Dejan Kovacevic tries to stir things up at the end of his Q&A. It must be frustrating for him, with the city thinking of only one thing (PirateFest!), and no one but the likes of me reading his spring training coverage.
Bill James says something that is true and hard to accept, namely, that you always assess a current or living player's rank in history as conservatively as possible. Here in the week Lemieux retires, he may look like the Wagner or better of professional baseball. Heck, Bettis may too, if he retires from the endzone of a victory in Ford Field. But raise that same question - who was better in his sport - fifty years from now ... what would you expect?
Plus you have to accept that hockey is somehow the equal of football or baseball. Even if we play anthropologist and argue that kumquats are equally good as apples and oranges, you're just plain nuts if you think hockey has been the equal of those sports in the life of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area. So ... the greatest athlete in the city's history? We could have all of history's greatest ping-pong player in this town - a ping-pong player who walks on water and never lost a game - and still she wouldn't be the greatest athlete in the city's history. No offense, Mario, but the city's sports history - at least in regards to the twentieth-century - will always be about football and baseball before it's about hockey. And that's not all that unusual for an American city; it's not like Pittsburghers ignore professional hockey any more than the average American sports fans of other major cities.
That said, all hail Mario!
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