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here it is
Here’s our Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame: Only the best of the best allowed in
Daniel Brown
Mar 24, 2020
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Reggie Jackson is of the belief that there should be a Hall of Fame for the real Hall of Famers, a place where the ghosts of Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson could roam the sacred grounds without bumping into, say, Tommy McCarthy and his 0.2 Wins Above Average over 13 seasons.
In an interview a few years ago, Mr. October rattled off a few of his contemporaries who were lowering the real-estate value in Cooperstown, a list that included Gary Carter, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro, Jim Rice and Kirby Puckett.
What about Bert Blyleven?
“No. No, no, no, no,’’ he told
Sports Illustrated’s Phil Taylor.
Reggie, have we ever got a place for you.
You’re going to love it here.
The challenge from
The Athletic headquarters this week was to put together local versions of the Hall of Fame that would consist of the 25 figures who represented the most impactful athletes/administrators in the history of each region.
The only criterion was that inductees spent their careers in a specific city, not where they were born, which is why we left off notable natives Joe DiMaggio and
Tom Brady. This is also why we excluded local college stars such as John Elway (Stanford) and Bill Russell (USF), who are better known for what they did elsewhere.
TWENTY-FIVE? That might work in some markets, but over here, where we can blame the bad traffic on parade routes, that’s barely a starter kit. Consider that the Bay Area could reasonably lay claim to the best baseball player of all time (Willie Mays or Barry Bonds, take your pick), the best football player of all time (Jerry Rice) and the best backcourt of all-time (Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson). Our Mount Rushmore could span the Sierra Nevada.
We’ve had so many dynasties that the next one gets us a free sandwich: The Swingin’ A’s of the ‘70s; the
49ers of the ‘80s; the
Giants and Warriors of the ‘10s. The glory days of Al Davis’ renegade
Raiders weren’t too shabby, either.
TWENTY-FIVE? Consider that there is an
actual Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame that has 180 inductees, 59 from football alone.
For an example of how hard it was to crack our list, consider that our last cuts included Super Bowl MVPs (Jim Plunkett), longtime aces (Dave Stewart) and players immortalized with statues outside stadiums (Juan Marichal, Dwight Clark).
That a high enough standard for you, Reggie?
Without further ado, here is
The Athletic Bay Area’s Induction Class for our mythical Hall of Fame. The toughest arguments were settled by powerful recency bias.
THE ELITE FIVE
1. Joe Montana, 49ers
Before the 1979 draft, the skinny kid from Notre Dame heard that the
Green Bay Packers were interested. New York was a possibility, too. “I was just begging that it was a little bit nicer than that,’’ Montana said years later. Luckily, Joe Cool joined forces with Bill Walsh in San Francisco — and they began warming Bay Area hearts. Montana won four Super Bowls during a 49ers career that lasted through 1992. He won three Super Bowl MVP Awards, and the one time he didn’t, all he did was spot John Candy in the stands before leading a comeback drive capped by a touchdown pass to John Taylor in the final seconds of Super Bowl XXIII.
Montana also won two regular-season MVPs, was a six-time All-Pro and lofted the throw to Clark that became “The Catch.” Though many quarterbacks since have made Montana’s career totals look puny (he ranks 16th in career TD passes, just below Vinny Testaverde), here are the stats to remember: Montana was 4-0 in Super Bowls with 11 touchdowns, zero interceptions and a passer rating of 127.8.
2. Willie Mays, Giants
It’s not as if he’s underappreciated, but it’s absurd in retrospect to realize that the most exhilarating five-tool player ever won the MVP award only twice. By WAR, the “Say Hey Kid” was the National League’s top player nine times — including six times after the Giants moved to San Francisco. In 1964, for example, Mays led the league with 47 homers, a .990 OPS and 11.0 WAR — and finished sixth in MVP voting. No one was fooled. “If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases and performed a miracle every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better,’’ his former manager, Leo Durocher once said. It took a while for the Bay Area to warm up to the New York import, but he endures among the most beloved Bay Area athletes of all time.
3. Stephen Curry, Warriors
Whether it’s his unthinkable half-court swishes or his swirly, inventive drives through the lane, Curry has managed to turn the
NBA into one big driveway pickup game. That includes the joy he exudes with doing stuff like winning three NBA championships and back-to-back league MVPs, including becoming the first (and still only) unanimous winner in 2016. The Baby-Faced Assassin is getting up there in years; he’s 32 and a broken hand has limited him to just five games this season. But despite the uncertainty ahead, there are no questions about his legacy as the greatest shooter the league has ever seen. Curry made an NBA record 402 3-pointers during the 2015-16 season, part of five consecutive seasons in which he led the NBA in 3s. He made at least one shot from beyond the arc in 157 consecutive games — only one other player (Kyle Korver, 127) has done it so much as 100 times.
But Curry is just as fun to watch without the ball, as he zips around like a dragonfly from one corner to the other, indefatigable until the final horn.
“You make going to work every day, for me, a true joy,” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said to Curry on the day the guard won his second MVP award. “It’s very hard not to like you. I find it impossible.”
A generation of new Warriors fans wholeheartedly agrees.
4. Al Davis, Raiders
He was a deeply complicated man — brilliant, rebellious, cantankerous and stealthily compassionate — who somehow boiled his worldview down to three simple words: “Just win, baby.” Davis wore many hats (scout, assistant coach, head coach, general manager, AFL Commissioner) but will be mostly remembered as the tough-minded owner who personified the Silver and Black. At the peak of his powers, Davis transformed a struggling franchise into a three-time Super Bowl champion; the Raiders had the best record in pro sports from 1963 to 1991. “He ran that club the way he saw fit. He brought in players that everyone else was discarding, including me, and he made it work,’’ Plunkett, who won two Super Bowls for the franchise, said upon Davis’ death in 2011. Along the way, Davis broke barriers by hiring Art Shell and Tom Flores as head coaches and Amy Trask as CEO.
5. Rickey Henderson, A’s
Some records are meant to be broken. But not this one. Not ever. Henderson racked up 1,406 career stolen bases, a mark that will stand for as long as the game is played. The closest player signed to a 2020 contract in affiliated baseball: Dee Gordon, who has 330.
Even Henderson’s origin story comes with a whiff of superhero legend: He wrote in his autobiography that he honed his speed as a kid by racing city buses on the streets of Oakland. And years later, he said his headfirst sliding style was inspired by an airplane landing so smooth he asked the pilot how it was done.
“He said when you land a plane smooth, you get the plane elevated to the lowest position you can and then you smooth it in,’’ Henderson once said. “Same with sliding.”
Henderson did everything in style, whether it was talking in the third person, making snatch catches with a flourish or inspiring local legends (like the apocryphal one about the time he mistook John Olerud for the actual John Olerud).
Few things were as fun as watching Henderson crouch impossibly low and dare pitchers to squeeze one into his acorn-sized strike zone. Henderson’s 2,190 walks rank second all-time to Barry Bonds.
www.nytimes.com
