1. Which athlete do you idolize the most and why?

2. If you could live with only 1 sport, what would it be and why?

3. Of these four people, Wayne Gretzky, Hank Aaron, Joe Montana, or Michael Jordan, who do you think made the biggest impact on his sport?

First: the short answers.

1. Jesus.

2. The human race.

3. Hank Aaron, no: Michael Jordan. Uhh, not Montana. Gretsky is a tough one....Yes, I can understand why others have introduced new names. I might say Michael...But Hank is huge for the social psychology of our nation...

Okay, that wasn't as short of an answer as I intended it to be!

Next: the long explanations...

1. All right, you don't have to believe in who this ubiquitous historical figure is who He says He is to respect him as an athlete. Allow me to explain.

I happen to accept Him as a figure to worship, or "idolize", as the question asks. Obviously this biases my opinion and the following rationale. Jesus was born, according to belief and tradition, in a lowly stable. He worked in the labors of his family as a carpenter or a stone mason (there's current debate as to which), but his labor was immaterial as compared to his lasting teachings and His physical impact on the world. This is beyond debate.

Christians, as a global demographic, make up approximately 2 billion faithful of every sect and denomination on every continent. That is about one third of the earth's inhabitants. Jesus's impact and influence through organized religion upon sports is endless. In our country we have Notre Dame and Boston College (as well as Gonzaga and the Loyolas, etc.) as official Catholic entities represented in the sports world; the numbers of high schools is an unknown but formidable number, in the US alone. Worldwide it is hard to comprehend, and this is only the Roman Catholics, who compose about a third of extant Christianity.

Beyond Catholicism, there is Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, Baylor, Wake Forest, Liberty, Brigham Young, etc., etc. Even Indiana University of my home town of Bloomington was started as a seminary college (I believe the first rector was Methodist). Harvard, the oldest American university with William and Mary, both have their Christian religious roots as well as so many others... The Holy Bible was the foundation for so much of our Western "educated" society...

So Jesus's physical or "academic" influence is great, and this should be evident to any common observer: religious, secular, or anti-religious. 

For the spiritual or "faith related" part of this equation, there is the matter of the Creation, Divinity and the Resurrection. Not light subjects for those, like myself, that posit faith in these larger than life creeds. They require the quintessential leap of faith to accept, but once one has and is convinced of their veracity, there is no other person who has lived or breathed around our planet that could be considered an "athlete".

Omnipotent, omniscient, able to raise Himself from death and conquer all human frailty, sickness and sin. If you accept this, there is no one to compare...

So that is my number one athlete! And I happen to believe that without His athletic prowess, none of the rest of the so-called athletes would amount to much. But this is all my personal, subjective and biased opinion: I don't wish to impose it or use it as an excuse to be exclusively superior, only fairly suggest it as who I honestly "idolize". He may have never hit a homer nor even have made one three point shot, but His presence and legacy in sports and life are endless...

So, in the words of the Golden Domers and NBC color commentators:

"Touchdown, Jesus!"

(And I am a secular IU fan when it comes to Midwest college football! Go Hoosiers!)

2. There's a phrase or axiom (doubtfully so) that I always thought was wise: "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face." To me, that means that even though there is something that we may not like or that we may wish to eliminate for whatever reason, ill-conceived or legitimate, we must keep the complete picture intact.

My biggest sport that exists on the earth is the "human race", an intended pun that wishes to convey that pure survival is indeed, the number one sport. How, where and why we go about this "survial sport" is the question. For me, I have been developing a theory (well, hypothesis, really) that the human race does much better with three staple facets of reality: freedom of economy, stability of food and substance, and a diversity of healthy recreation (sports, individual and organized teams, included).

So this is my soap box to conveniently argue the proliferation and continued development of all sports and the organizations that maintain them!

Haha! I cheated here, folks! I kept them all and I am actually upping the ante to create more!

