Um, the heroes that should look down on us from mountaintops forever aren't guys who are famous for playing sports, if you ask me.

The only famous ancient history sport icon is the guy who ran the Marathon distance. And I can't even remember his name. The truth is, those big names won't exist in a few hundred years.

yeah.... i'm really not in favor of an athlete's mt rushmore at all.... talk about shallow. what do they actually do but disctract us from important issues?

(Dont get me wrong I am not saying sports are bad. I AM saying that immortalizing sports heroes like that is stupid when you can immortalize... you know... real heroes)

Is a monument carved in stone that different from a statue outside a stadium, or the stadium itself if named after a player or coach?

I agree the idea of a sports Mount Rushmore is stupid, but then again I think most of these list threads from obiwanobiwan are stupid. A sports Mount Rushmore would be free of the Indian guilt they lay on you by Mount Rushmore itself, so there's a very good chance I'd see it.

Unless it's out in some bumblefuck area like Cooperstown, New York or something.

Well, we DO immortalize REAL heroes... in case you don't know, we have a nice mountaintop already with four pretty famous leaders of ours up there... folks seem to like George, Tom, Teddy and Abe. ;)

But the Greeks had Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, and then the gods, Apollo and Artemis and Zeus and Hera and Hermes and Dionysis, all immortalized...

Why shouldn't we do the same for OUR cultural heroes?

(And I beg to differ- with `ZaZaMaRaNDaBo`, Babe Ruth WILL be remembered forever, he's so integral to the american identity and America to the 20th century AT LEAST. And Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali will be remembered and revered as heroes FOREVER, and rightfully so- they weren't just heroes on the field or in the ring, but civil rights heroes, striving for equality one base hit or one body shot at a time.)

The Greeks remembered and revered their heroes and gods.
Europeans have honored and built statues in honor of King Arthur and his Knights and Robin Hood and his Merry Men, those legends and heroes...
Not to mention all the musical heroes that Europe has honored...

America has sports. Sports have defined this country since its inception; the first baseball games date back to Revolutionary times, and the first official game dates to before either the Civil War or even the Gold rush, way back to 1846.

James Earl Jones in "Field of Dreams" said it best:

"America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again- but BASEBALL has marked the times. This field, this game, its a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good- and could be again."

That's baseball, what it means for America. "I don't watch baseball" you say, or "Folks don't watch it as much anymore."

Itn doesn't matter. Baseball is like that grandfather ytou see only a couple of times a year, at the holidays. You don't see baseball or theat grandfather much, and you know they was once younger, maybe more innocent, and maybe have seen better days.

But they're here.
And if they hadn't been there, in a way, neither would you be.

Without those early baseball games, some even bringing armies from the North and South together to lay down their rifles for a bit and play ball, without that, we don't have 20th century baseball.

Without that, we don't have Babe Ruth, and all he stood for and exemplified about America in the 1920's- big, strong, carefree, more powerful than ever before, but a bit out of control, and not seeing the darker times that lay ahead, only NOW mattered.

Without Jackie Robinson and baseball being integrated, what happens with the Civil Rights Movement? Jackie mattered a lot, because BASEBALL MATTERED A LOT.

People can and do hate those of other skin colors or languages sometimes in America... but if that black boy or Jew or white boy or Latino can help you beat the Yankees, put him on the team!

THAT'S part of what makes sports so relevant, like the legends were for the Greeks. For the Greeks, if you wanted a life lesson played out before you, you listened to a play about a tragic hero or The Odyssey or Iliad or The Labors of Hercules.

For Americans, we watch the Super Bowl and think, "I want Peyton to win, he's a strong leader and a quiet man and stoic and clean-cut and everything I admire in a person" or else "Let's see the Saints win, because after all, if the Saints can go from the worst team to winning the Super Bowl, maybe we CAN rebuild New Orleans."

Baseball, "I love the Yankees, its the greatness and sheer perfection, business, professionalism, and they always win, and we love winners, I love winners!" or else "Damn those Yankees! Hoarding all the best players and all the moeny... it's un-American! Unfair! They're acting like royalty, and this country was founding on breaking away from that! I like that working class theam, the Brooklyn Dodgers/New York Giants/New York Mets, THAT'S the sort of image for me, for us- the hard-working mish-mosh of people, maybe not perfect stars but they're a melting pot of talent, just like us!"

And then the generational thing...

