This was supposed to be the year that Lance Armstrong would falter.
It almost happened in 2003, when he barely dragged his way through a time trial and outlasted Jan Ullrich of Germany by only a little more than a minute.
On July 10, Armstrong arrived in France after losing a Tour de France prep race to face more than 100 cyclists intent on finding a weakness in his armor.
More than three weeks later, they were still looking.
Once the 2004 Tour de France began, Armstrong whipped the best climbers in the mountains. He whipped the best sprinters at the finishes. He whipped the time-trial specialists in the time trials. Along with the rest of the Posties' "Blue Train," he whipped all the other teams in the team trial stage.
For most of the past month, Armstrong has been doing more whipping than a workaholic dominatrix.
By going where no bicyclist has gone before, Armstrong is now racing not against flesh-and-blood riders, but against posterity -- for his place in the next listing of ESPN's next top-100-athletes-of-all-time list.
Certainly, he's not the first.
It wasn't all that long ago that Michael Jordan transcended his sport. Before him, there was Wayne Gretzky, Jim Brown, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Babe Ruth. In fact, the whole, "Where does Lance Armstrong rank among history's greatest athletes?" question is merely a break from the debate over Barry Bonds' place in the pantheon.
The first thing to do in any debate, as any debate coach -- or, as in my case, former debate coach -- will tell you to do is define your terms. For any discussion on athletic greatness, it is necessary to define "great."
Right about now, you're thinking that's absurd. Great, after all, is, well ... great. Maybe we don't know art, but we know great when we see it.
Fine, then answer me this: who was the best left-handed pitcher in baseball history?
That's easy, you say. Sandy Koufax. From 1963 to 66, when arthritis forced him to retire, Koufax had a won-lost record of 97-27 with a 1.86 ERA.
What about Warren Spahn, I say? The man won more games after World War II than any other pitcher. He joined the mound elite in the late 1940s and stayed there until the early '60s.
See the problem here? There are reasonable arguments in favor of both Spahn and Koufax great. In his own way, each was greater than the other.
Bill James, baseball number cruncher extraordinaire and Boston Red Sox consultant, boiled down the argument by defining greatness in two ways. On one side, there are the players who reached peaks that were higher than any of their peers.
Those players, including Koufax, could be called the "talls."
The second category of greatness, in James’ estimation, is those who might not reach the elevation of the "talls," but they do achieve excellence and sustain it much longer. Spahn, and others like him, would be the "wides."
An extreme example of a "tall" is New York Giants quarterback Kurt Warner might have had one of the skinniest careers in any sport. From 1999 to 2001, with St. Louis, he completed 67.2 percent of his passes, averaged 9.06 yards per pass attempt, threw 98 touchdowns and 53 interceptions. During that stretch, his average passer rating was well over 100.
Since then, he hasn't been able to find an open receiver with a map and compass. But for those three years, Warner was better than any QB in history. Of course, he still has an opportunity to put a little meat on the bones of his career, starting this year.
A few more examples of "tall" sports careers, from players who reached rarefied air, but couldn't stay at the heights, for reasons ranging from injury to personal problems: Eric Dickerson, Bobby Orr, Diego Maradona and Darryl Strawberry.
If Warner is the Manute Bol of sports immortality -- poor Bol, he wasn't even talented enough to be as "tall" as he was tall -- Hank Aaron might have been William "The Fridge" Perry, who, ironically, was a "tall" and not a "wide."
Aaron, who never hit more than 47 round-trippers in a season, had 15 seasons with at least 30 homeruns to finish with the all-time homer crown, at least until Bonds is done.
George Blanda, Cal Ripken, Jr., Ray Bourque, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are some of sports' all-time "wides."
Disclaimer: none of these lists are intended to be comprehensive, so don't grouse if I left out your favorite player.
Sports fans can be "wide" or "tall," as well, depending upon which type of player they value more. "Wides" tend to regard "tall" players, like Dwight Godden as having had limited success by fluke, while "talls" damn "wide" players, like Steve Largent, with faint praise by calling them consistent, but not spectacular.
And the distinction isn't always clear cut. Take the aforementioned Mr. Ullrich. Is he a "tall" because he won the Tour de France once, or a "wide" because he finished second four times?
And there is a third group -- considerably more exclusive -- the "wide and talls."
A roll call of this group includes sports' greatest icons -- Pele, Muhammad Ali, Wilt Chamberlain, Jack Nicklaus, Ted Williams, Jordan, Brown, Bonds, and Ruth (Disclaimer: See above).
With his run of major-tournament victories two years ago, Tiger Woods certainly qualifies as a "tall." If he has similar success sometime down the road, which isn't at all out of the realm of possibility, he could cross over into the "wide and tall" pantheon.
Which brings us back to Lance Armstrong, who has just filled out his admission application to sports' inner circle.
By winning the world's premiere bicycle race, he has climbed the mountain. By doing it more often than anyone else, Armstrong has spent a long time atop that peak.
Congratulations, Lance. It's official -- you may not look it, but you're both "tall" and "wide."
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