GOAT Bay Area Athlete Jerry, Steph or Barry?

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Dennis Eckersley, A’s​

Eck was a 32-year-old with the makings of a washed-up starter by the time the A’s traded for him in 1987. It’d be nice to say general manager Sandy Alderson and manager Tony La Russa had a brilliant plan all along to turn him into a late-innings weapon. But they didn’t see it coming, and neither did the greatest closer the A’s have ever had. “When I got here, they said, ‘Just go out there and we’ll figure this out. We’ll find something for you,’’’ Eckersley said.
The kid from Fremont took to the bullpen begrudgingly at first, then used it as his path to Cooperstown. He finished his career with 390 saves and 197 victories. He did so with flowing hair, a thick mustache and a penchant for pointing at batters after striking them out. Fiery as he looked, his arm was always in control: In the 1989 and 1990 seasons combined, he walked only seven while striking out 128. As Goose Gossage once said: “He could hit a gnat in the butt with a pitch if he wanted to.”
Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series heroics aside, Eck had a singular career.

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Reggie Jackson, A’s​

Reggie gained his greatest fame in Yankee pinstripes, but he spent twice as much time in Oakland (10 seasons) as he did with the Yankees (five seasons). As he said upon his arrival in New York in 1977: “I didn’t come to New York to be a star. I brought my star with me.” The Coliseum is where Jackson first burst into consciousness and still ranks among Oakland’s all-time leaders in every offensive category except batting average. He ranks second in home runs in Oakland A’s history with 269 (behind Mark McGwire’s 363).
In those early days, Mr. October was better known for what he did the other months of the season. In 1969, for example, he reached the All-Star break with 33 home runs. In the 1971 All-Star Game, Jackson clobbered a pitch from Dock Ellis into the light tower on top of Tiger Stadium. In 1973, he led the league in slugging, homers, runs and RBIs and was the unanimous AL MVP selection. That fall, Jackson gave a hint of his autumns to come by earning World Series MVP honors as the A’s defeated the Mets in seven games.

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Ronnie Lott, 49ers​

As a defensive back who terrorized 49ers’ opponents from 1981 to 1990, Lott left his mark by leaving a mark. This guy hit hard. Lott tried putting his ideal hit into words, telling the San Jose Mercury News in 1989: “Everything tingles. You let everything out, kind of cleanse yourself. Me making a great hit is no different than Magic (Johnson) making a great pass. You don’t luck into it. It’s knowing the game, knowing what’s going to happen, knowing what angle to take.”
Lott made 10 Pro Bowls and earned a spot on the NFL All-Decade Team for the 1990s. He also won four Super Bowls — enough to fill his left hand, if only because Lott lost the tip of his pinky finger to surgery after it was crushed by the helmet of Cowboys fullback Timmy Newsome in 1985. Lott also played two seasons with the Raiders (and two with the Jets) after his 49ers career was over.

 

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John Madden, Raiders​

Because of the video game that bears his name and his bombast and humor from the broadcast booth, it’s easy to forget Madden was once a wildly successful head coach — with an emphasis on wildly. Hired at 32, he was a gesticulating madman on the sideline while going 112-39-7 over 10 years with the Raiders. Madden’s .759 winning percentage is the highest ever among coaches with 100 career victories. He also guided the Raiders to seven Western Division titles and – boom! — never had a losing season.
“He did a great job of managing the guys. We had some characters,’’ former Raiders defensive back George Atkinson told ESPN in 2013. “For him to manage us and keep us engrossed in playing football and winning, that was in and of itself a hell of a job. A lot of guys had been rejected from other teams.”
Madden led the Raiders to their first Super Bowl victory in January 1977, but two years later retired with a bleeding ulcer and coaching burnout. All Madden did after that was win 16 Emmys during his TV career and launch a video game empire.

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Patrick Marleau, Sharks​

Not long before the Sharks took the quiet 17-year-old with the No. 2 overall pick in the 1997 draft, the Mercury News dispatched a reporter to his family’s 1,600-acre farm in the tiny town of Aneroid, Saskatchewan.
“I envision the kind of career I’d like to have; the player I’d like to be,” Marleau said in his living room that day. “I want to be the go-to guy. I want to help a team win a Stanley Cup.
“It’s going to be interesting being on a team lower in the standings and helping to build it up. It would make winning the Stanley Cup even more special.”
So, so close.
Marleau helped ignite a struggling franchise and went on to establish himself as the most prolific player in Sharks history. He’s the team’s all-time leader in goals by an impossibly wide margin — 518, safely ahead of Joe Pavelski (355). The only Sharks player with more assists, Joe Thornton, was the guy who went No. 1 overall to the Bruins in that 1997 draft.
Marleau, 40, will finish this season with the Pittsburgh Penguins after being traded by the Sharks in February (which followed his rejoining the Sharks early this season after he spent two seasons in Toronto) and is set to become an unrestricted free agent after this season. Another return to the Sharks is considered likely.