My grandfathers could tell me how they saw Babe and Lou Gehrig, or how Mel Ott amazed them as a kid, and they'd tell my uncle, and he'd grow up watching Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra and Roger Maris do battle with Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays and he'd tell ME about how it felt, hearing his father tell him stories, catching him balls at Yankee Stadium, and then the joy of him telling me.

And I can tell MY KIDS all that someday... and how I saw, live and in person, my biggest baseball hero as a boy, Mike Piazza, only once, at Dodger Stadium... and how he hit a home run down the baseline I was sitting near, and how it made me feel watching my hero, the only time I ever saw him, how he INSPIRED ME, how I can recall that image and the sounds and sights a decade later now, and many decades later when I tell those kids.

And I'll tell them how I saw Barry Bonds and McGwire and Sosa, and how they shamed the game and themselves, and how it was just like how America itself was growing greedier and more shameful, until the steroids issue burst... right around the time the economy did.

And how my grandmother was close to death, a life-long Yankees fan, in 2004, and as she's in surgery the Red Sox mounted that amazing comeback from 3-0 games down to win the Series 4-3, adn how SHE said she felt happier and amazed all the sick people around HER were inspired by the Sox pulling off the Impossible Dream.

And how I finally met friends to relate to, how they don't love sports anywhere near as much as me, but they'll watch baseball, how my best friend and her mother loved the Sox, and talking about that strengthened our bond, how another friend's family loved the Cubs, another the Dodgers...

How my drama teacher smile and laughed every time I'd stress about the Mets, because HER father, long gone, did the same thing... 35 years ago.

I can tell them all this...

And they'll be LINKED, in a way, with those friends, that teacher, my uncle and grandfathers and grandmother, to Babe and Lou and Mickey and Jackie and Willie and Mike Piazza and all the rest.

Sport is not jsut sport.

It's part of our tapestry, it weaves the generations together, for us, in America.

It's one of the few ways that we ARE kept alive forever- in the stories our fathers and mothers and uncles and grandparents and friends pass down to us, and we will, in turn, pass them down ourselves.

Babe Ruth will live on forever in this way, and so will Jackie... and so, in a way, will that grandfather who took my uncle to Yankee Stadium and caught balls for him.

That grandfather may be gone now, and Jackie, and the Babe... but they're NEVER GONE.

(Gee, I'm not passionate at all about this lol... and I didn't mean a LITERAL Rushmore, with real mountains and carvings, that was for fun, it was mainly which four symbolize the values of the games and still inspire, the way Babe and Jackie do today.

Again- gone, but woven into our minds and lore, connected with everyone they played with and all the fans that ever watched them, including our fathers and ourselves, so that grandfather of mine is never gone, in a way, because every time I see or hear about Babe I can think of that grandfather... and my children will do the same... and theirs... and theirs... and your children... and their children... and theirs...)

Okay, look at it this way obiwan. Civil Rights Movement--Rosa Parks? Martin Lutheran King Junior? Malcolm X? Jackie Robinson will take a back-seat, to be brutally honest. He was a big change for baseball, but he still comes short in the bg names of baseball as well.

Babe Ruth will be remembered when baseball dies away. But will Harmon Killebrew or Ted Williams? Probably not.

I dsiagree... and for the only time ever, I will "pick on" Rosa Parks.

Compare:
-Not giving up a seat and inspiring boycotts and black civic pride and a sense of importance, against
-Integrating an entire INDUSTRY and thus giving blacks the chance to not only stand as equals in one more area as whites, but also to stand as ECONOMIC and SOCIAL and ATHLETIC and PERSONAL equals

I think Jackie Robinson integrating baseball and not only inspiring later Civil Rights movements but giving all the black players (and other nationalities) to follow a chance at social and economic freedom and equality in this country...

I see that as being roughly on par with Jesse Owens blasting Hitler's idea of a Master Race by beating it in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, or Joe Louis doing the same thing against Hitler by defeating Max Schmeling.

Jesse and Joe defeated one sort of racism, and Jackie defeated another... AND opened opportunites up for millions of other young men of his and other races AND set a precedent for the nation on one of its highest stages (EVERYONE watched baeball then) that blacks were equal to whites AND inspired the Civil Rights Leaders, in one way or another, that were to come.

Rosa Parks was a great hero, and she doesn't have to give up her seat to anyone- not to a white man, and not to Jackie.

But Jackie Robinson CERTAINLY isn't taking a backseat to Ms. Parks in Civil Rights History...

If we must compare them, let them sit side by side, just as important and fabulous, but, in truth, they should not be compared, for heroism is heroism, and that is all.



