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…