right there, the similarities between Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson end, right? Sure. Iverson wears baggy shorts off his rear end, wears enough gold to give Fort Knox a run, wears cornrows in his hair, and is publically disliked by some NBA veterans. Seems to me, though, there was this other dynamic "can't-nobody-guard-me" guy who came into the league in 1984. Wore baggy shorts, wore a lotta gold, had a bald head before bald heads were chic, was frozen out during an All-Star Game by some NBA veterans. Michael Jordan took sports toward the end of the century by not adhering to what establishment had set up. Allen Iverson takes sports into the next century by doing the same. They both have game; they just prove you can have game . . .on your own terms. --Stuart Scott
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