There are 100 different ways to measure this and all of them will cause an endless debate.
But I would posit Bo Jackson as a great contender. He was 6′1 230 lbs and moved like a much smaller man.
He famously ran sideways across a wall because he was running too fast during a game to slow down.
He was a freak athlete in every sense of the word. He played pro football and baseball:
In the US, the 40-yard dash is the signature combine event in the NFL, to measure the fastest athletes.
The current record is 4.22 and over the past 20 years, only a few people have dipped below 4.3.
In college, there is an unofficial clocked time of 4.12 by Bo Jackson. One coach showed him a time of 3.9 and another showed him 4.0 but he chose to go with 4.12. Jackson didn’t bother attending the combine because he was already expected to be picked first in the NFL draft (he was).
So put simply, he’s built like a tank and can run like a cheetah, and has a vertical leap that matches Michael Jordan's. There are high school stories of him getting his elbow well above the basketball rim.
He also has incredible balance and hand-eye coordination—enough to hit 141 home runs in his short baseball career. He could also throw the ball to home plate from deep in the outfield.
In high school, he pole-vaulted 13 feet on his very first attempt. He won the state decathlon twice, in the only two years he competed in the event before quitting track. He was so far ahead in the decathlon that he skipped running the final event (the mile).
He could also high jump 6′9, which means he could jump his entire body over Kobe Bryant—while weighing 220 lbs (at the time).
He is that guy who casually picks up a sport you've been doing your whole life and, on his first day doing it, makes you feel like a talentless amateur.
Bo Jackson is commonly regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time because, quite frankly, he is. The only thing that stopped him from rewriting record books was an injury.
If you were to create a Bo Jackson clone, he could go pro in dozens of sports. It was only a matter of his choosing. He’s the definition of a genetic specimen.
#bojackson #MLB #Baseball
