As part of Sportsnet magazine’s upcoming sports movie package we’re seeking to determine the greatest fictional athlete in film history. And we need your help to do it.
“Greatness” is open to interpretation. Some of the names appearing in the bracket overcame extreme adversity, others single-handedly took their team from laughing-stock to champion, while a select few were flat-out dominant in their respective sports.
Each day this week on Sportsnet.ca we’ll be asking you to cast your vote, with the final results appearing in the next issue of Sportsnet. With a seemingly endless list of worthy candidates and a rule that only one athlete from a movie can be represented, on Monday we asked you to help whittle the list down to 16 names that will make up the bracket.
Vote on the following matchups: Jesus Shuttlesworth vs. Happy Gilmore; Lewis Scott vs. Adam Banks; Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez vs. Amanda Whurlitzer
So let’s get started with our first round match-ups, this one being likely the only time you’ll see these two names intertwined:
Roy Hobbs, New York Knights
He was going to be the greatest baseball player there ever was. Instead, he had to settle for the greatest season—long delayed. He got shot in the stomach as a teenager, and didn’t make his big-league debut until 35. But even after 15+ years out of the game he was still so good he knocked the cover off the ball on command. Former ESPN scribe and current Ringer ringleader Bill Simmons once estimated Hobbs’s stats in his one season of pro ball at 44 homers, 106 RBI and a 1.196 OPS in 115 games. Not bad for a 35-year-old rookie.
Joe Cooper, Milwaukee Beers
From an unemployed 23-year-old to a living legend in the span of just five years, Coop not only invented the sport he’d come to dominate but retired as one of the most clutch BASEketball players of all-time. His most iconic on-field moment came at the 1997 Denslow Cup, when, after replacing child workers with adults at a factory manufacturing his own clothing line in Calcutta, he helped the Beers erase a 16-point deficit in the seventh inning to hoist the trophy—and get the girl.