The Best Play in the History of Sport?
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Several times per week I walk across the road to the 9-hole disc golf course installed by the United Methodist Church on the acres of grass surrounding their building. That’s a very nice thing for a church to do. They haven’t (at least as yet) used it to proselytize — the way some soup kitchens say “yes, we’ll give you homeless people some food, but first you have to listen to this sermon.” Good for them. They’re simply doing it as a service to the community.
I got into the activity through one of my kids. He gave me a starter set of discs for Father’s Day, and then a couple more for my birthday. I’ve learned the basics and now find myself looking up YouTube videos by professionals. Yes, there are professional disc golf players. Earlier this year, one of the game’s best, Paul McBeth, signed a $10 million dollar endorsement deal, which seems like that means this sport is a pretty big deal. And that brings me to the topic of this essay.
Paul McBeth won the disc golf world championships (yes, they have world championships) in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Then other people won the next three years, and Paul won it again in 2019. It was cancelled in 2020. He was the clear favorite for the 2021 championships and had a slim lead throughout the contest. On the final hole he was one stroke up over James Conrad. Conrad had to go for it off the tee, but ended up hitting a tree and putting himself in difficult circumstances, so McBeth played it conservatively, just making sure he’d get a par. For a birdie, Conrad had to go 250 feet and around a tree to get to the basket. He lined it up, staring right into the sun, let it fly… and he made the shot! That tied it up in regulation, and he went on to win in overtime. See the shot and crowd (and announcer) reaction here, or watch the whole round here to get a better a feel for the buildup and context of the shot.
In the wake of this incredible shot, the disc golf podcasts (yes, they have those too) started debating not just whether this was the best shot in the history of disc golf, but whether this was the single greatest play in the history of sports. That’s the sort of claim that gets my analytic juices flowing, and I work out what I think about something by writing. So here goes.
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In order to claim with any degree of objectivity that something is the best play in the history of sports, we need some criteria that are intuitively plausible. I think there are a few we should agree on.
First, the best play in sports history has to occur in a context where the stakes are the highest. There have probably been longer shots made in disc golf, but if they happen in some guy’s back yard, it’s not going to qualify as the best play in history. Conrad’s shot not only happens in the world championships, but on the final hole when he’s one stroke down to send it to overtime against the greatest player in the sport’s history. That’s pretty significant. Is it like hitting a game-tying home run against Mariano Rivera to send game 7 of the World Series into extra innings?
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Conrad’s shot might be more significant than that, because it is more improbable. And that’s the next criterion. But here we may have some disagreement (I say so because I’ve already argued with my wife about this while writing). The best play ever can’t be too easy — making a game tying layup as the clock runs out in the NBA finals wouldn’t qualify. But I think too much improbability could actually disqualify something from being the best play. Hear me out.
If some play is too wildly improbable, it becomes all luck and the role of skill starts to vanish. For example, I think it’s a better play for Steph Curry to take a couple of steps past half court and hit a clutch shot, than for someone to chuck the ball from the opposite end of the court backwards over their head to win the game. That’s just lucky, whereas Curry’s shot is improbable — but not crazy improbable. I think the best play in history ought to have some measure of skill. How much? I can put some outer limits on that, but probably nothing too specific. If the play could be made in the range of 1 out of 5 (or maybe 1 out of 10?) attempts, it’s not improbable enough to be counted as so amazing that it’s the best play in history. At the other end, if it’s more improbable than 1 out of 50 (or maybe 1 out of 100?), then it’s just too lucky to count as the best play in history.
So now we need some data. How often could Conrad hit that shot? It certainly isn’t 1 in 5 or 1 in 10. I couldn’t hit it 1 out of 100 tries (mostly because that’s at the extreme end of my longest shots ever!). But I wouldn’t be surprised if that level of professional could make it somewhere in the 1 out of 50 range. Conrad himself said (just after minute 15 in this interview) that he thinks he could make the shot about 1 out of 20 times, or maybe 1 or 2 out of 50. This personal testimony isn’t quite the same as data, but let’s just stipulate for now that the shot was within the improbable-but-not-too-improbable range that the best play in sports history ought to be.
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And it was in an incredibly clutch situation in the biggest, most important event in the sport. Does that make it the best play in all of sports history? There is one more criterion that must be discussed before I’ll agree to that (incredibly!) honorific designation. And I feel bad saying it, but I think the overall popularity of the sport has to come into play here. Would we say something was the best play ever if it occurred in a sport invented by a couple guys last year, even if they invited everyone who wanted to play to the world championships and won by an incredible play? I don’t think so. If the other criteria are equivalent, I think you have to give the nod to more popular sport. A great play in basketball or soccer is going to be more significant in the history of sports than an equivalent play in water polo.
So how popular is disc golf? I guess we need some more data… and probably some more criteria to determine how we should measure popularity. We have the $10 million sponsorship from industry to sponsor the disc golf’s best player. That suggests that the sport has enough popularity for capitalism. But how does that stack up to sponsorships in more mainstream sports? Roger Federer got $300 million over ten years from Uniqlo. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lebron James both have more than $1Billion in lifetime commitments from Nike. Seems like disc golf has a ways to go.
The disc golf world championships have been viewed on YouTube more than 600,000 times. Does that make it qualify as a popular enough sport to house the best play in sports history? I’m afraid it’s still a couple of orders of magnitude behind the 2020 Super Bowl, and more than three orders of magnitude behind the 1.1 billion viewers who tuned in to the World Cup game in 2018. And those were just the viewership numbers during the live events, rather than the cumulative YouTube views of the disc golf finals, which I suspect are significantly higher because of the amazing shot.
That might mean that Conrad’s shot could help to propel disc golf to the kind of popularity where it would qualify as having the best play in sports history. But at the moment, my intuition is that disc golf is too niche of a sport for even Conrad’s truly amazing shot to rank higher on the “Best Play in Sports History” list than the Immaculate Reception, or The Shot, or Hand of God, or my favorite: Bill Mazeroski’s World Series game 7 walk off home run against the Yankees.
Let the debate continue…