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Willie McCovey, Giants​

Long before Barry Bonds came along, McCovey was the fearsome left-handed Giants slugger that opposing teams tried to avoid at all costs. In 1969, McCovey was intentionally walked 45 times, shattering the mark of 33 held by Ted Williams. “If you pitch to him, he’ll ruin a baseball. He’d hit 80 home runs,’’ rival manager Sparky Anderson once said of McCovey. “There’s no comparison between McCovey and anybody else in the league.”
Beloved by everyone except opposing pitchers, “Stretch” became one of the most popular Giants ever. He introduced himself by going 4-for-4 against Robin Roberts in his debut in 1959, finished with 521 career home runs and remained a ballpark fixture in San Francisco until his death in 2018.

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Buster Posey, Giants​

In the 46 years B.P. (Before Posey), the San Francisco Giants won zero World Series. In the five years A.P., they won three. Posey became the first player ever to win a Rookie of the Year award, an MVP and three World Series titles before his 28th birthday. Posey didn’t change the franchise’s fortunes single-handedly — he came up as part of a wave of drafted and developed players that included Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum and Bumgarner. But Posey’s prime offensive years, combined with his preternatural leadership skills, provided the foundation for a team on the rise.
“You hear people say they’re blown away, say it’s incredible what the Giants achieved,’’ pitcher Jake Peavy once told Andrew Baggarly. “Is it really incredible when you have Buster Posey, one of the best players in the league, running the game?”

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Jerry Rice, 49ers​

Walsh first spotted the Mississippi Valley State receiver while flipping channels in his Houston hotel room the night before a game against the Oilers. He summoned executive John McVay and public relations director Jerry Walker to come watch, saying, “Look at the way he moves! Look at his concentration!” The rest of the world would eventually see it, too, and we might not see another one like him. Rice is the NFL’s all-time leader in touchdowns (208) by a wide margin: Emmitt Smith finished with 175 and Larry Fitzgerald is the active leader with 120. Rice is also the all-time leader in receiving yards, catches and receiving touchdowns. He remains most proud of his three Super Bowl rings, which he displays often. “You hear so many players say ‘I’m not going to let a Super Bowl define my legacy,’’’ he once said. “Then why are you playing the game?”

 

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Ken Stabler, Raiders​

Want to know what the 1970s Raiders were like? Just find a photo, any photo, from the playing days of the quarterback nicknamed The Snake. The wild-haired, keen-eyed passer with the mischievous grin was the embodiment of the franchise’s ethos.
“Just stay in the fast lane, and keep moving,” Stabler wrote in his autobiography. “You cannot predict your final day, so go hard for the good times while you can.”
Even his official bio from the Pro Football Hall of Fame notes that Stabler was known for his “exciting and flamboyant style.” He compiled a .661 winning percentage and became the first quarterback of the AFL-NFL merger to lead a team to the five consecutive conference championships. With his knack for fourth-quarter comebacks, Stabler endeared himself to teammates with his clutch play. One of his favorite lines in a tense huddle: “This is our time.”
Stabler was the NFL MVP and in 1974 and helped the Raiders win their first Super Bowl in January 1977.
“The bigger the situation, the calmer he got,” Madden once said of Stabler, “which was a great combination with me, because I was just the opposite.”

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Klay Thompson, Warriors​

You’ve heard athletes talking about being in the zone? Thompson lives in one, forever marching to his own off-beat drummer. His personality, and his dedication to an English bulldog named Rocco, could make him a fan favorite, even if he were a 12th man.
But Thompson finds the zone on the court, too, and when he does it’s a sight to behold. There was the time when he set an NBA record with 37 points in a quarter, going 13-for-13 from the field, including 9-for-9 from long range. There was the time scored a career-high 60 points — in 29 minutes, the fewest minutes ever played in a 60-point game. There was the time he set an NBA single-game record with 14 3-pointers as part of a 52-point night. That was one of Thompson’s catch-and-release specials — he took just five dribbles on those 14 3s.
Above all, there was the time he torched the Oklahoma City Thunder with a playoff-record 11 3-pointers as part of a 41-point, season-saving performance in Game 6 of the 2016 Western Conference finals.
In terms of composure, Thompson could compete with Montana for the greatest thrill-to-chill ratio the Bay Area has ever known.
“He’s so comfortable in his own skin,’’ Steve Kerr once said of Thompson. “I just think he wants to go out there and hoop, and he doesn’t worry about much else.”

