The 10 Most Influential Athletes Of The Century

There may have been some–a very few–who were better than these, but none had greater impact on how their games were played. Along with Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Pele, these were the people (and the animal) who shaped the century in sports

–By Daniel Okrent

BABE RUTH In sports’ first golden age, there was Babe Ruth–and then there was everyone else. In 1920, only his second season as an everyday player, he hit 54 home runs–more than any entire team in the American League. Within a few years, his assault on distant fences had bent baseball into a new and thrilling shape. His appetites were as prodigious as his home runs, his affinity for the crowd and the camera seemingly part of his dna. By the time he retired in 1935, Ruth had become, in the words of sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, “a national heirloom,” a gift from one generation to the next, a treasure from an earlier time.

BOBBY JONES He was the embodiment of the true sportsman, a modest fellow whose noble consideration for his opponents was equaled only by the cruel ease with which he vanquished them. Jones won an unprecedented (and still unmatched) 13 major golf championships in a brief seven years, culminating in his 1930 sweep of all four majors, the only Grand Slam in the game’s history. And then, still an amateur and determined to remain one, he retired, at 28. From that day forward, Jones played competitively only once a year–at the tournament he invented on the course he co-designed: the Masters at Augusta National.

JACQUES PLANTE Gordie Howe was great, Bobby Orr greater, Wayne Gretzky the greatest–yet none altered the course of hockey quite so much as the piece of molded fiberglass that Jacques Plante affixed to his head on Nov. 1, 1959. Already the dominant goaltender of his era, Plante could now venture out from his circumscribed piece of ice in front of the Montreal net, there to face down without flinching the bullet shots of the league’s best shooters. After Plante, hockey’s goalies–virtually all of them masked by 1970–would display a new boldness, a more aggressive posture, a more intimate role in the currents of the game. And more teeth too.

JESSE OWENS For one brief moment, he was white America’s first black athletic hero, his four gold medals (and three world records) at the 1936 Berlin Olympics both a garland of honor for the U.S. and a mortification to Hitler. Within months, though, even with medals on his bureau and his degree from Ohio State in one of its drawers, he was able to support himself only by racing against horses as a sort of sideshow at Negro League baseball games. To TIME, he was variously the “coffee-colored” Owens, “the world’s fastest blackamoor” or “the dusky speedster.” But to Jackie Robinson and millions of other black Americans, he was inspiration and paladin, a sign of things to come.

VINCE LOMBARDI He was the essence of coach, this gruff, gap-toothed tyrant-with-a-heart-of-gold who forged championships–five in seven seasons–not from brilliant constellations of X’s and O’s but from his total commitment to the concept of a team. The Packers “didn’t do it for individual glory,” Lombardi once said. “They did it because they loved one another.” Maybe so–but Green Bay lineman Jerry Kramer saw it differently: “The difference between being a good football team and a great football team,” he wrote of Lombardi, “was only him.”

CURT FLOOD He was more successful on the field than he was in court, but when outfielder Curt Flood sued baseball in 1970 to win the right to sell his services to the highest bidder, he initiated a process that would destroy the feudal structure of pro sports. Flood lost his battle; his fellow players, in time, won the war. Those who do not thank him daily in their prayers should be ashamed of themselves.

JOHNNY UNITAS You could justify celebrating John Unitas for leading his Baltimore Colts to the 23-17 overtime victory over the New York Giants in the 1958 championship game, the one that turned out to be the NFL’s coming-out party. Or you could cite the three MVP awards, the 10 Pro Bowl games, the unfathomable record of touchdown passes in 47 straight games (people come closer to Joe DiMaggio’s streak than to this one: next best after Unitas is Dan Marino, with 30). But Unitas’ influence–vast and beyond challenge–is this: he was the first modern quarterback in a sport that the quarterbacks have owned ever since.

