Woods' greatness on a different level than other sports' greats

A few years ago, Muhammad Ali's wife, Lonnie, gave me her business card. And the name of her company was: GOAT, Inc.

That really took me aback because one of the great slurs in sport is exactly that . . . goat. A goat is a player whose blunder cost the game. The goat is adorned with the cuckold's horns.

But when I looked more closely at Lonnie Ali's card, I saw that "GOAT" was an acronym for, well, the absolute opposite of goat. G-O-A-T stood for Greatest Of All Time. And if Mrs. Ali, with a preemptive strike, had declared her husband the GOAT boxer, the term has since migrated into other sports, and these last few weeks have been a veritable GOAT-fest of arguments.

The urge to ascend a superstar to exalted GOAT status is always strong because so many sports fans are what I call "presentists." To these students of GOATdom, the best athletes can only be those performing now, in the present. That's because athletes are bigger than their forebears, and literal records prove everything. Thus, because he holds the current hundred-meter record, Usain Bolt is ipso facto the GOAT sprinter, and someone like Jesse Owens is a has-been. Hey, say the presentists, just look at the little guy's times.

Moreover, fans today pay so much money they want to believe that what they're seeing is the best ever. It's sort of ironic, because in other arts it's the old masters from the past who are the GOATS. Current painters, composers and actors are never so good.

Of course, it's always more difficult choosing a GOAT in team sports because you can't simply be intrinsically the best individual. You must possess complementary team value, as well. The rising babble about LeBron James being even more talented than Michael Jordan plummeted when James' team lost in the playoffs. But Tiger Woods and Roger Federer don't have to worry about teammates. They win a tournament, it's their's alone, and so as soon as Federer won his French Open a couple of weeks ago to complete his career sweep of the four Grand Slams, his GOAT stock soared.

Comparing Federer's record to Rod Laver's is trickier than comparing Tiger Woods to Jack Nicklaus, though, because tennis was still a so-called shamateur game for much of Laver's career, with legitimate pros locked out of the tournaments that mattered. So, the Laver-Federer GOAT dispute remains ongoing, while Woods seems to have already eclipsed Nicklaus in most golf GOAT arguments.

It isn't Woods' fault, but as he goes for another U.S. Open championship this week, what he has missed is a real foil, an almost-GOAT to keep challenging him -- as Nicklaus had Palmer, Player, Trevino and Watson, as Ali had Frazier, as Laver had Rosewall, as Federer has Nadal. Thus, while Joe Louis fought what were called the bums of the month, Woods pretty much plays the, well, the ordinaries of the week. So Tiger may well be the GOAT, but he's also the cheese, standing alone. His eminence is in relative isolation.

Published Jun 17, 2009

FRANK DEFORD

Frank Deford is among the most versatile of American writers. His work has appeared in virtually every medium, including print, where he has written eloquently for Sports Illustrated since 1962. Deford is currently the magazine's Senior Contributing Writer and contributes a weekly column to SI.com. Deford can be heard as a commentator each week on Morning Edition. On television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel. He is the author of 15 books, and his latest,The Enitled, a novel about celebrity, sex and baseball, was published in 2007 to exceptional reviews. He and Red Smith are the only writers with multiple features in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century. Editor David Halberstam selected Deford's 1981 Sports Illustrated profile on Bobby Knight (The Rabbit Hunter) and his 1985 SI profile of boxer Billy Conn (The Boxer and the Blonde) for that prestigious anthology. For Deford the comparison is meaningful. "Red Smith was the finest columnist, and I mean not just sports columnist," Deford told Powell's Books in 2007. "I've always said that Red is like Vermeer, with those tiny, priceless pieces. Five hundred words, perfectly chosen, crafted. Best literary columnist, in any newspaper, that I've ever seen." Deford was elected to the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. Six times at Sports Illustrated Deford was voted by his peers as U.S. Sportswriter of The Year. The American Journalism Review has likewise cited him as the nation's finest sportswriter, and twice he was voted Magazine Writer of The Year by the Washington Journalism Review. Deford has also been presented with the National Magazine Award for profiles; a Christopher Award; and journalism honor awards from the University of Missouri and Northeastern University; and he has received many honorary degrees. The Sporting News has described Deford as "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media," and the magazine GQ has called him, simply, "The world's greatest sportswriter." In broadcast, Deford has won a Cable Ace award, an Emmy and a George Foster Peabody Award for his television work. In 2005 ESPN presented a television biography of Deford's life and work, You Write Better Than You Play. Deford has spoken at well over a hundred colleges, as well as at forums, conventions and on cruise ships around the world. He served as the editor-in-chief of The National Sports Daily in its brief but celebrated existence. Deford also wrote Sports Illustrated's first Point After column, in 1986. Two of Deford's books, the novel, Everybody's All-American, and Alex: The Life Of A Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis, have been made into movies. Two of his original screenplays have also been filmed. For 16 years Deford served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and he remains chairman emeritus. He resides in Westport, CT, with his wife, Carol. They have two grown children – a son, Christian, and a daughter, Scarlet. A native of Baltimore, Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught American Studies.

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