Kin & Tonic

Ask sixteen family members to name the ten greatest athletes of all time, and you’ll get something better than a list — you’ll get evidence. Five names showed up on nearly every ballot, proof that some greatness is simply undeniable. Three more earned super-majority status, the athletic equivalent of a plea deal everyone agrees to. And there were multiple votes of three or more for quite a few others. But the rest? The rest were trace DNA samples. One-off choices that say less about sports history than they do about the people making the picks. So let’s get right to it: here’s what our family’s lists reveal about the athletes we all admire as well as the unique choices that define who we are and what we hold dear.

The athlete who garnered the most votes overall was… Lionel Messi. But of course, the World Cup was in progress and his name was everywhere so this could be an example of recency bias doing what recency bias does. Messi was followed closely by Gretzky, Phelps, Jordan, Williams, Biles, Bolt, and Ali - in that order. Brady, Thorpe, and Woods got fewer votes but garnered strong support as well. What’s notable isn’t just that we agreed on this particular pantheon, but how we agreed: across eight different sports, spanning six decades, with picks ranging from a guy who dominated an era before some of us were born to an athlete still actively rewriting her sport’s ceiling. It suggests that our family, whatever else divides us at Thanksgiving, has a shared and fairly sophisticated definition of greatness — dominance, longevity, and a certain gravitational pull on their sport that goes beyond the stat sheet. It’s with the outliers, though, where things get really interesting.

Some picks aren’t about the athletes at all. They’re about loyalty - or love. Jen, a Denver football fan to her bones, writes “gross” next to her grudging Tom Brady pick — and chooses John Elway among her ten - not a fingerprint so much as an admission. Billy, a lifelong New Yorker, somehow finds room on a scant list of ten for Ruth, DiMaggio, and Mantle, not just three baseball players but three Yankees. Arnie, a proud Wisconsinite, can’t leave Brett Favre off his list, regardless of what the record book say. And Brendan cannot forego including Roberto Clemente, a Pittsburgh Pirate for 18 seasons (who was killed at age 38 while delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua and was never found). Likewise, only hometown loyalty can explain why Finn, a native Minneapolitan, elected to include Napheesa Collier, a professional basketball player for the Minnesota Lynx (WNBA) on his list. And finally, what other than besottedness can explain the love-eyes emoji Beth placed next to her elevation of Harry Kane to a list of all time greats?

The sports we play/played ourselves figured into our selections too. Every wrestler included a wrestler on his list: Torin, Neil and Cam included Greco-Roman super-stud Alexander Karelin (who went undefeated for 13 years). Matthias opted for Iowa wrestler Dan Gable while Homey and TD both independently chose another Iowa standout - Cael Sanderson. Arnie, a volleyball player himself, opted for Kerri Walsh as well as the very obscure four-time Olympian Lloy Ball (gold, 2008).

Not every name on these lists comes without baggage, and to the family’s credit, nobody flinched from including them anyway. Lance Armstrong shows up twice — once from Lessandra, a cancer survivor herself, and once from Randy, who also, despite how much he loved Moxie, can’t leave pitbull-abusing Michael Vick off his list. These aren’t naive picks. Lessandra knows exactly what Armstrong’s diagnosis and comeback meant, doping scandal notwithstanding. Randy knows precisely what Vick’s history is. Brad, meanwhile, includes Mike Tyson — a name that carries its own well-documented weight. Homey includes Pete Rose, ditto. In each case, the family seems to be drawing a line between accomplishment and virtue, deciding — consciously or not — that greatness on the field and goodness as a person are two different scorecards, and only one of them was being assessed here.

If the rest of the family is arguing at the margins, Mino and Cam are having an entirely different conversation. Mino’s list barely touches the mainstream at all: Trisha Zorn, the most decorated Paralympian in history; Chris Nikic, the first person with Down syndrome to finish an Ironman; Pudzianowski, a strongman; Philippe Petit, a man whose “sport” was walking a wire between the Twin Towers. For a 73-year-old who’s spent a lifetime bartering instead of buying, measuring people by talent and generosity instead of fame, it’s a perfectly coherent list — it just happens to be coherent on its own idiosyncratic terms. Cam runs a close second. Bruce Lee, Jonah Lomu, Javier Sotomayor — these aren’t casual-fan picks, they’re a real, obsessive sports historian’s picks.

Bruce Lee, Jonah Lomu, Javier Sotomayor — these aren't casual-fan picks, they're a real, obsessive sports historian's picks.

The more idiosyncratic the choices, the more revealing they are. I mean, who other than Brendan, with his PhD in history, would include Pheidippides on their list? (The legendary Athenian herald who back in 490 B.C. ran the first marathon ever and then promptly dropped dead). Who other than TD would include Anderson Silva - a Brazilian mixed martial arts - on their list? Who other than an aspiring CPA (Bradshaw) would dare include chess master Magnus Carlson on a list of the Ten Greatest ATHLETES ever? And who other than cheeky, rage-bating Pace would include competitive eating great Joey Chestnut?

