Truly The GOATs

“The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.” –Washington Irving

“The Greatest of All-Time”: An expression that has become so ubiquitous in 21st-century sports reportage that it’s often more convenient to use the acronym GOAT. Truly The GOATs takes that expression very seriously, especially the “all-time” part.

From Europe to Asia, from Polynesia to Mesoamerica, humankind has played organized or semi-organized sport for at very least 4,000 years. The games may be straightforward, as in throwing the discus or running the 100-meter dash; they may be symbolic, as in the ball game of the Aztecs and Maya; or they may be utterly abstract, as in cricket or chinlone. 

Truly The GOATs seeks to remember those who enthralled spectators with wondrous feats of athleticism in their day – whether ancient, medieval, modern, or post-modern. We’ll also recall the cultures that produced the games in which truly unique athletes and their sports that may have become moribund, evolved beyond recognition, or simply disappeared altogether.

On Truly the GOATs, we’ll travel through time and space, from the football pitches of South America to the ball courts of Mesoamerica. We’ll see Spain in the 15th century and return for the late 20th. We’ll go from 40 miles per hour in Rome to 375 kph in Germany. We’ll visit Canada and Japan, we’ll barnstorm America, we’ll sail the Atlantic.

And Truly the GOATs hopes you see the commonality within humanity. Whenever and wherever you go, you’re certain to find fascination with the proverbial thrill of victory, the agony of defeat – and tales of the Greatest Of All-Time…

Truly the GOATs Trailer

Os Davis - Truly the GOATs Host

Os never played the games but has enjoyed a nearly 30-year career writing, reporting, blogging, and podcasting about them. In many ways, Truly the GOATs is a culmination of a life’s worth of interests.  You can learn more at Truly the GOATs website here.

Beginning next week is the world’s second-largest international sports competition: the Paralympic Games, an event with a surprisingly long and interesting history beginning with roots as physical rehabilitation/therapy for World War II veterans. Guesting on this extra edition of Truly The GOATs is now three-time(!) guest Dr. Dennis Frost. Dennis has previously joined TTG for...
During Olympics season 2021, Truly The GOATs takes a look at the Greatest Of All-Time who starred in the modern Games. In this series-within-the-series, TTG presents the stories of superstars from the 1928, 1972/1976 and 1992 Olympics. This is the third, a review of three movies about men’s basketball at the ’92 Games. Between the...
During this Olympics season, Truly The GOATs takes a look at the Greatest Of All-Time who starred in the modern Games. In this series-within-the-series, TTG presents the stories of superstars from the 1928, 1972/1976 and 1992 Olympics. This is the second, the story of Vasily Alekseyev of the USSR. Of all the phenomena of the...
During this Olympics season, Truly The GOATs takes a look at the Greatest Of All-Time who starred in the modern Games. In this series-within-the-series, TTG presents the stories of superstars from the 1928, 1972/1976 and 1992 Olympics. This is the first, the story of Kinue Hitomi of Japan. The 1920s was quite the boom period...
For episode 13 of Truly The GOATs, we we privileged to have on the show Michael Foley, who as a journalist, author and podcaster is a real triple threat in the sports history world. Michael is sports editor/writer for the Sunday Times Irish edition and a member of the Gaellic Athletic Association’s History & Commemorations...
Episodes 12 and 13 of the Truly The GOATs podcast included excerpts from an interview with Emmet Ryan, sportswriter, journalist and old compadre from TTG host Os Davis’s days of European basketball reportage. Emmet is the author of the book I Like It Loud: A basketball tour through Europe, but he was invited on the...
Truly The GOATs’ current infatuation with Irish sport continues. The previous TTG episode on hurling summarized some 3,100 years or so of the history of hurling, ancient game of the Celts, and concomitantly the whole of Irish history. That story took us up to late 19th century, that great period of codification of modern sports....
On this day, June 26, in 1911, Mildred Elle “Babe” Didrikson was born. Truly The GOATs shows our appreciation for this legend in international sports with a remastered re-release of the TTG podcast episode 4, “The Other Babe.” You’d think that earning three-American basketball team nods plus one national team championship, dominating the U.S. Olympic...
On June 26, 1911, Mildred Ella Didrikson, later to become known worldwide as Babe Didrikson and after that as Babe Didrikson Zaharias, was born. To mark the occasion, Truly The GOATs releases this bonus episode, a collection of excerpts from Babe’s autobiography This Life I Have Led, as read by Raechel Wong; these excerpts helped...
Truly The GOATs episode 12 was devoted to the Irish sport of hurling and its interconnectedness with Ireland, but how can one summarize 3,000 years of myth & history in any decent amount of time? In this extra edition of Truly The GOATs, we talk origins, specifically those of Canada’s national pastime: Did the Irish...