What is GOAT?

  When the discussion for the Greatest Of All Time(A.K.A. GOAT), what do people think makes them the greatest of all time? How many championships they have won? Their stats? Length of their career? There are so many factors that you have to consider when thinking about the GOAT of not only each sport, but each position in each sport. When you think of the Mt. Rushmore of any sport, it so hard to decide. Different sports, you may only have Mt. Rushmore of a certain position, like baseball for pitchers and position players or football quaterbacks and all other positions. What is it that puts these players at the immortality of their respective position and sports?

    As mentioned, every sport is different in this category. Let’s start with baseball. Baseball is so tough to choose simply due to the fact of its lengthy history. If you want my honest opinion, you have a Co-Goat. You maybe thinking, Co-Goat(this will be football too, read down), huh? In baseball, everyone in the sport except the DH(who I would not even consider a GOAT of the sport) plays the field. You have 9 fielding spots, including the pitcher. No matter what defense is such a strong category in baseball. You have the gold glove award just for this reason. Omar Vizquel and Ozzie Smith could bat at behind the pitcher if they wanted, but they were number 1 on the field they were so good. You could say they were the best 2 defensive shortstops to ever play the game, but they weren’t great offensively.   

   Then there is batter vs. pitcher, which is where our Co-GOAT comes into play. Offensively, you have a hefty amount of categories including Home Runs, Hits, RBI, Runs Scored, and Batting Average just to name a few. There have been so many position players that were so good with that bad, I can’t count those on my toes and fingers. I have had this argument with many people before on who is the greatest. Pitcher’s are the same way. You have most strikeouts, wins loss record, fewest walks allowed, ERA, and K/9 ratio to name a few categories.

     If you want to name a GOAT for a position player, you have to take all of the above into consideration and more. For a position player, you take into his defense, offense(what kind of offensive player was he power or contact), did he win any awards(ROY, MVP, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger etc). You can take winning in to account, but please just look at Ted Williams, he is one of the greatest to play the game but never won a World Series. Even though baseball is the penultimate team sport(another time), 1 player could change the dynamic of a lineup(look at Babe Ruth). If you want my honest opinion, the GOAT among position players is Babe Ruth. He transformed not 1, but 2 teams(Red Sox and Yankees). He hit for power, he played his position well, he was one of the first 5 inductees of the Hall of Fame the year after he retired!

    For the Goat Pitcher, it is a lot more complicated than what you may think. Today, we have 2 types of pitchers, a starting pitcher and relief pitcher. Up until the early 1960’s, 2 things occurred that did not occur today, starters pitched more often than every 5 days and relievers were not used as much or as popular. While thinking about the GOAT, you have to think about this situation as well. If you want to say that Mariano Rivera is the greatest relief pitcher of all time, you can say so, but I would not put him in the top 10 pitchers of all time. For a pitcher, you also have think of the stats he puts up including wins, strikeouts, ERA, innings pitched, and strikeouts/9 innings to name a few. You also have to think of the awards they receive(ROY, MVP, CY Young, Gold Glove). You would also have to think about the length of time they were dominate. Look at Sandy Koufax, for the first 5 years of his career he was a horrible pitcher, all of a sudden in 1960 he turned it around and was so dominate no one even thought about the first years of his career, but he was forced to retire at age of 30. If you want my opinion, the greatest pitcher of all time is Randy Johnson. He is top 2 in all time strikeouts, multiple Cy Young and no hitters and has over 300 wins. He had an extended career which certainly helped.

   In football, you can go a similar direction. You have the defensive end of the ball and the offensive end of the ball. How can someone say Tom Brady or Joe Montana is the greatest football player of all time if they only played 1 position on 1 end of the ball? If you want to debate that they are the greatest quarterback or offensive football player of all time I understand that, but aren’t you taking away the chance of saying someone like Lawrence Taylor, Warren Sap or Dieon Sanders is the greatest of all time? You can certainly say any of those players is the greatest DEFENSIVE player of all time.

     Think of it in this light,  an offensive or defensive player can player their side of the ball and Special Teams, but they still have less in common than a pitcher and position players who BOTH play 2 sides of the ball(defense and either offense or pitching). If you want to say Tom Brady, Jim Brown or Reggie White are in the top 10 players of all time based on stats, length and other characteristics. Football is one sided on both ends of the ball.

    Everyone has to rethink what the meaning of the Greatest of All Time means in every sport. It is certainly fun to have this debate. I have it all the time with my friends, we argue all the time. Everyone should take advantage of watching the generational greats. I got to watch Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. If you were able to say you watched them play, then you are the lucky one.