All-time Kings of Cool in Wisconsin Sports
Posted on April 22, 2011
But what about the coolest athletes from Wisconsin? Hmmm, almost sounds like trying to come up with the best ski resorts in Florida.
Many Hall of Famers have played this relatively staid scene, but few have passed the Dr. J exam for cool.
Henry Aaron was more regal than cool. Robin Yount and Paul Molitor? Great players, but hardly Fonzies in spikes. Reggie White? Not quite.
Few teams were cooler than those 1977 Marquette Warriors. I mean, how many group photos are taken in tuxedos and a '34 Packard? Al McGuire may have been the coolest coach ever.
And Don Nelson's fish ties? Definitely cool.
Granted, a sports writer should never be trusted with the subject, but here are one guy's top 10 coolest locals:
1. Paul Hornung: James Dean, the exemplar of cool, had achieved cult status two years after his death in 1957. Dean's big-screen successor, Steve McQueen, was just beginning his reign as the King of Cool. And in San Francisco, the Beat Generation was banging the bongos, daddy-o. But Green Bay was a different world when the Packers made the Golden Boy the No. 1 pick of the '57 draft. It was clear that the Heisman Trophy winner from Notre Dame could do just about anything on the football field, but few in northeastern Wisconsin quite knew what to make of this suave ladies' man who brought a Rat Pack vibe to Titletown. "Hornung," as Vince Lombardi yelled when he caught Mr. Night Life sneaking out of camp again, "what do you want to be, a playboy or a football player?" Do you have to ask Hornung's answer?
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: There may have been a sizable cultural gulf between The Captain and Milwaukee of the 1970s, but behind that aloof facade was the beat of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. To Kareem, jazz and basketball were played at the same tempo. And it wasn't the improvised riffs he was talking about, either. "A team of basketball soloists, without the structure of a common goal, may get TV endorsements for pimple cream, but it doesn't win championships," he wrote. And the only thing cooler than jazz is Kung Fu-ing it up with Bruce Lee, which Abdul-Jabbar did in "Enter the Dragon."
3. Eric Heiden: The first person to win five gold medals in a Winter Olympics was cool because he insisted he wasn't. Just try to be invisible to the world when you wrap speed skater's tights around a 32-inch waist and 27-inch thighs on the way to history, but that was Heiden's intent at Lake Placid. He genuinely thought he was a regular guy. "Heck, gold medals, what can you do with them?" Heiden said three decades ago. "When I get old, maybe I could sell them if I need the money." Not that he needs to now that he's a doctor in Utah.
4. Elroy Hirsch: OK, so he played just one season for the Badgers. But Crazylegs was able to parlay his incredibly cool running style all the way to the NFL and Hollywood, where he starred in his own biopic. Not bad for a kid from Wausau. In 1957, Hirsch played the role of the pilot in the airline disaster movie, "Zero Hour!" Twenty-three years later, three screenwriters from Milwaukee parodied the film with the megahit "Airplane!" And who played the co-pilot? Kareem-Abdul Jabbar. Now that's cool.
5. Gorman Thomas: If the '82 Brewers were the Beatles to this town, Stormin' Gorman was its Lennon, sideburns and all. If Thomas hadn't been born to hit a baseball 400 feet and crash into center-field walls, he could've been Eli Wallach opposite Clint Eastwood in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." If Thomas had played a rogue cop in an '80s action movie, you would've given up on the spot and handcuffed yourself.
6. Mickey Crowe: One of this state's greatest high school basketball players, Crowe had the ultracool Pete Maravich look down in the mid-'70s. He could score like Pistol Pete, too, 41 points a game as a senior without the three-pointer for St. Nazianz JFK Prep. Even the name of his school was cool. Plus, he had the proper relaxed perspective on defense. "People were coming to the games to see how many points I could score," Crowe once told insidewisconsinsports.com. "I couldn't do it on the bench with five fouls."
7. Maurice Lucas: Everything about those great '70s Marquette teams was cool, but Lucas majored in cool. He radiated cool. He was so cool that people called him "The Enforcer" and he didn't even like to fight. He'd just knock opponents out to be done with it. He played for the coolest pro team ever, the Spirits of St. Louis, and won a championship with the '77 Portland Trail Blazers. Lucas died a few months ago at the age of 58, may he rest in peace.
8. Sam Cassell: Cartoon-character cool. After getting ejected in Washington for punting the ball off the scoreboard, Cassell was on his way to a party 10 minutes later wearing a fur coat and a floppy hat. Sammy didn't care if the sun was shining. Didn't care if it came up, either, which is a cool way to live. He was terminally happy and could talk smack like nobody's business, yet there wasn't a malicious bone in his body.
9. Ted Simmons: He grew his hair in the late '60s and early '70s when a lot of baseball players had the Pete Rose flap-top thing going. He read books. He did crosswords in the clubhouse. He had that Cool Hand Luke kind of rugged individualism about him. That he's not in the Hall of Fame isn't cool.
10. Brett Favre: Recent events have caused No. 4 to tumble eight or nine spots. But even with all the big piles he has stepped into of late, you've got to admit the guy was pretty cool there for a while.
...I'm going to have to disagree with Michael Hunt on #8. I always thought Sam Cassell was smug and never saw him in the "cool" light. To be fair, I didn't live in Milwaukee, attend Bucks games on a regular basis or get to hang out with Sam...ever.
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