Smartest sports player

[houston-nat]

PatsNats suggested Ross Ohlendorf; JCA said Craig Breslow, someone else mentioned Bill Bradley. This all was in the "Former Nats" thread.

So who's the smartest sports player?

Two ways to answer:
1. Brainpower generally (college, whatever)
2. Sports smarts

Mark DeRosa went to the Wharton School of Business. Then there was a basketball player, John Amaechi, for the Utah Jazz who did poetry readings and wine tastings in the locker room. Right now Amaechi is getting a Ph.D. in psychology, apparently.

But these are also stories I think of when I think of brilliant athletes.

I wrote last week about Drew Brees sitting in Week 17 and setting the NFL record for the most accurate passing season (70.62 percent, beating Ken Anderson's 70.55 percent in 1982), which was mindful to some of the 1941 baseball season. Ted Williams was batting .399955 (.400, because the average would have been rounded up) entering a doubleheader on the last day of the season, and his manager gave him the option of sitting, and Williams said he'd play, and he went 6-for-8 in the doubleheader and finished with a .406 average. It's the last time a player ever hit .400.

I was with Brees in New Orleans Thursday night and asked him about it, and a pained expression came over his face. He wears number 9 because he grew up idolizing Ted Williams. When he was drafted by the Chargers, he moved into his first house because it was on Ted Williams Way. I can tell you he's still conflicted about setting the record the way he did -- but understands he couldn't have done anything about it.

Turns out that on the day after Minnesota lost to Chicago in Week 16, clinching home-field advantage for the Saints, Sean Payton called Brees into his office and told him he wasn't going to play in the season's final game at Carolina. You know -- it's the whole thing about resting starters, avoiding injury, giving other guys a chance to play. Later that day, doing a media interview, Brees was told that, though he and Anderson were both at 70.6, if the figure were taken out to the next decimal place, Brees' number was better, and thus he was ahead of Anderson.

Brees didn't want to spill the beans about Payton's lineup plan, so he said nothing. But he said he got a terrible feeling right then.

"I immediately thought of Ted Williams going into the last day of the '41 season batting .399995, or whatever it was,'' Brees said, "and I thought, 'If I don't play, I'm letting Teddy down.' ''

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/01/10/mmqb/1.html

The magic show is over. I dislike absolutes, but of this I am sure: Greg Maddux is the most fascinating interview, the smartest baseball player and the most highly formed baseball player I have encountered in 27 years covering major league baseball. There is no one alive who ever practiced the craft of pitching better than Maddux.

Like a grand master in chess, Maddux saw the game on a higher plane than everybody else. Some of his tricks he shared with me, such as knowing how to attack a hitter after watching the hitter take his warmup swings. There was the time he was in the dugout decoding the body language of Jose Hernandez of the Dodgers during an at-bat when he deadpanned to a teammate, "Watch this. The first base coach may be going to the hospital." On the next pitch Hernandez drilled a line drive off the chest of the first-base coach. Well, Maddux was wrong about the hospital part, anyway.

http://images.si.com/2008/writers/tom_verducci/12/06/maddux/index.html

Naturally, as soon as you devise a strategy that seems to succeed against Maddux, he'll change the game. Braves manager Bobby Cox calls him the smartest player he's ever known, and others have called him the shrewdest scout in the sport. Nicknamed the Professor, Maddux admits that he looks for subtle signs in a hitter's behavior, such as the way a batter's back foot opens up slightly when he's trying to hit to the opposite field. "Maddux constantly changes his approach," says Colorado Rockies catcher Jeff Reed, a lefthanded hitter who has hit .317 in 60 at bats against Maddux. "So one at bat I might say I'm going to wait on the ball a long time and take him the other way, but if he's busting me inside, I'm going to change. It's a guessing game, and he probably knows me better than I know me."

Maddux seems to have a photographic memory, so five years later he still remembers the time he made a batter look bad on a certain pitch, and he'll fool him with it again. Many hitters also swear he's clairvoyant. "Sometimes I would see the sign and think, Why's he throwing that pitch?" says former Braves second baseman Mark Lemke, who's now with the Boston Red Sox. "Then the batter will pop it up. He'll work to a hitter's strength, only not when he's expecting it. It's like he knows what the hitter is looking for, so he throws the opposite."

Says Maddux, "In order to be a good pitcher, you've got to think like a hitter. Why do you think I sit beside our hitting coach every game when I'm not pitching? It ain't because I like him so much."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1013272/index.htm

[NatsAddict]

Bernie Kosar completed his degrees (he received two from University of Miami - business administration and economics) two years early.  He was also offered a Rhodes Scholarship.  He is currently on the board of directors for UM.

He was one of the smartest QBs, and rarely made bad decisions.  I think his record of 300+ consecutive passes without an INT still stands.

As a backup quarterback for the Dolphins, he could pickup and run the opposing offense almost perfectly, even the ones with a running quarterback (which he certainly was not - Drew Carey's standup routine had a great impersonation of Kosar scrambling - he wobbled the microphone stand), and was a tremendous asset.  The defense said it was always easier on gameday than facing Kosar during the week.


