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In the right voice, it never sounds like bragging. (Reggie Jackson's is not the right voice.) "I'm very good at my profession," says Jockey Willie Shoemaker, 53, a restrained appraisal of his almost 8,500 victories in 36 years. "I don't know if I'm as strong as I've ever been, but I'm smarter." Still 95 lbs. after so many campaigns, Shoemaker rides "three or four" races every California afternoon, and last week his odometer turned past $100 million in purses won. While the West and East coasts cannot agree on whether Laffit Pincay or Angel Cordero is the ablest jockey today, no one threatens Shoemaker's place. Although he thought of retiring ten years ago, he says, "Something wouldn't let me." You can almost hear a horse cantering when he adds, "I just kind of go along."
Endurance is one of the tests. The ultimate grade comes when it is impossible to call the sport and the man to mind separately. There is one international word for European football or American soccer: Pele. But then a day or two can be a lot, and 45 minutes enough. During the most astonishing three-quarter hour in 1935, Ohio State Sophomore Jesse Owens broke three world track records and tied a fourth. He was ready for the Munich Olympics, his legacy. How long Gretzky and Bird play at the top and stay at the fair will help determine their ultimate reputations.
An all but obsolete baseball player in an all but obsolete position, Cincinnati Reds Manager-Player Pete Rose, 43, is hanging around for the rare chance to meet Ty Cobb this summer--sometime in August, he expects. To the young players under his authority, Rose extends a greeting without apology. "I'm no different from anybody here," he says, "who has two arms, two legs and 4,000 hits." Probably because Rose skipped his true generation, he is good at updating latecomers on events even older than he is. A young fan materialized at the batting cage once just as the topic turned to Joe DiMaggio, whose 56-game hitting streak coincided roughly with Pete's birth. Rose was well into an explanation of what made Joe DiMaggio so great when it became obvious that the boy had no idea who Joe DiMaggio was. "C'mon, you know," he tried to jog a memory, "Mr. Coffee." Whether that helped or not, the light went on in the child's eyes.
DiMaggio's resilient aura 34 years into retirement speaks for the power of grace, though football's Jim Brown has kept his legend for 20 years without leading a notably polite life. Thanks to the persistence of his advocates and the pure power of memory, Sugar Ray Robinson weathered another boxing Sugar Ray without giving up his personalized subtitle "pound for pound." Contemplating why anyone is best in any game is a riddle. If the best pitcher was Sandy Koufax, the best catcher was Johnny Bench and the best hitter was Ted Williams, who was the best player? Willie Mays, of course. In the late '60s, Williams signed the young Bench's baseball "to a Hall of Famer, for sure"; the greatest players seem to know their descendants. Neither Bobby Orr nor Gordie Howe had any difficulty recognizing Gretzky. "He passes better than anybody I've ever seen," says Orr, "and he thinks so far ahead." Howe allows, "In the old six-team league (21 teams now), the opposition would have been able to learn more about him, but it might not have helped."