One of my contributions to this month’s “100 Greatest Cincinnati Athletes Ever” was going to be a Mt. Rushmore of Cincinnati Athletes. If you’re a sports fan at all, you know the game: Which four faces do you carve in stone to represent ultimate achievement? You can do it for anything really (Mt. Rushmore of shampoo brands, Mt. Rushmore of Gilligan’s Island characters) but the sports world is perfect for this sort of foolishness.
Then we ran out of space, and I had to forgo the fun. So I’ve relocated Mt. Rushmore to this space.
The first three faces on my Cincinnati pantheon came quickly and without any real debate: Anthony Muñoz, Oscar Robertson, and Pete Rose. They’re among the top five or 10 players of all time in their sports. In fact, the Big O and the Hit King would be on a lot of people’s Mt. Rushmore of Basketball and Major League Baseball, respectively. Let’s not get into a Rose argument; he belongs here.
It took me a while to settle on my fourth honoree. I’m a big Ken Anderson and Boomer Esiason fan and not ready yet to anoint Joe Burrow this town’s QB1. Strong cases can be made for Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Tony Pérez from the Big Red Machine. Ken Griffey Jr. is a close second to Rose in terms of a born-and-raised Hall of Famer. Ezzard Charles was one of the best boxers ever.
I ultimately chose Barry Larkin. Local kid, starred at Moeller with his brother Byron, played in two College World Series, and spent his entire 19-year pro career with the Reds. National League MVP, 12-time All-Star, first ballot Hall of Famer, retired number … the whole shebang. What raises Larkin even higher in my appreciation—much like the Big Red Machine gang—is he won a World Series championship here. That wire-to-wire season was 35 long years ago, the most recent major sports title in Cincinnati. How time flies.
That’s my Mt. Rushmore: Larkin, Muñoz, Robertson, Rose. What’s your foursome? How about a Mt. Rushmore of UC, Xavier, or NKU sports? E-mail me, and I’ll publish your lists online in a few weeks.
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