About fifty years ago a wisecracking Brooklyn-born barber clipping in Sacramento took a yellow newspaper article off his wall, handed it to me, and said, \u201cThis is for you. And don\u2019t forget, despite all these injuries he\u2019s got more World Series home runs than anyone. How many does your guy Willie Mays have?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tUncharacteristically, I declined to respond.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThat\u2019s right, none. Mickey Mantle\u2019s the greatest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tBack in the sixties baseball fans enjoyed debating who was better: Mays, Mantle, or Hank Aaron. That\u2019s like trying to crown the best composer: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, or someone else. It\u2019s impossible and irrelevant. <\/p>\n
\tI don\u2019t remember details from the article but will always recall the full-length photo of a grimacing, suit-clad Mantle on crutches, and numerous horizontal lines from neck to toe that led to labels of injuries and maladies and when they occurred. I used to save every article of interest but long ago lost that poignant image. I probably could find it, or something similar, on the internet today but don\u2019t want to see it again. The Mick would sustain more injuries and, unbeknownst to the public, was battling an even more serious problem: alcoholism. And in the nineties he died young, at age sixty-three, from liver cancer. <\/p>\n
\tNow, in 2015, I\u2019m able to summon espn.com and see, in permanent glistening color, a computerized photo of Tiger Woods, clad in his Sunday red shirt and studying the flight of his ball, impervious to pretty blue lines leading to a series of injuries he could commiserate with Mantle. Studying the online list, I note Tiger had a benign tumor removed from his left knee in 1994, a benign cyst removed from the same knee in 2002, an injured shoulder blade muscle in 2006, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in 2007, and surgery in 2008 to repair the aforementioned ACL damage right after winning the U.S. Open, his fourteenth and still-final major championship. At the time he also had a double stress fracture in his left tibia, and that year had torn his right Achilles tendon. In 2010 an inflamed neck joint forced him to withdraw from a tournament. The following year he sprained his left medial cruciate ligament and strained his left Achilles tendon. A month later both injuries returned to knock him out of another tournament. In 2012 he reinjured his left Achilles tendon. Back problems in 2014 required him to undergo a microdiscetomy for a pinched nerve. And last week he underwent another microdisectomy. <\/p>\n
\tNone of these surgeries and procedures threatens the life of Tiger Woods or even his ability to function as a healthy citizen. What they do mean, however, along with nature\u2019s clock that tolls forty this November, is that Woods\u2019 goal of matching or exceeding the eighteen major championships of Jack Nicklaus is out of the question. Only one golfer has won three majors after turning forty, and Vijay Singh was healthy and hungry for glory. Tiger declares he wants more major titles, and he\u2019s sincere, but it\u2019s unlikely he craves them as he did in his youth and certain he no longer has the athleticism or steel nerves as a putter to destroy fields laden with young golfers more talented and fit than when Tiger was slamming. Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth have that Beethoven-Mozart look, and Jason Day appears ready to rock with Bach. If Tiger Woods can get healthy and remain so, and even that is a long shot, then he may be able to swing awhile with the new big boys but he certainly will not dominate them.<\/p>\n