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Joe Thornton, Sharks​

In a perfect world, Thornton will hoist that elusive Stanley Cup over his head before skating off into the sunset. Goodness knows he’s done everything else.
Thornton, who turns 41 in July, is widely regarded as one of the best passers ever. He ranks seventh in NHL history with 1,089 assists and ninth in games played. His chase for that trophy is symbolic of hockey in San Jose — so much regular-season success, so much playoff frustration. A phrase they both know by heart: Wait till next year.
“I feel like I still have a lot in the tank left,’’ he told The Athletic earlier this month. “It’s not like a last-hurrah-type thing. I feel good, and my mind feels great. It’s not like, ‘Oh, this is going to be my last shot at it.'”
Thornton is the only player in NHL history to win the Art Ross Trophy while switching clubs in the middle of the season after the Bruins traded him to the Sharks early in 2005-06. Since then, Thornton has more than 800 assists in a Sharks sweater, just the 15th player in league history to reach the milestone with a single franchise.

 

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Gene Upshaw, Raiders​

For a measure of Upshaw’s enduring excellence, consider that he is the only player in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl in three different decades for the same team. The 6-foot-5, 255-pound left guard blocked for the Raiders in ’67 (lost to the Packers in Super Bowl II), in ’76 (beat the Vikings in Super Bowl XI) and in ’80 (beat the Eagles in Super Bowl XV).
He spent all 15 of his NFL seasons with the Raiders and proved a nightmare matchup for teams that had to contend with his mobility on the sweep. “Running over those defensive backs is my biggest thrill in football,’’ he once said.
Upshaw, who died in 2008, was the Raiders’ first-round draft choice in 1967 and became the first pure guard to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Upon retirement, the seven-time Pro Bowl selection went on to serve for another quarter-century as the head of the NFL Players Association.

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Tara VanDerveer, Stanford​

When VanDerveer was growing up in upstate New York, her parents weren’t always supportive of her basketball interest. She’d be launching shots at a neighbor’s basketball hoop when the call would come from across the yard: “Basketball won’t take you anywhere. Come in and do your algebra.”
Did VanDerveer choose wisely? You do the math.
She has gone on to guide Stanford to two NCAA Championships (1990, 1992), 12 NCAA Final Four appearances, 22 conference regular-season titles and 31 trips to the NCAA Tournament. The late Pat Summitt was the first women’s coach to surpass the 1,000-win milestone. VanDerveer was the second.
She’s both a relentless ambassador for the women’s game and a ruthless technician who has won the national coach of the year honor four times (1988, 1989, 1990, 2011) and coached the U.S. women to the gold medal in the 1996 Olympics.
“As a player, Tara teaches you that the most important thing is how to be a good teammate,” former Stanford guard Kate Paye (and now a Cardinal assistant coach) told writer Michelle Smith in 2017. “Over the course of your life, you understand that she was really teaching you how to be a good person.”
VanDerveer has been inducted into both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2011) and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (2002).

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Bill Walsh, 49ers and Stanford​

One of the crazy things about “The Catch” is that Walsh saw it coming. At training camp in 1981, months before the play that won the January 1982 NFC Championship Game, Walsh had Montana and Clark stick around late to practice “Sprint Right Option” until they got it just right. “Until I threw the ball three times an arm’s length over Dwight’s head, Bill wouldn’t let us off the practice field,’’ Montana said years later. “When we finally walked off, Dwight and I were both saying, ‘That gray-haired guy is going senile. … We would never throw a ball there.’’’
Walsh essentially spent his whole career like that, with a chalkboard that doubled as a crystal ball. Walsh out-schemed opponents to go 92-59-1 (.609) during his 10 seasons as the 49ers head coach. He won three Super Bowl titles, left behind the blueprint for two more and revolutionized the game by popularizing the West Coast Offense. Walsh also had two Stanford stints — before and after his 49ers run.
At his funeral in 2007, quarterback Steve Young called him: “The most important person in football over the last 25 years, and I don’t think there’s any debate about that.”

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Steve Young, 49ers​

For Young’s first 49ers training camp practice in 1987, equipment man (and noted practical joker) Bronco Hinek handed the quarterback of pair of used Mizunos. It wasn’t until Montana said, “Nice shoes,’’ did Young notice that his footwear was embossed with the famous “No. 16.” He was literally following in Montana’s footsteps. But the mobile, eerily accurate left-handed passer eventually found his own path — all the way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Young won two regular-season MVP awards and a long-awaited, hard-earned Super Bowl MVP trophy in January 1995. Young led the NFL in passer rating seven times and left an indelible mark when his own shoes took a weaving, wandering journey for a 49-yard, game-winning touchdown run against the Vikings on Oct. 30, 1988.