Unfortunately, with the failure of his restaurant, a Cleveland judge threw him personally into chapter 7 of bankruptcy last week.  Although the bankruptcy was for a business in Cleveland, he was thrown into personal bankruptcy in Ft. Lauderdale, and the Ft Lauderdale judge is also taking his NFL pension.

[dirtynat]

Steve Nash. 

[tomterp]

Tom McMillen and Len Elmore might be the smartest big-guy tandem.

[blue911]

Moe Berg.



EDIT: A few years ago the Padres had a pitcher that graduated from MIT.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Not that Ivies are necessarily a good criterion, but DeRosa is UPenn, Breslow is Yale, and Chris Young the Pitcher is Princeton, as is Ohlendorf.  Plus there are countless Stanford guys. 

This USAToday article starts out talking about Breslow:

When former Boston Red Sox teammates Josh Beckett and Doug Mirabelli debated how many times a baseball rotates between the pitcher's hand and home plate, they knew where to turn: "Call Breslow. He'll figure it out."
That's Craig Breslow, the Oakland Athletics relief pitcher and former Red Sox who has a degree from Yale in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, plus the unofficial and potentially burdensome title of "smartest man in baseball."

"Whatever the subject, if I have an opinion, it's the word," Breslow says. "It doesn't matter if it's a subject I know anything about."

(For the record, "I think we came up with 12" for the rotation question, Breslow says.)

[Nat of the Living Dead]

Muhammad Ali

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Muhammad Ali

I had been thinking only active baseball players, but yes, Ali has to be considered among all sports, all time.

[bklynnats]

Ohlendorf actually did an internship with the USDA over this off-season... (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pittsburgh-pirates-pitcher-ross-ohlendorf-dc-internship/story?id=9335447)

Ross Ohlendorf has a decent full-time job -- as a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

ABC's Rick Klein tell us about Ross Ohlendorf, who is more than a star athlete.
But he's spending the winter in a cramped office of the Agriculture Department in Washington -- where his main focus has been tracking the migration of cattle diseases.

Ohlendorf, a 27-year-old Pirates right-hander, is serving as an unpaid intern at the US Department of Agriculture. He logs roughly 20 hours a week behind his desk, in a small room that he shares with a fellow intern, in an anonymous wing of the sprawling department headquarters.

He's nowhere near a pitcher's mound. And he's having a great time.

"This one's been, I'd say, the most exciting off-season I've had," Ohlendorf told ABC News.

Not sure if that = smartest, but it definitely shows a desire to keep learning even with the whole major league pitching gig.

[blue911]

Pedro Guerrero



http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/2000/06/06/roundup_ap/

[houston-nat]

Wow, Breslow and Ohlendorf sound like pretty awesome guys.

Fernando Perez (Rays OF) did a creative writing program at Columbia University and has published poetry.

NatsAddict and PANats: at least 2-3 guys on the Rice Univ football team have received Rhodes scholarships since 2000. Nobody famous, though.

[UMDNats]

Gilbert Arenas.

[blue911]

Jack McGeary went to Roxbury Latin and now attends Stanford.

[saltydad]

I would also say Moe Berg.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/MBerg.html

[PANatsFan]

NatsAddict and PANats: at least 2-3 guys on the Rice Univ football team have received Rhodes scholarships since 2000. Nobody famous, though.

Wouldn't count on any more as Todd Graham made them practice like actual football players.

[HerndonNat]

Once Myron Rolle gets drafted this year he will be the smartest in the NFL.

[PANatsFan]

Once Myron Rolle gets drafted this year he will be the smartest in the NFL.

He is a class act. Bowden didn't let EVERY player down academically

[d_mc_nabb]

Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard. Either got a 38 or a 50 (big difference, but still disputed) on the Wonderlic IQ test, which is insane either way. The test is out of 50, and the average is a 20. I think the average for a chemist is a 33, but I could be wrong.

[KnorrForYourMoney]

Mark Grace:

Grace had an interesting explanation for why he never took PEDs.

"I like my sex life," Grace said. "I want to be able to perform. It's kind of funny, but it's not. That stuff will tear you up as far as your manhood is concerned."

[ZIM4MVP]

/end thread

[PatsNats28]

Jack McGeary went to Roxbury Latin and now attends Stanford.

If I hadn't been so stupid in 6th grade and focused more on my grades, I would be at Roxbury Latin right now (I was first on the wait list, but obviously no one declines). Still, one of my best friends goes there.

[PatsNats28]

btw i was thinking more like book-smarts when i brought it up, not sports smarts.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Ryan Fitzpatrick went to Harvard.

Yabutharvard$uck$.   

Breslow went to a real school.

[NatsAddict]

Jack McGeary went to Roxbury Latin and now attends Stanford.

I was stupid enough to not accept a scholarship to Stanford - too far away from the HS sweetheart.   

[HalfSmokes]

Collinsworth got a JD while still playing football