101 Greatest Moments in Sports

Attention, fellow sports fanatics—here’s something you’ll learn even quicker than Usain Bolt (see #11), more heartbreakingly than a Protopopovs death spiral (#81) and as acutely as a Randy Couture left to the jaw (#65) when compiling something as instantly debatable as The 101 Greatest Moments in Sports: 101 is a very tiny number. So let’s call out the elephant right here and now. There are a few moments we missed, or nearly did. They include the following three, but likely three hundred others—give or take a few thousand: “You might want to have another look at that Jimmy Connors U.S. Open run in 1991,” a friend mentioned (with some restraint) when weighing in on an earlier draft of this list—which ran deep into the 140s. “You’re not including water polo?”…

George Herman Ruth. The Bambino. The Sultan of Swat. The finest lefty pitcher of the 1910s (you may have forgotten)—with nine shutouts in 1916 alone. The heaviest, steroid-free hitter ever, if you leave Ted Williams, Hank Aaron and a couple others out of the debate. The most active philanderer in professional sports (stats unavailable). And, yes, the legend behind baseball’s most famous and famously debated home run. How can we dare begin our countdown of the 101 Greatest Moments in Sports with the great Babe Ruth slotted in 101st? Two reasons. One—it’s Babe Ruth. He needs to be perched at the very top of these pages, even if it’s technically the bottom. Two—the most mythical, eternally debated moment in his peerless career may be just that. A total crock. Or…

I don’t know anything about Angola, but Angola’s in trouble,” quips Charles Barkley, when asked at a press conference about his team’s upcoming first-round challenger in the ’92 Barcelona Summer Olympics. On July 26, Olympic basketball’s U.S. “Dream Team” then makes good on Barkley’s prophecy, beating Angola 116–48—before trouncing every other team in their predestined path to Olympic podium glory. Basketball’s most terrifying starting five ever—Barkley, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing and Karl Malone—lead the dozen-member Dream Team to score 46 unanswered points against Angola—save for a single free throw sunk by Angolan forward Herlander Coimbra after receiving a hard elbow to the chest from Barkley. After the game, Coimbra will describe his American opponents as being “on a galaxy far, far away.” Stacked with active NBA players for…

By his own admission, Fauja Singh was a late bloomer. Born in the Punjab region of British India on April 1, 1911, according to a British passport (birth records were scarce in India at the time), the future Londoner didn’t walk until he was 5 years old. As a frail kid growing up in Jalandhar, he’d be teased by his peers—who nicknamed him “stick.” A tortoise-and-hare turn of events will lead Singh to become the world’s fastest and most prolific runner for his advanced age bracket after moving to London and taking up the sport in his late ’80s—mainly to get out of the house. “Most elderly people in Britain eat a rich diet, don’t move about and only travel in cars—and that makes them sick,” Singh tells The Indian…

For proof that athletic triumph can be launched from the most far-fetched dreams, look no further than Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards. The 24-year-old English day laborer easily qualifies as the least likely Winter Olympian in history when he enters the 1988 Calgary Games as the U.K.’s first-ever one-man ski jumping team. Having taught himself on $60 boards, a helmet fastened with string and oversize boots that require six pairs of socks, Edwards is greeted in Calgary by surprise fans, a new nickname and all the media attention a spectacled plasterer from the Cotswolds with inexplicable and unwavering ski-jumping aspirations should expect. “I’d like to say I fly like an eagle, but I’m probably closer to the ostrich,” says Edwards, winning the unofficial gold in endearing himself to everyone. But mainly…

Billie Jean King, the No. 2 female tennis player in the world in 1973, initially has no intention of stooping to play a media-baited tennis match against former men’s champion, outspoken sexist and shameless self-promoter Bobby Riggs. At age 55, Riggs claims he can handily beat any woman on the court, repeatedly challenging the best female tennis players as brashly and publicly as possible. When No. 1-ranked Margaret Court takes him on—and then loses to a smug Riggs in a CBS-televised match on the second Sunday of May (dubbed the “Mother’s Day Massacre”), Riggs extends yet another challenge to 29-year-old King, who this time accepts. “When Margaret lost, I immediately thought, ‘Now I’m gonna have to play him,’” King recalls in a SportsWire interview nearly 50 years after her historic…