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An international century list
Posted: Thursday December 16, 1999 02:04 PM
American baseball legend Babe Ruth ahead of French soccer great Michel Platini in a French poll for sportsman of the century. I can hardly believe my eyes. Where's the supposed French hatred of the yanks? Where's that often-parodied pompous French behavior? What ever happened to their rampant jingoism? Well, thanks to the fine publication L'Equipe, those stereotypes -- ones I've never found to be true anyway -- have been thrown out of the window once and for all as far as I'm concerned. The French sports daily made a list of its 100 greatest athletes of the last 100 years -- and duly packed it with 30 Americans. That's more than any other country on the list, leaving France and Britain a distant second with just eight apiece.
And how brave L'Equipe was to name Americans on the list that their readership knew little or nothing about.....then to go and put a baseball player ahead of their football icon. Sacre Bleu! And it wasn't even close. Babe Ruth came in 12th...Platini only 33rd. Bear in mind he is the greatest footballer France has ever produced and that baseball has never figured in the French psyche. If you were wondering who finished top, it was another soccer icon Pele. He's not from the USA, but is South American and did once star for the New York Cosmos. So L'Equipe were most magnanimous and worthy of applause for their fair-minded approach to their list of lofty centurions, remembering sport in the last hundred years wasn't confined to Europe. Now if only the USA -- and all its polls of the century -- could come even close to following suit.
Phil Jones is a co-host of "World Sport," the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International.
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