The Sports Immortals [antikvár]

Intrmhictiim These pages tell the stories of 50 of the greatest athletes in the history of modem sports. They were chosen by the sports staff of the Associated Press, men and women whose careers and professional standing are based on their ability to record with accuracy, objectivity, flavor and dimension the achievements and failures of the world's athletes. These staffers demonstrate this ability every day in the stories you read in the pages of your newspaper and hear broadcast both on the networks and on your local station. Even so, choosing immortals is a task that leads to long, reasoned debate, hot bursts of argument and a great deal of name juggling. After all, even in ancient Greece there was argument about the proper ranking of the mythological immortals of Mount Olympus. When the job entails writing a book about real people instead of simply cataloging the make-believe population of a mountain, exercising a high degree of judgment, knowledge and sensitivity is absolutely essential. As it applies to athletes, the dictionary definition of an immortal—"one who has enduring fame"—isn't much help. So we just had to go ahead and confer upon ourselves a certain omniscience as to which athletes, living and dead, have earned a place here. We think there is no doubt that the men and women whose careers make up these pages belong in them. They are athletes whose names will live on as long as modem games are played. All of them have some of the same qualities: determination, pride, both natural and developed skill. Many of them display generosity and largeness of spirit and unwavering physical and