"Babe Ruth will be remembered when baseball dies away. But will Harmon Killebrew or Ted Williams? Probably not."

That depends.

First- WILL baseball die away?

I will be frank- I think not. I think many sports will, in time, pehaps die... but not baseball. As long as there is an America... no, it is even more farspread and beloved than that, as long as America or Japan or Asia or Latin America are still around, so too will baseball be played.

Perhaps there will come a day when baseball is no longer a mass-market game (though I doubt that, even, could fully happen- New York loves its Yankees and Mets so mcuh, LA its Dodgers, Chicago the Cubs and Boston the Sox, other places, Mexico City loves its teams, Tokyo... those teams won't die away, I think) the game will live on.

Baseball was once played just like handball is- by kids or schoolboys or men, on private pastures or vacant lots, and just done as a way to kill time and have fun.

Baseball will live on in that sense.

Will Babe be remembered? Yes. Jackie? Yes?

But what of Harmon, you ask? Or Teddy Ballgame?

Well, let me ask you- we remember Oedipus the King... but do we not also remember Creon? Or the servants of his palace? Or the Sphinx? Or the one who saved Oedipus from death as a child? Or Oedipus' father?

We remember Achilles, but his brother, too, and how his brother died and made Achilles ashamed at his greed and ready to unleash even more rage upon Troy.

We'll remember the brightest stars... but also those who helped them along.

We'll remember Babe Ruth, but also Lou Gehrig, for he was at the Babe's side (even though they didn't always get along), and he died so tragically (and when you have a disease named after you, you tend to be remembered.) And we'll remember, even if not by explicit name, those who played with Ruth, and the man who served up his "called shot." Perhpas there'll be a course, much like a "Western Myths" class, where they'll learn the names from scholars.

The scholars of that class of Myths will remember Ruth, but Gehrig, too, and Charlie Root for the called shot. They'll remember the earliest players, Mathewson and Cobb and Alexander, and how those early stars started the modern game.

And they'll remember the teams and years. The 1920s will forever belong to Ruth and Gehrig, the 1930s to Gehrig and DiMaggio and the Gashouse Gang in St. Louis, the 1940s are Dimaggio's days, and Jackie Robinson's coming. The 1950s will forever be the Golden Age, with Brooklny's "Boys of Summer" (another reason baseball will be remembered- its contributed so much to our vocabulary, "Boys of Summer," "Ruthian," to strike out/struck out, a home run is a euphamism for great success, etc.) and Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, and it'll be remembered how all seemed so innocent, but really it was something of a show, like the 1950s themselves.

The 1960s, where things started to change, just before when the Dogers and Giants left, the birth of the Mets, expansion, more money, free agency, greed, the Gold Age dying, and the last great Miracle occuring in 1969 with those Mets, so big that NYC shut down schools and so much else just to celebrate the Miracle.

That lore will carry on, in one form or another, forever.

And the game itself, whether its played at the new billio-dollar Yankee Stadium or old Wrigley Field or in a pastural lot with college boys or just boys, boys and girls...

The game itself will go on, so long as the cultures that love it are about, and so many cultures now do, in so many parts of the world, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Boston to Atlanta to New York to Tokyo to Mexico and Panama and Venezuela and Cuba and the Koreas...

Someday maybe tennis will die away. Basketball couts may be abandoned. Even (sadly) football fields and hockey rinks may go by the wayside.

But soccer stadiums all over Europe and the world, so very old, and baseball fields in North and South America, Cuba, and Southeast Asia, THOSE two sports will never die.

Baseball is unique that way. It is, literally, timeless- no clock.

If you're teams are good enough, you might have a game go 1,000 innings if so you wish. The game only ends when a team is beaten.

And yet, as long as there is the promise of another game, you are beaten, but never really defeated.

So as long as there is a space of grass, a stick, a ball, and a group who want to play, baseball will never be gone.

Don Bradman for cricket (I suspect there are even more cricket fans than baseball fans, especially since it is so popular in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, not to mention Australia, New Zealand, South Africa... the list goes on).

Don't forget that Most Americans have NO IDEA what Cricket is mate

Cricket: Bradman, Sobers, Grace, Tendulkar

Football: Pele, Puskas, Maradona, Cruyff (or Beckenbaur, or di Stefano)

Wow, sometimes you people have no imagination. 'he heroes that should look down on us from mountaintops forever aren't guys who are famous for playing sports'. 'i'm really not in favor of an athlete's mt rushmore at all.'

