There is a neat and terrible tool over at Deadspin that allows you to enter in your birthdate and find out how many pro athletes in the four major sports are older than you. I’m 32, I did not enjoy this exercise. This isn’t about aging out of your/my Jim Morris fantasy or pulling off a modified-reverse Little Big League, though, this is about another sadly impossible dream of yours/mine: the fat man’s dream of playing pro sports.
Let’s face it: There are a ton of 40-year-old baseball players. A ton = nine if you count the DL’ed and likely kaput Joe Nathan and the soon-to-be 40 Alex Rodriguez and Torii Hunter, but that’s still a lot compared to the amount of 300-pound (or very near) players. And if you widen your view and glance through baseball history, the numbers are even more skewed toward it being more likely that a grey beard will make middle-aged men swoon with the possibility of eternal youth, than a Bob Hamelin-type will make you glance at a chili dog and a batting cage with confidence.
So, it’s with that and the fantastic uptick in public awareness of folk hero/collegiate pitcher Ben Ancheff (pictured, above right), that we wanted to highlight some of the most interesting husky heroes that have thrown their weight around the big leagues and inspired us all.
Babe Ruth
Career Achievements: Hit his 139th home run in 1921 to take the all-time record which he extended to 714 by the time he retired; reportedly once ate 12 hot dogs and drank eight bottles of soda during a double header; had the honor of being played by John Goodman in a movie.
Walter Young
Career Achievements: Hit 173 home runs in the minor leagues and one with the Baltimore Orioles; followed in the footsteps of other large Oriole first basemen Sam Horn, Calvin Pickering and Boog Powell; weighed in at 320 pounds, the highest ever for an MLB player.
Bob Hamelin
Career Achievements: Won the Rookie of the Year award in 1994; absolutely looks like a guy named “Bob Hamelin.”
David Wells
Career Achievements: Won 239 games; threw a perfect game while hung over; wore a $35,000 Babe Ruth hat during a game despite his manager’s protests; suffered from gout; posed for the above picture once.
Terry Forster
Career Achievements: Saved 127 games; got called a “fat tub of goo” by David Letterman; recorded “Fat Is In,” a novelty rap anthem that I have lived my life by since a half-hour ago.
John Kruk
Career Achievements: Hit exactly .300 with exactly 100 home runs; unknowingly lived with bank robbers; possessed a mullet that was a party in the back and in the front.
Jeremy Brown
Getty Image
Career Achievements: Had his fleshy body discussed in Moneyball; was portrayed as having fallen over while running the bases in the film adaptation; got back up. #Hero
Bartolo Colon
Getty Image
Career Achievements: Won the 2005 Cy Young Award; weighs 285 pounds; is leading the league in wins at the age of 42; is the quintessential role model to dad-bod having men in their 40s who still believe, deep down, that they could do something good with a bat. Don’t ever change, stout dreamers.
(Via Time, YouTube, Fox Sports and New York Times)
