Let Debate Begin: Basketball, Tennis Are Toughest to Play

Isolate on a sport, approach and examine it from all aspects of the physical application required and give it a grade ... 1 through 10.

Bill Sturm, because he’s enthralled with the subject, embarked on a study to decide which is the most difficult game to play at the professional level. Such a determination is subjective, of course, and lacks laboratory analysis.

In his report, basketball and tennis finish 1-2 and are far ahead of baseball, football and soccer. He intends for his effort to stimulate conversation and even welcomes challenges from athletes, coaches, trainers and kinesiologists. He went about establishing a self-styled criteria for no reason than to see what it would produce.

What Sturm, a former athlete at Loyola College in Baltimore, suggests is that the following categories be rated when measuring the degree of a sport’s difficulty: agility, speed and quickness, hand and eye coordination, strength, heart, concentration under pressure, the need for quick decisions and stamina. He calls it the Sturm Sports Rating System and has a copyright.

Sturm conferred a 10 on basketball for hand and eye coordination, a 9 for agility, a 9 for speed and quickness, an 8 for heart (meaning competitiveness), an 8 for the need to make quick decisions, an 8 for stamina, a 7 for strength and a 6 for concentration under pressure. It comes to a grand total of 65 points.

Using the same pattern, he gave tennis 64 points, boxing 63 points, skill positions in football 61 (but refuses to list interior linemen because so few of them offer much more than bulk and strength), ice hockey 60, wrestling (amateur not pro) 57, baseball 56, a tie at 53 between soccer and skiing, the decathlon 50, swimming 48, cycling 45, track (running events) 44, golf 42 and bowling 37.

What about lacrosse, rugby, curling, field hockey, figure skating, polo and dozens of other games he failed to include? “I didn’t attempt to concentrate on those sports that are played for the most part on a general regional basis, such as lacrosse and field hockey, or the national games of another country. For the most part, they are limited in scope,” he answered.

Sturm, 56, a graduate of Loyola College who represents an orthopedic supply company, says he was drawn into the eye of what might well become a hurricane of controversy after reading a magazine story that insisted competitive cycling was the most demanding. “That didn’t sound right to me then and it doesn’t now,” Sturm insisted. “That’s when I went about establishing my own criteria for measuring the aptitude required to reach the highest level of professional excellence in 15 different sports.”

It’s an ambitious project because the character of the various games necessitates a divergent blend of skills. Golf, bowling, swimming and running events in track received zero points in two distinct areas, which meant the total scores, under the Sturm microscope, would obviously drop. He didn’t attempt to field test the athletes but arbitrarily decided on what the obvious demands were to play each game.

The only qualification he insists upon is that all judgments be pre-supposed on what it takes to compete at the “highest professional level.”

“I am ready to agree in another sense that probably the most difficult sport, when you consider it from the vast numbers who try to play it, going back to early childhood in our country, would be baseball,” commented Sturm.

“More boys, and even girls, attempt to throw, catch or hit a ball than endeavor to learn the techniques of any of our other games. The small percentage who qualify for a high school or college team and then are sufficiently endowed to go on to the big leagues is staggering.”

But this is apart from what Sturm is trying to at least highlight, even if he can’t prove it, with his personalized sports rating guide. On a somewhat related matter, the late Don Kellett, who captained three varsity teams at the University of Pennsylvania and became general manager of the Baltimore Colts, frequently cited an effort in the 1930s and 1940s undertaken by the celebrated Olympic track coach, Lawson Robertson.

After compiling a series of check-offs and evaluations similar to those used by Sturm, it was Robertson’s finding that a baseball shortstop was the most accomplished of all individual athletes. We’re in total accord. A shortstop must possess speed, quickness, sure hands, range, agility, jumping ability and the footwork of an adagio dancer in making the double-play pivot.

But back to the overall concept Sturm is endeavoring to prove -- the aptitudes necessary to reach the highest level of competition and what is the most demanding of all sports. There’s always going to be room for debate. It’ll never be a closed case.

Measuring the abilities, therefore, becomes totally subjective, or akin to what is said about beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Sturm insists it takes more natural athletic talent to compete in basketball and tennis than any other physical endeavor. But let us not forget mountain climbing.