[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Money or not there will likely never be a talent like Bo in two sports.
[/ QUOTE ]
Walter Ray Williams Jr. is a six-time World Champion in Horseshoes and a six-time PBA Player of the Year in bowling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ray_Williams
[/ QUOTE ]
This is the same as being very good at chess and checkers. Nice, but we are talking about sports, not games.
[/ QUOTE ]
We're not just talking about "being very good." We're talking about being the very best in the world. In two different games/sports. Six times in each game/sport. Really quite an amazing accomplishment, even if you don't consider either activity to be a sport.
[/ QUOTE ]
Right, but there is still a HUGE difference between good enough to play two major professional sports and being able to play two games like bowling and horseshoes at a world-class level. The reason for this is that the major professional sports are far, far closer to some theoretical maximum or perfect ability level, as a whole, than games like horseshoes and bowling. The 'average professional baseball player' is way closer to the 'theoretical perfect baseball player' than the average bowler or horseshoe-player.
Our average baseball player is ALSO closer than the average baseball player from 50 (or even 15 or 20) years ago, meaning that it is less likely now (and presumably less and less likely as time goes on) that we will ever see anything like this again. Its not impossible, though, and over enough years, unless there is something that strictly prohibits it, it has a good chance of happening again. Previous posters have brought up things that might prohibit it, though, like the fact that these clubs aren't going to want to allow their guy to play other sports, and the amount of money might preclude anyone from wasting the time developing other skills.