Old School A’s fan and CurveBallCity citizen Jon writes, “Dan Quisenberry: The Quiz–deserves to be the Q on the list.”  While the decrees of the CurveBallCity “A-Z” Executive Committee are usually final, we’re willing to make an exception in any case that allows us to remove Paul Quantrill from this site.  Nice work, Jon.

Hence the present revisitation.  While it’s only been three years since we last posted the “Greatest Athletes of All Time” A-Z list (and really, three years shouldn’t be making too much of a dent in an “All Time” sense), we’re not ashamed to admit that not a great deal of research went into the original list formation process.  As such, it may be time to make some changes to our arbitrary, subjective categorizations.  What say you?  Was Lou Gehrig “greater” than Wayne Gretzky?  Or John Stockton than Barry Sanders?  Here in April of 2009, three years older and wiser, we’re willing to admit that we may have been wrong back in those golden, halcyon days of 2006 (also known as the short-lived “Milton Bradley Didn’t Seem Like He Was That Crazy” Era).

(On the other hand, being three years younger didn’t stop us from ignoring List Contributor Joey Anderson’s protests that LaDainian Tomlinson was better than Jim Thorpe.  How’s that one lookin’ now, Joey?)

Without further ado, the list as it presently stands:

A—Muhammad Ali

B—Larry Bird

C—Wilt Chamberlain

D—Joe Dimaggio

E—Julius Erving

F—Joe Frazier

G—Wayne Gretzky

H—Rickey Henderson

I—Allen Iverson

J—Michael Jordan

K—Sandy Koufax

L—Carl Lewis

M—Willie Mays

N—Joe Namath

O—Sadaharu Oh

P—Pele

Q—Dan Quisenberry

R—Babe Ruth

S—Barry Sanders

T—Jim Thorpe

U—Johnny Unitas

V—Michael Vick

W—Ted Williams

X—X-Pac

Y—Cy Young

Z—Zinedine Zidane

Seriously.  Can no one get X-Pac off this list? 

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I will never in my lifetime see a worse sports day than October 15, 1988.

That said, October 16, 2008 was pretty bad.

I spent my entire day eagerly anticipating BYU-TCU – the game that would cement the Cougars as a football powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with on the national football scene.

Didn’t happen.

Awash in shame and a curious conviction that BYU’s loss was somehow indicative of my failures as a human being, I took comfort in the knowledge that Tampa Bay’s 7-0 lead would soon take them into the World Series as well as shovel that last pile of dirt onto the grave of the Boston Red Sox.

That didn’t happen either.

My world spinning uncontrollably into a cyclone of despair, I decided to seek sports refuge in the one place I knew wouldn’t let me down, and popped in a DVD of the WWF’s 1996 Royal Rumble.

And Shawn Michaels won.  “Sexy Boy” Shawn Michaels.   For the second year in a row. At one point tossing out Vader AND Yokozuna, some 900 pounds combined, simultaneously (!!!!!).  Probably with one hand.  While choking out a bear with his feet.  And curing AIDS.

I have no doubt that had I taken out the Rumble at that very moment and popped in Rocky IV instead, Ivan Drago would’ve scored a fourth-round TKO in Moscow. 

My point is this: on a day when every sporting event you watch, even fake sports recorded twelve years previous, starts letting you down, you should probably just stop watching sports for a while.  Watch The Office or something instead.   

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First off, happy Fourth of July!  I hope everyone has a great day celebrating our nation’s independence from either the British or the aliens from ID4, whichever you’d prefer.

This has been a heck of a week for me, between the holiday, a tense three-game series with Anaheim and an in-depth look at the ins and outs of federal subject matter jurisdiction, but the highlight of the week so far came in its very first day.  Judging from the ratings, most of you weren’t watching WWE Monday Night RAW this week, but those of you who did saw a moment such as professional wrestling rarely offers – within the first fifteen minutes of the program, relative newcomer C.M. Punk challenged for, and won, the World Heavyweight Championship.

Believe me or not, but it was a transcendent moment.  Watching it reminded me why I bother to wade through the weekly crapfest that pro wrestling tends to be these days – because I know that every so often, I’ll get to vicariously share in a moment of true wrestling euphoria. 

But I’m not really writing about C.M. Punk here.  I’m writing because watching Punk’s title victory reminded me of the last time that watching wrestling felt that great – and that came four years ago, in the closing moments of Wrestlemania XX, watching Chris Benoit hold up the very same title that Punk won four days ago.

