HOBBY ICONS
To those of us obsessed with sports, history has supplied a generous, seemingly endless lineup of heroes. From the earliest Olympiad standouts (ever hear of Milo of Croton, a wrestling standout active from around 520 to 540 B.C.?) to Adley Rutschman (today’s No. 1 prospect in baseball), the list is long and ever-growing.
As such, singling out 10 hobby icons is a near-impossible task. By the time you’re finished reading, we guarantee you’ll have come up with a number of names you’ll insist should be included. (Note: We’ve headed you off at the pass, at least a little, by packing a sidebar with 15 other names that should be in the argument.)
In a way, the assignment would’ve been easier if we had angled our feature on the cliché of the day — a Mount Rushmore of hobby icons. Why? Because the top four names on our list are immovable forces in the hobby (and would work in any order), as you’ll likely agree when you arrive. But that’ll be a few pages away, because we’re starting at No. 10 and counting down.
So dive in … and then feel free to tell us where we erred.
10. TED WILLIAMS
The Splendid Splinter may have been baseball’s purest hitter ever, a man who studied the science of hitting and practiced it like no one else. He batted .344 with 521 homers in his 19-season career, despite losing three of his prime years (ages 24 through 26) to military service. He led the AL in hitting six times and exhibited the keenest batting eye in the game. He led the league in walks eight times and totaled 2,021 free passes in his career (to go with 2,654 hits). Not surprisingly, he led