BILLIE JEAN KING There were certainly better female athletes. In tennis alone, Martina Navratilova was her clear superior, and even at her peak she had a pretty hard time with Chris Evert and Margaret Court. Sheryl Swoopes is more dazzling, and Mia Hamm combines finesse and power in what may be a palimpsest for the New Athletic Woman. But before any of them, there was Billie Jean Moffitt King, 20 times a champion at Wimbledon, who changed the way we look at female athletes–and, more important, changed the way they look at one another. “She was a crusader fighting a battle for all of us,” said Navratilova. “She was carrying the flag; it was all right to be a jock.”

SECRETARIAT How can a horse be influential? If in 1973 you saw the big chestnut colt win the first Triple Crown in 25 years by 31 incomprehensible lengths, and if you realized that in appearance, style and disposition he was the Platonic ideal of the athlete, you wouldn’t argue the point. His influence is this: Secretariat is the standard against which every other Thoroughbred must be measured.

MICHAEL JORDAN Will the gentlemen of the jury rise and state their verdict? Magic Johnson: “When you talk about beautiful basketball, the way Mr. Naismith drew it up to be played, you’re talking about Michael Jordan.” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are not like the rest of us. Well, Michael’s athletic skills are not like the rest of us.” Charles Barkley: “The one player I’ll accept losing to if I have to lose.” Shaquille O’Neal: “I’ll tell my grandchildren I got to play against him.” Phil Jackson: “He represented our personal flight of fantasy about what great things an individual can do.” Dominique Wilkins: “Can’t nobody have done better.”

THE MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN SPORTS

1903 Boston beats Pittsburgh in first World Series, 5-3

1913 Jim Thorpe, winner of pentathlon and decathlon in 1912 Olympics, stripped of medals for having accepted $25 a week to play baseball

1919 Chicago White Sox throw the World Series

1924 Knute Rockne, Four Horseman lead 10-0-0 Notre Dame

1927 Sonja Henie of Norway wins the first of her 10 consecutive world figure-skating titles

1929 Bill Tilden wins the last of his seven U.S. Open tennis championships

1929 California’s Roy Riegels runs 65 yds. in the wrong direction with recovered fumble in Rose Bowl

1934 Carl Hubbell strikes out six straight in All-Star game

1938 Joe Louis knocks out Germany’s Max Schmeling in racially charged heavyweight rematch

1939 Fatally stricken, Lou Gehrig announces retirement

1941 Joe DiMaggio hits in 56 straight games

1948 Citation sweeps to Triple Crown, Eddie Arcaro up

1951 Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard ’round the world” kills Brooklyn, wins pennant for Giants

1954 Roger Bannister runs first 4-min. mile

1956 Rocky Marciano retires as only undefeated heavyweight champion at 49-0

1965 “Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball!” –Boston Celtics win seventh of eight-straight titles

1966 All-black Texas Western basketball team defeats all-white Kentucky in NCAA final

1966 England captures World Cup on “phantom goal” vs. West Germany

1968 Bob Beamon obliterates long-jump record in Mexico City Olympics; at same Games, black runners Tommie Smith, John Carlos stage protest

1969 Joe Namath predicts, delivers Jets’ Super Bowl championship vs. Colts

1972 Mark Spitz swims to record seven gold medals in Munich

1975 At Thrilla in Manila, it’s Ali over Frazier

1976 Nadia Comaneci vaults to seven perfect 10s in Montreal

1977 A.J. Foyt becomes Indy’s first four-time winner

1980 USA! USA! USA! Hockey team strikes Lake Placid gold

1980 Borg over McEnroe in epic match; it’s his fifth straight Wimbledon

1984 Bird takes Magic in first of three title matchups

1986 Jack Nicklaus captures his sixth green blazer at Augusta, 23 years after his first

1988 Diving-board mishap draws blood but doesn’t keep Greg Louganis from winning gold at Seoul

1995 Cal Ripken Jr. breaks the unbreakable, passing Gehrig’s 56-year-old record for consecutive games played

1996 Michael Johnson cops double gold in Atlanta, smashes 200-meter record

1998 It’s Mark McGwire over Sammy Sosa, 70-66, for the new home-run crown at the end of the best baseball season in memory