Preserving an athlete in stone or bronze is the highest kind of tribute a community can pay its favorite player.
Emperors got statues. War heroes, statesmen, titans, too. Those who shape the very soul of a region are cast into the most elegant of pigeon roosts.
A statue can elevate the frivolous work of playing a game to the level of art. It turns the unessential essential, giving permanence to deeds that come and go on the wings yesterday’s box score.
What better marker of reach exceeding grasp can there be? There is, after all, no such thing as a statue of limitations.
More than a proclamation, beyond displaying a few artifacts in a glass case, a statue represents a major investment in an athlete’s legacy. No one commissions a statue as an off-hand gesture or token of shallow thanks.
As the former Hawk great Dominique Wilkins said on the verge of his statue being unveiled this week: “What this does is connect me to the history of this city.”
Wilkins joins a very small group of athletic personalities in our realm who have been made into forever figures. Bobby Dodd and Vince Dooley are on-campus landmarks. Bobby Jones stands watch outside the Atlanta Athletic Club. Hank Aaron, Phil Niekro and Warren Spahn are posed outside doomed Turner Field.
So, who beyond those few is the most statue-worthy Georgia sportsperson? Who are we forgetting? Whose number above all others should the sculptor call next?
- Herschel Walker. There is no one at Georgia who travels more freely between the boundary of reality and myth. His pedestal could be a flattened Bill Bates.
- Ted Turner. Eccentrics are not automatically excluded from this honor – in fact, that is a fairly common trait among those who stand in the town square. He is a pioneer businessman, team owner and best darn sailor in Atlanta. The inscription might run a little long; better create an extra-wide base.
- Tommy Nobis. Mr. Falcon hasn't made it to Canton, but that is no reason to deny him a place of honor outside the team's new stadium. No one represented the franchise more fiercely than the first player it ever selected.
- Chipper Jones. He began as a Brave and ended as a Brave, almost reason enough to celebrate him. And in between were 18 seasons of choice baseball. Just, please, for his sake and ours, pose him at bat, not in the field.
- Eddie McAshan. Making history can be a messy business. It had not always been smooth between Georgia Tech and McAshan. But together they claim the distinction of Sept. 12, 1970, when he became the first African American to start at quarterback for a major Southern university.
- The Three Amigos. A money-saving idea here: Carve Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz out of the same block of granite. They are co-joined in Braves lore anyway.
- Teresa Edwards. Born in Cairo, schooled at UGA, she is the spirit of women's basketball. She competed in five Olympics, took the Athletes' Oath in Atlanta in '96 and generally towered.
- Evander Holyfield. Atlanta is not much of a boxing town but it helped spawn one of the most committed members of the heavyweight warrior class. You could raise his statue in Centennial Olympic Park, in partial repayment for getting hosed in the 1984 L.A. Games.
- Bobby Cox. Any proper statue will also have to include an umpire giving the Braves manager the heave-ho.
- Louise Suggs. The Atlanta-born Suggs (her grandfather owned the old Atlanta Crackers) didn't get the press of Babe Zaharias but once beat Babe by 14 strokes (1949 U.S. Women's Open). She helped found the LPGA the following year, and won 58 events on tour.
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