You better know Chris Benoit as the wrestler who went on to murder his wife and son before killing himself last year.

(Read the article)

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CurveballCity is on a depressing, depressing hiatus until the A’s . . .  I don’t know, actually win a freaking series or something.  In the meantime, remember: always listen to Jesse, and not Jose.

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In the interests of adding yet another entry to the endless “The Present Will Never be as Awesome as the Past” argument, this past Monday I headed to the Staples Center to attend the live broadcast of WWE Raw.  I brought along with me a large piece of poster board, each side of which carried one of the following two messages:

-          THIS IS RATINGS GOLD (to be used either literally or ironically)

-          NACHO BREAK (exclusively for literal use)

These were the final drafts of a long thought-out, deliberative process that at other times included the following, inferior messages:

-          I’M NOT WATCHING THIS

-          SET TiVOS TO FAST FORWARD

-          I DON’T LIKE YOU

-          I WANT MY MONEY BACK

-          DOES ANYONE KNOW THE MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL SCORE?

-          WOOOOOOOOOOO!

-          I BOUGHT A RELATIVELY EXPENSIVE TICKET FOR THIS SEAT AND AS SUCH HAVE A FINANCIAL COMMITMENT TO WATCHING THE REMAINDER OF THIS BROADCAST.  YOU THE HOME VIEWER, IN CONTRAST, HAVE NO INCENTIVE TO STOP YOU FROM CEASING TO WATCH THIS LESSER ON-SCREEN PRODUCT IN FAVOR OF A SUPERIOR ONE, OR, IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY SUPERIOR PRODUCT, ENGAGING IN ANOTHER ACTIVITY ENTIRELY. (cut in the interests of brevity)

And no, the irony was not lost on me that I was actually planning in advance to heartily disapprove of the show that I was paying money to see.  That’s kind of my point here.

Monday was only the second time I had ever brought a sign to a wrestling show; the first time was in July of 1998, when I proudly lofted the eight feet in length “SUCK IT!!!!!” sign that my buddies Mark and Joey had lovingly handcrafted the previous day. 

My point?  In 1998 (also known as the third Golden Age of pro wrestling), I would never have dreamed of bringing a sign for the express purpose of expressing disapproval.  I wouldn’t have expected any need of it.  Sure, even in 1998 I knew I wasn’t going enjoy every last bit of the show – I believe the card that night featured both Marc Mero AND Mark Henry – but it never occurred to me that the show might be so bad as to make me want to express my absolute disgust to a national television audience.

Not so today.

And the fans know it: of the approximately twenty thousand fans in attendance, I’d say a good 70% of them were wearing officially-licensed wrestling apparel that they had purchased sometime in the 1998-2001 period.  I myself was rocking the Cactus Jack t-shirt I found at the back of my closet – purchase date: May of 2000.  With few exceptions, we were right to do so (Memo to the guy with the Roadd Dogg Jesse James “Roll tha Dogg a Bone” t-shirt: Its time has passed, if indeed its time were ever here to begin with).

What’s more, the WWE knows it: Monday’s show featured Shawn Michaels and Triple H doing their circa-1997 Degeneration X shtick in both the opening and main event segments, surrounding segments that included 80’s mainstay Hacksaw Jim Duggan, an evil Russian named Vladimir Koslov and a twenty-minute bit in which Stone Cold Steve Austin drove a Budweiser truck in to the arena and soaked the ring in “beer,” a gimmick that was truly monumental the first time they brought it out in April of 1999.  The WWE either believes that what made them successful once is sure to make them successful again, or that clinging to the past will make their audience more likely to tune in for the future.  Their current ratings suggest otherwise.

And here’s the thing: forced nostalgia aside, it was actually a pretty good show, the highlights of which were an absolutely ungodly pop from the largely-Latino Los Angeles crowd for Rey Misterio, emerging heel brilliance from Umaga and Mr. Kennedy, and the transcendent irony of the aforementioned Duggan starting a “U-S-A!” chant as his Mexican tag team partner Super Crazy fought two guys from Tennessee.

Wrestling is a remarkably simple enterprise.  While it’s not easy for an individual wrestler to put on a good performance, it is thoroughly easy for a wrestling company to put on a good show.  The WWE has the talent, but for some reason it insists on using its talent in ways that no one wants to watch.  At least, not since the way they wanted to watch in 1998.

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