Sportsman Of The Year/ten Living Legends

Once upon a time, which is the way a story about a legend should begin, joe DiMaggio was asked how he felt about bieng inducted into baseball's Hall of Fame.

"Now I've had everything," said DiMaggio, "except the thrill of watching Babe Ruth play."

Imagine that. For all the thing that came to him, DiMaggio still longed for the honor of seeing Ruth trot around the bases, just as many of us regret never having witnessed DiMaggio's running down a fly ball in the gap. What would we give for the opportunity to behold—in person—a Red Grange gallop or an Ali shuffle or a Richard rocket? Oh, to be able to say, of Hogan or Tilden or Cousy, "I saw him play."

In a way, those four little words are the acid test of who is a sports legend and who is not. When applied to the right athlete, they convey both privilege and reverence. I saw him play. The "him" might be a "her," and "play" isn't exactly what the boxer or the runner does, but you get the idea. I saw him play. Does the sentence fit Babe Ruth? Of course. Babe Didrikson? Yes, with a gender switch. Babe Parilli? Not quite.

Arrayed here are 10 athletes deserving of those words. Photographer Walter Iooss Jr. went from coast to coast, March to December, to capture them on film. He did it with mirrors and moxie and Mother Nature. "It may be the best assignment I've ever had," says Iooss, who has had a few in his 30 years of shooting for SI. "Some were more cooperative than others, but you could sense the enjoyment all of them got from their sports."

These athletes have something else in common. We can still see them play. Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Jack Nicklaus are simply the best that ever were in their respective sports, and Michael and the Great One are still playing at that level. And while 35-year-old Martina Navratilova was battling her way into the 1991 U.S. Open finals, Jimmy Connors, 39, was proving there was life in the old boy yet. Nolan Ryan and Cal Ripken Jr. continued their outrageous numbers game-that's seven no-hitters, 314 wins and 5,511 strikeouts for the 44-year-old Rangers hurler, and 1,573 consecutive games played and two MVPs for the 31-year-old Oriole star, who's arguably the best shortstop in baseball history. At 30, Carl Lewis put up a pretty good number himself, 9.86, to set the world record for the 100 meters. Two of these legends, Joe Montana, 35, and Edwin Moses, 36, spent the year on the sidelines, but we wouldn't count them out just yet.

If you think it is a privilege to see these athletes perform, consider how the people who really know them, who play against them and work with them feel.

"The first time I saw Jimmy play was at my first Wimbledon, in '73," says Navratilova. "He was playing my countryman Jan Kodes, and even though Jan won, I was awed by Jimmy. In one game Kodes hit four first serves and Jimmy hit four return winners. Years later, my coach, Mike Estep, told me nobody can hit four winners in a game, and I said, 'Wrong.'

"I love watching him play. He's like a surgeon. Every ball he hits is six inches over the net and lands six inches inside of the baseline. He has the best return of service I have ever seen."

Turnabout is fair play. "The first time I saw Martina?" asks Connors. "My, my, my. It was back when the Open was at Forest Hills. Her look was different, her game was different, her body was different. I know what she's had to do to get from there to where she is today, all the hard work, all the conditioning. Along the way, she changed women's tennis, she and Chris and Billie Jean. But she was really the first aggressive women's player. I hate to put it in these words, but as I am the Old Man of Tennis, she is the Old Lady."