This page presents a list of sporting immortals ranked objectively across six different fields of competition.

All rankings are final, all choices are arbitrary and all errors solely the author’s.

Apples & Oranges has rated more than 700 players so far. More detail will be coming, but for now here’s the top 20:

Name	Sport	Games	Total	Per 160	Rating
WG Grace	Cricket	870	140.50	25.84	37.69
Pelé	Soccer	680	114.59	26.96	37.67
Wilt Chamberlain	Basketball	1205	177.37	23.55	36.87
Michael Jordan	Basketball	1251	179.00	22.89	36.27
Eusébio	Soccer	532	88.49	26.61	36.02
Babe Ruth	Baseball	2544	302.38	17.95	35.34
Ty Cobb	Baseball	3052	318.01	16.67	34.50
George Lohmann	Cricket	293	50.05	27.33	34.41
Frank Tarrant	Cricket	329	55.41	26.95	34.39
Mike Procter	Cricket	695	97.57	24.13	34.00
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	Basketball	1797	215.86	19.22	33.91
Willie Mays	Baseball	3017	305.97	16.23	33.72
Karl Malone	Basketball	1669	203.02	19.46	33.71
Barry Bonds	Baseball	3034	306.61	16.17	33.68
Hank Aaron	Baseball	3315	321.63	15.52	33.46
Shaquille O’Neal	Basketball	1423	177.29	19.93	33.25
George Mikan	Basketball	611	90.23	23.63	33.13
Ferenc Puskás	Soccer	355	56.66	25.54	33.06
Kobe Bryant	Basketball	1566	188.43	19.25	32.98
Tris Speaker	Baseball	2809	279.42	15.92	32.63

If you’re curious what all this means, I lay out my methodology here.

In addition to the top 20, the position-by-position rankings for Baseball, Cricket, Football, Basketball, Soccer and Hockey are fleshed out, complete with commentary. More player profiles will be updated daily.

This project has been more than a decade in the making. Some of the data used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at www.retrosheet.org. Other sources include Baseball Reference, Pro Football Reference, Basketball Reference, Hockey Reference, The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation, Cricket Archive, 11v11, Football Club History Database, HockeyDB, BDFutbol, JustSportsStats, Eurohockey and BBall Sports.