Century’s Best in His Mind Had to Be Ruth

Most end-of-the century voters have been making what I think of as several wrong calls.

Contemplating the most recent 100 years:

* Babe Ruth was the athlete of the century, not Muhammad Ali.

* O.J. Simpson was the football player of the century, not Jim Brown.

The negative--if that’s the right word--on front-runners Ali and Brown is that, like Michael Jordan, they were specialists.

Great athletes are by definition not specialists.

The great ones do several things very well, at least two things, as Ruth did in the century’s early dawn.

Ruth was first a winning World Series pitcher and later jarred baseball into a drastically different direction as the first of the great long-ball hitters.

Later, Simpson excelled in two sports. He was first a sprinter and was a member of USC’s 440-yard relay team that still holds the world record.

Next, after winning the Heisman Trophy as the best player in college football, Simpson went to the NFL’s worst team, Buffalo, where he quickly established himself as the best player in pro football--as well as the first running back to gain 2,000 yards in a season.

As ball carriers, Gale Sayers had more moves and Brown more power, but Simpson did it all faster.

*

All-Century Top 11: In their 11-man sport, the roll call of the century’s top 11 football players starts with Simpson and continues with quarterbacks Joe Namath, Steve Young and Johnny Unitas, defensive players Deacon Jones, Dick Butkus and Deion Sanders, running backs Jim Brown and Gale Sayers and receivers Don Hutson and Jerry Rice.

As for Jim Thorpe, he’s a legend whose greatness is now hard to verify.

As for Ali, he’s the boxer of the century--he would have been too fast for Joe Louis.

But as a great athlete, Ali only proved it in the ring.

Brown as a mainstream great athlete only proved it as a running back.

He wasn’t much of a blocker.

And lacrosse, Brown’s other sport, doesn’t count.

In basketball, which does count, Jordan didn’t win his first NBA championship for five years--until he got a winning coach, Phil Jackson.

Jordan doubled as a baseball player but couldn’t hit the ball, failing where the greatest active athlete, football player Deion Sanders, succeeded.

Magic Johnson, a point guard who as a rookie turned center for a day to win his first NBA championship, was the basketball player of the century.

But as an athlete, nobody is close to Babe Ruth.

*

49ers fixable?: As their intolerable season winds down, the most obvious thing about the San Francisco 49ers is that they need a new defensive backfield.

Almost everything else seems reasonably well tuned for 2000 with Fred Beasley settling in at fullback, Charlie Garner delivering at halfback, Jeff Garcia improving at quarterback, and the defensive front performing.

Indeed, 49er Coach Steve Mariucci, remarked recently that Bryant Young is playing better football this year than any other NFL defensive tackle.

But the San Francisco secondary has disappeared--as it did once before in the club’s unprecedented 18-year run at the top.

That was at the very beginning, when the 49ers drafted three defensive backs in one year, 1981--the year that Bill Walsh put three rookies in the secondary and coached them to San Francisco’s first Super Bowl championship.

In the present, more competitive, era, Walsh, now the team’s general manager, can’t make that kind of fix in one year. It should take two or three years this time.

*

McNown does it: After the Chicago Bears’ top three quarterbacks went down with injuries this season, they began the rotation all over again last week, starting rookie Cade McNown against the formidable Detroit Lions.

Said Chicago’s rookie coach, Dick Jauron, “You know your first quarterback hardly ever stays healthy for the whole year, but to go through all three of them, that’s been a surprise.”

What happened next was another surprise when McNown threw for four touchdowns to upset Detroit, 28-10.

As some of us have been saying, McNown is the best quarterback drafted this year, and since the draft he has been intelligently coached in Chicago.

Jauron has given him at least one series of plays in every game.

Jauron and McNown will be heard from next year.

*

Runs to nowhere: In the NFL’s game of the week, the Washington Redskins lost to the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday, 24-21, for these five reasons:

* After the league’s leading rusher, Stephen Davis, had hustled the Redskins into a 13-10 halftime lead, he missed the second half because of a foot injury, ending a duel he and Redskin quarterback Brad Johnson had been winning from the Colts’ Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James.

* Johnson was allowed to throw only four first-down passes in the first 55 minutes, completing three of the four, including one for the touchdown that kept Washington ahead for three quarters.

* Because the Redskins’ new owner, Daniel M. Snyder, continues to interfere in the coaching--reportedly learning in interviews with his offensive linemen that they like to run the ball--Washington’s coaches continued to call running plays on the important downs of the second half.

* What beat them was running to nowhere with second-stringer Skip Hicks.

* Setting up Indianapolis’ two winning fourth-quarter touchdowns, the key Redskin play was a run that failed on third and three at the Colt 33.

*

Kickers do that: On a Miami afternoon when the field-goal kickers scored all the points for both sides, the Dolphins escaped with a 12-9 win last week after San Diego’s John Carney blew a makable last-second kick.

That’s a reminder that when football fans or media people talk up a kicker, they often hear something like this from football players: “Love him while you can, because someday he’ll break your heart.”

*

And finally:

* There’s a good reason why you should think of Cincinnati’s Corey Dillon as a great running back: Players who stand out on bad teams must have something--as Dillon proved again the other day when he gained 192 yards, averaging seven. Others who succeeded on bad teams in this century were Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears, who were mostly ineffectual in his time, and O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills, who were worse.