“The time you won your town the race, we chaired you through the marketplace. Man and boy stood cheering by, and home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, shoulder-high we bring you home, and set you at your threshold down, townsman of a stiller town.” – A.E. Housman

It is not often you can honestly attach the superlative “the greatest of all time” to a person – well, at least not on a skill that matters to anybody.

You might be the greatest pencil sharpener, knuckle cracker or dog belly scratcher in history, but it is difficult to make anyone stand up and take notice of those talents. I think I could be a contender for having the greatest ability to lose the remote control between couch cushions. If you have a job opening requiring a similar skill, look me up.

Playing baseball is one skill many people care about and are willing to spend their hard-earned money to watch, and we recently lost the person who is arguably the best to have ever done it.

Willie Mays remains the gold standard for what baseball scouts refer to as a five-tool player. He could hit home runs and hit for a high batting average. He could steal bases with ease, throw a baseball from sea to shining sea and catch any flyball hit within the closest few ZIP codes.

Mays died last week at the age of 93. To have someone born and raised just outside Birmingham arguably be the greatest player of what many people consider to be America’s greatest sport is a point of tremendous pride for our state.

Alabama’s ability to produce athletes who reach the pinnacle of their sport in so many different disciplines compared to our state’s limited population is remarkable.

These athletes not only reach the pinnacle but also have a knack for establishing some kind of historical significance for themselves – a difficult feat in sports where fans and followers tend to focus on what have you done for me lately.

Jesse Owens, born in Lawrence County, won four gold medals in track and field in the 1936 Berlin Olympics while embarrassing Adolph Hitler who claimed the racial superiority of his people. New York Times columnist Frank Litsky called Owens “perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history.”

Joe Louis was born just outside LaFayette and went on to have the longest uninterrupted reign as world heavyweight champion in the history of professional boxing. His knockout of German Max Schmeling in 1938 after losing in their first bout also went a long way toward dispelling racial superiority. You can see a statue of Louis in front of the Chambers County Courthouse.

There are so many other examples who could be mentioned. I did not bring up any of our state’s collegiate athletic stars we all know well. Even the man who has a resume worthy to challenge Mays as the greatest baseball player, Hank Aaron, was born and raised in Mobile.

So is Mays the greatest there ever was? Frankly, who cares? Debates on this topic are rarely productive. Whoever is your favorite athlete, musician, author, etc. should be the greatest in the world to you. I say celebrate those people, and do not sweat what everyone else has to say about them.

Even Mays’ obvious greatness was not universally recognized. My favorite story I learned about Mays since his passing came from 1979 when he was first eligible to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Baseball Writers Association of America is responsible for electing former players to enter the hall of fame. It is a group notorious for having some members who are extremely hard to please. Despite his cavalcade of accomplishments, 23 writers did not include Mays on their ballot, though Mays still easily passed the threshold to enter the hall of fame that same year.

New York Daily News writer Dick Young was so disgusted with those writers for such an obvious snub of Mays, he wrote, “If Jesus Christ were to show up with his old baseball glove, some guys wouldn’t vote for him. He dropped the cross three times, didn’t he?”

Hearing stories about a person and celebrating the impact a person can have on people he or she may have never even met is what I enjoy most when discussing someone who has achieved significance in this world, especially a fellow Alabamian.

Was Mays better than Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb or Jesus with an old baseball glove? I will leave that to you and those cantankerous old baseball writers to decide.