by Matt Barr

Fear and hopelessness

I've enjoyed Colby Cosh's conversation with his readers about which athletes might fit the bill of "Terror" [n]:

For me, this is the most treasured wing of the sports pantheon -- that of the practically unstoppable, explosive athlete who reduces opponents, as an individual, to a state of obsession and snivelling fear. These are the guys who remind you of Butch and Sundance running, bleary-eyed and panicking, from the Superposse. There are not many of them, and many greats don't reach that level.

He says a reader, Tim Plett, does a better job describing what he means:

Quiet efficiency--even deadly quiet efficiency--does not amount to terror. Great team play and winning don't necessarily produce terror. The Great Terror isn't necessarily consistent, or a great team player, or a winner. He might not be multifaceted in his approach to his particular game. (I mean a Great Terror might be lousy defensively.) What a Great Terror is terrifying in is his ability to take over a game at any instant, and to literally paralyze opposition with his dominance.

See here, here and here for a three part discussion of the concept. After three rounds I'm less sure than I was the first installment that I'm exactly sure who is and isn't a Terror. But one of Cosh's readers in the third link hit on something I'd like to run with: Dominik Hasek, he says, "had the ability to make games seem hopeless."

Right there. I think there are athletes who make games seem hopeless, and whether they do so by inspiring cold sweats or a slow, simmering frustration, I think this is a more interesting and intuitively understandable category. You may prefer to think of them as the Jack Bauers of sports: They were ruthless and relentless, the result inevitable, and somebody might get shot in the thigh along the way.

The Platonic ideal of this player would be Nolan Ryan, who is briefly mentioned on Cosh's site in the Terror context. Tiger Woods, also not officially endorsed as a Terror, fits perfectly in this category, too.

These players obviously need not make every game seem hopeless; we haven't come across the player who could do that yet. But it takes more than a couple games that looking back seemed inevitable to qualify, so Frank Reich doesn't. But Joe Montana probably does.

Gretzky sucked the hope out of opponents and their fans. Your team could summon every ounce of will and claw their fingernails bloody to draw even or even slightly build an advantage, but it could all disintegrate. Demoralizing -- that's what these players are.

Lots of goalies have runs like this, and Hasek is probably first among them. Roy, sure. I don't know if Billy Smith himself made things seem hopeless for the other guys -- I think he certainly was a Terror. Dryden, Parent, yeah. Of skaters, Orr joins Gretzky, and maybe Mario does, too.

I mentioned Ryan but I don't think Clemens qualifies. Saying why will just make poeple mad. The guy I think of after Ryan is Eckersley. Cosh says no other ballplayer has really ever joined Ruth as an all-time Terror, and I think it's difficult to be a position player and routinely sap the life out of teams and their fans because you have to have the opportunity to change games, and you don't very often in a nine-person batting order. I think the 21st century Barry Bonds qualifies if anyone does. When I was a law student in Chicago following the early 90s White Sox, Frank Thomas was a hope-wringer-outer. I know several people who would nominate Derek Jeter.

I don't follow basketball, but know Jordan fits.

Lots of discussion about Lawrence Taylor at Cosh's and I think he's here with Montana. Dick Butkus (the one player in this post I never saw, which is a type I'm intentionally avoiding, but Butkus is so obvious). Elway. In the Terror pantheon is Bo Jackson; I think he probably fits here, too.

Another way to look at it is these are the types of players that when you beat them, you beat them -- "we beat Gretzky!" "We beat Elway!" I don't know if the words "we beat David Ortiz!" have ever been strung together followed by an exclamation point, ever. The nauseatingly real possibility of abject failure makes the rare success much sweeter.

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