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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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If you are talking about careers, then Barry Bonds. He had two inner circle HoF careers. He is just absurd. Mahomes likely will get there.

But I would say Mario is the GOAT. Dude got chemo. Later that day he suited up and scored a goal on his first shift. Just absurd stuff. Most naturally gifted player ever.

Chess isn’t a sport but Magnus is awesome.

Murray I agree. Great tennis player but he is clearly far behind the big three and probably even Alcaraz. He is more Stanimal territory. Agree re WNBA as well.

A huge chunk of Bonds' career predates 2000.

Totally. Other poster broadened the discussion to all time.

Bonds even before he got (rightly) upset over the attention McGwire & Sosa got and started taking roids was a HOF player.

Especially since he was going up against plenty of roided up pitchers himself, I'd argue 2001-2004 Barry Bonds is the among the scariest athletes when it comes to ability to take over a game, and it's in a sport where he only gets 5 chances to do so.

From 2001-2004 Bonds didnt have a single season with an OBP below .500. That’s utterly insane. In 2004 his OBP was above .600. The numbers are hard to fathom.

If you are talking about careers, then Barry Bonds.

Anyone who cheated (steroids in his case) doesn't belong on a list of greatest athletes. And if that means the list is empty, then so be it. Great athleticism requires doing it the honest way.

Yeah but realistically most of the candidates here would be using something.

Usain Bolt an outlier upon outliers in a very simple/easily-optimized sport in which most of his contemporaries popped for doping at some point? Either he's like 3-4 levels of outlier from the fastest people ever, or he was doing approximately the same stuff and was only a tier ahead.