He's not actually proposing it. He's not starting a petition and raising funds. He's just trying to have some fun. Get the pole out of your tush and play along.

For Hockey there is one obvious 'Great One' - Wayne Gretzky. Others that could be included are Gordie Howe or Maurice Richard, but I am too young to remember them playing.

lol i am playing along. i'm playing along with the idea that we are really going to do it.

And personally i would be very much opposed to the idea. They don't deserve to be our heroes, simple as that. They play a game, and don't really stand for anything.

Like.... honestly.... what did Babe Ruth do besides play baseball? And I'm going to be honest with you obi, I only recognized half the people on your list. That's not a good track record. Maybe they seem like giants.... but when I red-blooded American doesn't know who they even are... you have trouble.

Your idea that even Babe Ruth will be remembered forever is crazy. No one will be remembered forever. I know you didn't mean like... for infinite years in the future, but even for like 1000 years. Maybe in 1000 years you can still read about who Babe Ruth was. Maybe. Past that, you may not be able to do even that.

Or, maybe you can, but not one soul ever does, you go 100 years between when someone looks up his file.

Like.... seriously. Entertainers do not have immortality. Neither do statesmen or military leaders but they have longer immortality.

Think about it. Back in the day, people thought their Pharaoh would be remembered forever because of his great deeds.

Now, how many pharaohs can you name off the top of your head? I'll try:

Tut, Rameses, and.... Menes, and Akhenaten. That's all I got.

And you ask me about what they did? All I know is that Tut did nothing, Rameses... was great... Menes unified Egypt, and Akhenaten was a monotheist. That's the extent, 3000 odd years later. And these were god-kings, who actually influenced history's course.

And that's being generous. How many people know what an Akhenaten is anyway? I'm a nerd for even knowing how to spell it.

Look at how many famous people you have from the BC period. I'm going to take a wild guess and say I could come up with maybe 100, maybe 200 names of people who lived BC. That's being generous. Now, ask me (or just an average Joe, the hypothetical is the same), how many people from the 20th century I can name, and you get thousands.

The lesson is this: The further you get from a time, the more obscure everyone from that time becomes. The people who were already not very famous (maybe someone like Gerald Ford) get forgotten pretty quickly. Then you go even further down the line and you start to forget what we would still call "important" people (like maybe Dick Cheney).

Round it out, and by 4000 AD you're looking at a representation of world history reading something like this up to 2000 AD:

Long before 1 AD there were classical civilizations which preceded the industrial revolution. These included ancient Egypt, which built the pyramids in 2500 BC, Greece, which produced the first intellectuals, such as Aristotle (300 BC), and Rome, which was a large empire that brought on the end of the classical age. Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, lived during the Roman Empire and is the basis of the BC/AD system.

After Rome, Europe went into a dark age characterized by primitivism and theocracy. Little intellectual output occurred in this period, and war, disease, and ignorance abounded. Then, in about 1400 AD, scholars began to discover the writings of the first intellectuals, which were preserved by Muslims in the Middle East, which was a religion started by Mohammed in 600 AD. The resurgence of European intellectual life was called the Renaissance.

The Renaissance led into the industrial revolution, since science was developed, and human understanding grew rapidly. The industrial revolution brought great social change to the west, and eventually, via technology, to the rest of the world in a process called globalization. The British and American Empires flourished during this time, with British dominance being fostered by their strong navy, and American dominance being fostered by their possession of the nuclear fission bomb. There were large wars during the industrial revolution which had not at that time been seen before.


Obviously it would be a tad longer than that.... and there would still be experts who study the old stuff.... but they would be even more irrelevant than ever.


My point in writing that out is that there is really no place to start talking about dudes like Babe Ruth, and any cultural figure really, including Irving Berlin, Sousa, Brahms, Elvis, Pele..... the list goes on.

I first started thinking about this in the context of Napoleon.

I realized that, in, say, 1850, Napoleon was positively a hot topic, and people likely spoke of him as we do of Hitler now. Then WWI happened, and suddenly Napoleon didn't seem like such a big deal. Then WWII happened, and now people barely even mention WWI. Even in high school American history books, it has less than a chapter. WWII is still relevant... but gets less so all the time. We're more preoccupied by terrorism and the Cold War these days. Wait long enough, and people will look at Hitler and say "a infamous dictator of Germany who instigated WWII and perpetrated a large Jewish genocide."

But today he's practically the devil. Just like back in the day Napoleon was practically the devil (for the Brits.)

Do you see what I mean? People get forgotten, no matter who they were.