FORT MYERS, Fla. â My ESPN colleague Tim Kurkjian likes to say that baseball players are the best athletes in the world â or at least the most underrated. I agree. Of course, Tim and I are baseball fans and absolutely biased in this regard, but we are also right. This is not a matter of debate.
This topic came up when I was down at the Boston Red Soxâs spring training, and we were discussing Mookie Betts. A couple of days before, MLB had tweeted a highlight video of Betts in action â not only hitting home runs and robbing home runs but also dunking a basketball, making a slick move on the football field and bowling. The tweet went viral:
Even Dave Dombrowski, the Red Sox president of baseball operations, saw the video. When Betts reported to camp â several days early, by the way â Dombrowski greeted him with, âHello, wide receiver.â
I asked Kurkjian if Betts is perhaps the greatest athlete in the world right now. He told me a story of an NFL player â the best at his position at the time â throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game. Kurkjian was working the game, and the player came up to him and asked, âHow do I do this?â Kurkjian thought the player was merely asking where to stand when he threw the pitch. No, the player was literally asking, âHow do I throw a baseball?â
It seems like a simple exercise. Any good athlete should be able to throw a baseball. Well, hereâs nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis attempting a first pitch:
And hereâs five-time NBA All-Star John Wall:
Itâs not so easy. Now try hitting one buzzing at you at 98 mph. As Adam Jones once told Kurkjian, âIâve told players from other sports, âWe could play your sport better than you could play our sport.'â
This brings us back to Betts. We know how good he is at baseball: Heâs the reigning American League MVP after hitting .346 with 32 home runs and 30 steals, winning a Gold Glove and leading the league in batting average, slugging percentage, runs and WAR. It was one of the greatest seasons in Red Sox history:
The case for Betts as the worldâs best athlete rests not just in his ability to dominate the most difficult of sports but also in his ability to do everything else. As he sheepishly told me, âEverything I played, I kind of found a way to be pretty good at. My mom always said, âIf youâre not good at something, then donât do it.'â
With that in mind, I asked Betts about his ability in a few other activities.
Football: Bettsâ mom didnât let him play football in high school, but he was always around the game at Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee. âI was water boy all four years, so I went to practices, every game, didnât miss a game all four years,â Betts said. He wanted to be around his friends even if he couldnât play, so in practice, heâd throw to receivers or run routes for the quarterbacks. How many water boys turn into MVPs?
As for his football skills, they looked impressive on the video. âHe could probably suit up for a lot of clubs right now and play,â Dombrowski joked. Considering the abundance of undersized slot receivers in the NFL, it seems Betts could fit right in as Tom Bradyâs new go-to target.
Basketball: As a high school senior, Betts averaged 14.4 points and 5.8 assists and was named MVP of his district. âSports is just something I have a knack to figure out how to play. Obviously, Iâm coordinated and whatnot,â he said. The good teammate that he is, Betts quickly added, âJust like everybody here is. Weâre all good at something else.â
Bowling: Bettsâ bowling skills are legendary by now. In 2017, he bowled a 300 game in the qualifying rounds of the World Series of Bowling. In early February, he and partner Tommy Jones won the CP3 PBA Celebrity Invitational. He said facing Justin Verlander is much tougher than facing a 2-10 split: âYou make a 2-10 split pretty often when you bowl as much as I do.â (Then again, Verlander is the one pitcher who seems to have Bettsâ number. He is just 2-for-24 against the Houston Astros ace.)
Now, maybe youâre smirking at the inclusion of bowling here. I get that bowling isnât necessarily a sport in which traditional measures of athleticism â speed, agility, strength, endurance â are critical to success. But like baseball, it is a sport of repetition and precision. No wonder Betts excels at it.
Indeed, thatâs one reason Betts is so good at baseball. He has the natural ability, of course, but he has honed those skills through a lot of work. My favorite play from last postseason came in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, in which Betts threw out the Astrosâ Tony Kemp trying to stretch a single into a double:
It was a play of sublime beauty that perfectly encapsulates Bettsâ athleticism: the anticipation that Kemp would go for second, the speed to get to the ball, the balance to quickly pivot and make the throw, and the execution to fire a rocket right on target. Even Betts knew it was a good play. He rarely shows emotion on the field, but he slapped his fist into his glove after the out call. After the game, Betts explained that he was able to make the play because itâs one he practices in spring training.
He takes the same approach to his work at the plate. Of Betts and teammate J.D. Martinez, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said, âIf you hear them talking around the batting cage, youâd think theyâre the worst hitters in the league.â In other words: never content, always looking to find ways to improve. Repetition and precision â until athleticism becomes muscle memory.
Pingpong: The Red Sox have a pingpong table set up in the middle of their spring training clubhouse. Betts said Chris Sale is probably the clubhouse champion. âI feel like Iâm right up there with him, though,â he said with a laugh.
Golf: Betts doesnât play much, perhaps a few times during spring training for the most part, but he said, âIâm all right.â He guessed his handicap is probably 12 or 13. âI try to get out during the offseason, but itâs cold and rains in Nashville, so I donât get out much.â Just donât let him drive the golf cart.
Mile run: âI think the fastest I did in high school was 6:45 or something like that,â Betts said. Maybe weâve found a weakness here. From watching Betts do some running drills one day in spring training, letâs just say Iâm not sure heâs a threat to break four minutes in the mile anytime soon. Then again, if you put the challenge up to him, who knows?
Checkers and chess: âMy dad taught me how to play those. I donât get to play often, but I have an idea what Iâm doing.â Does he usually win at those, too? âYeah.â
Rubikâs Cube: Yep, heâs good at this, too. The video evidence:
His expertise at the Rubikâs Cube helps explain my theory on Betts. Heâs one of those individuals who would be good at whatever he put his mind to: cooking, brain surgery, investment banking. He has the discipline and work ethic â and the desire â to be the best. If heâd wanted to be an accountant, he would have been the best damn accountant there is. Luckily for us, he chose baseball.
The thing that makes baseball so hard is that it requires a balance of athleticism and skill. Thatâs what Betts possesses. He has what psychologists term âbodily-kinesthetic intelligence,â in which mind-body coordination is nearly faultless.
But he also seems to have âlogical-mathematical intelligence,â as illustrated in the Rubikâs Cube video. In some ways, baseball players are like finely tuned robots, repeating specific skills until they master them. Solving a math problem can be construed as similar to throwing out Tony Kemp or figuring out how to make adjustments on hitting a curveball. You must have a brain that works in cohesion with your body.
Is Mookie Betts the best athlete in the world? Hey, maybe he isnât even the best in baseball. Cora suggested that Betts, Jose Altuve and Francisco Lindor are âpound-for-poundâ the best athletes in the game right now. I guess until somebody revives âThe Superstarsâ â those of you who grew up in the 1970s and â80s remember the show â weâll never really know. Until then, weâll just assume that Mookie Betts is better than us at just about everything.
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