3. Hank Aaron has impacted baseball more than the others (Joe, Mike, Wayne) for their respective sports...because...

Wow, this is significantly harder than the first two. Maybe a hundred years from now it will be a much easier question to answer...

Hank surpassed the legend of our national pasttime in 1974.  Need I mention who this was by name, and his famous candy bar? I thought not. Of course, he did not supplant him as that legend of his era, but he proved something far more significant in overt and subtle ways...

1) Hammerin' Hank proved the time honored adage that slow and steady wins the race... Patience, hard work, steady, no frills or binges...Plain, good ole fashioned hard work! This is America, this is our heritage. Aaron epitomized us.

2) You don't have to be brash or a human freak of nature to be the best. You can be a humble, likable champion. (Ali? Failed on a few too many counts until hit with Parkinson's).

3) Hank was black. He was American. He was proud. But he didn't shove race down your face. He was very human, not a bunch of hiss and howl. Leave that for dogs and alley cats. Hank was a class act.

4) He raised the bar of his cultural brothers:  J. Robinson, Mays, B. Robinson, Banks, et al. But he raised the bar for all his baseball bretheren: Dimaggio, Williams, Mantle, Killebrew, Clemente, etc. White, Latino, (eventually Asian), it didn't matter. Hank united us all through a singular greatness: The will to perform on the highest stage of American sport.

5) He left the racist myths behind. There is one superior race: Human. Hank was the quintessential champion. He was both an individual  and a team champion. The ultimate American. And our country, in a time of open wounds unhealed in Southeast Asia and at home, needed a person to make us feel like one people again.

Forgive our past wrongs, our present evils, the poverty, the enslavement, the hunger, the oppresion. Let a man fight for his portion on equal footing, let him be who we were all meant to be in God's green earth: champions! Let him struggle, toil and sweat in an equal playing field, in front of millions of witnesses, and let there be no doubt: he played the game the right way. And he prevailed. 

6) Hank knew he achieved the greatest feat in all sports, but it didn't go to his head. His demurring personality underscored the milestone while cementing the non-self-congratulatory nature of the act. He took this celebrated excellence in stride, the sign of a true victor and athlete who knows himself, and has no reason nor pretense to brag and bang his chest like others of less character and intelligence.

7) Hank reconfirmed that baseball was ours, and made it again the game of our dreams and aspirations. What defensive lineman or dominant center never dreamed of hitting a game winning home run? Baseball is a lifeline that puts everything else into perspective. It is slow and methodical. It is our life blood. Michael Jordan lost his father and went out to the Field of Dreams. Perhaps he found his father out there in those Alabama parks, those lonely batting sessions away from the screaming arenas, perhaps he met Shoeless Joe out there playing catch with his dad. Perhaps baseball, despite its own vagaries for an older Jordan, healed his great and troubled heart.

8) Hank did more for his sport  than the others listed because the excellence and majesty of that sport is the single game that brings us all together. Super Bowl Sunday is a national holiday. The NBA Finals are the time of playground legends. But the eternal game, the one whose limits we cannot truly fathom, culminate as the life cycle of the harvest ends in October.

Montana was great, yes, but other great QBs have added  and enhanced the grandeur and magic of that sport. Gretsky was and will always be the Great One of that sport, which resonates with pockets of our great country and the great white North...

Jordan revolutionized how the marketing and spectacle of winning and sheer will may overcome all obstacles. His passion and skill were perhaps superior to all of the others, but that is subject to debate due to three retirements...

But for my money, and by that I mean my most worthy respect and honor, Hank Aaron did more for all of us, not just  for "his sport", than practically any other single person has done in any other modern athletic event. And that crazy fan may still not fully realize what really possessed him to grab gentleman Hank after he rounded second base on 715...

For me, it's an easy call: he was reaching out to hug his dad.

And who is our country's spiritual father? Without knowing it, it just might be...

The understated giant, the anti-hero. The one who does all the work and seldom gets the accolades. And maybe that is the way our spiritual dad should be. Omnipresent yet elusive...

Hug your father. He's coming home.