My 2005 campaign on these pages for Philadelphia all-rounder J.Barton King's nomination as the Greatest American of All Time has gathered support, albeit three years after the poll closed and was won by an obscure mid-western baseball commentator.
It's a hundred years since Bart King, America's greatest cricketer of all time, graced the playing fields of both his own country and of England as a world-class all-rounder. It was Sunday, August 6, 1905, that five thousand people watched a New York XI lose by fifty runs to the MCC in a two-day game at the Staten Island Cricket Club.
The greatest cricketer the United States ever produced, and thus the greatest sportsperson in American history, King was snubbed by Discovery Channel viewers whose choices for the top 100 included Hugh Hefner, Martha Stewart, Mel Gibson, Michael Jackson and FOUR members of the Bush family.
The Discovery Channel in the US is conducting a poll to determine the Greatest American of all time. (Update: Nominations are now closed and the Top 100 countdown begins on April 18.)