Age factors into our choices too. Mino, 73, picks Philippe Petit and Trisha Zorn. Billy, 74, picks Ruth and DiMaggio and Pele. Randy, 71, picks Jesse Owens and Jim Thorpe. These are men whose frame of reference was set decades before Messi ever touched a ball, and it shows. They reach further back because further back is where their own sports memory actually starts.

At the other end, neither Harrison or Pace has a single pick that predates their own lifetime by much. Their greats are active, current, Instagram-famous. It isn’t that they don’t know history — it’s that history, for them, starts more recently. Plus, they tend to regard old records, like Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game - with skepticism. (Wilt, btw, appeared only on Brendan’s and Finn’s lists, overshadowed by Lebron (six votes) and, of course, Jordan). Understandably, the youth contingent tends to feel that “the game” (in whatever sport) has moved on and left the OGs behind and that someone like Pele, for example, couldn’t touch Ronaldo’s left cleat.

In between the old farts and the young bucks sits everyone else — the 40s and 50s crowd, old enough to remember Gretzky and Jordan firsthand, young enough to have also watched Messi and Biles arrive in real time. They’re the hinge generation, and it’s probably not a coincidence that their lists are the most evenly split between old-guard legends and current stars. They’re the only ones who had a front-row seat to both eras.

And then there are the lists that reveal something not by their outliers, but by their absence of any. Harrison turns in the single safest list in the family — Messi, Jordan, Brady, Gretzky, all consensus, no risk. Thaddeus, the worlds’ leading expert on futility law, picks Ali, a fighter whose own decline played out in front of the entire world. And Matthias fills his list with grinders - athletes renowned for their work ethics: Gable, Djokovic, Carl Lewis, Ali underneath the showmanship. None of these three would call their list a confession. All three of them wrote one anyway.

Ask sixteen family members for the ten greatest athletes of all time, and what you actually get back isn’t a leaderboard — it’s sixteen small autobiographies, disguised as opinions. The consensus names tell you what we agree greatness looks like. Everything else tells you who’s doing the looking.

None of us actually agree on the ten greatest athletes of all time. We were never going to. But somewhere in the disagreement — in the names nobody else picked, in the ones we couldn’t leave off no matter how hard we tried to be objective — we ended up with something better than a ranking. We ended up with a portrait of the people at our own table, athletic credentials be damned.

Two years ago, while visiting the snowbirds Peri and Randy in Alabama, we hatched a plan: spend a month in a foreign country and try, as much as possible, to live like locals. The dream was simple, rent an apartment, shop at neighborhood markets, wander museums, and putz around town with no particular agenda.

Once I moved to St. Louis and the Grosch’s relocated to North Carolina, our plans evolved. The new goal was escaping the brutal summer heat. Neil and Mom recommended Slovenia, so we started our search there. The weather looked perfect. The prices, less so.

That’s when Natasha, Peri’s Russian friend, suggested Riga, Latvia. She had vacationed there as a child and remembered it fondly. The criteria were met, the Airbnb was booked, and July was officially spoken for.

Riga’s crown jewel is its Old Town, a charming maze of historic buildings, many dating back to the 13th century. Art Nouveau architecture, museums devoted to Latvia’s complicated (and often depressing) history, and an endless supply of outdoor restaurants and pubs make it easy to lose track of time. Our Airbnb sat right in the heart of it all.

The weather was a sensory-deprivation dream: 69 degrees every day. We spent hours outside sipping local brews, people-watching, and congratulating ourselves on not being in Missouri. We shopped daily, often for the essentials like cappuccinos and ice cream, ate in, dined out, toured, walked, talked, scootered, and learned.

One especially memorable stop was the former KGB headquarters, complete with interrogation rooms, prison cells, and execution chambers. Every young American should visit before confidently declaring socialism the answer to everything.

I enjoyed Riga immensely and could have happily stayed another month.

Next July: Knowlton, Quebec.

French Baked Eggs (Pretty and Delicious)

Prep time: Only 10 minutes

Ingredients: 4 ramekins, 1 shallow baking dish, 6–7 white mushrooms, 2 green onions, Boursin & Gruyère cheeses, chives (dried is okay), heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 350° and put some water on to boil.
2. Thinly slice about 6 white mushrooms (caps only) and chop green onion.
3. Sauté mushrooms & onion in butter over low heat until they begin to brown. S/P to taste.
4. Spoon some of the mushroom and onion mixture into each of the four ramekins.
5. Put 5 Tbs Boursin into a cup with 1/2 cup of heavy cream and soften in microwave for 10 sec.
6. Whisk cheese and cream together, whisk in about 1/4 teaspoon of salt and pepper to taste.
7. Divide cheese and cream mixture among the four ramekins.
8. Sprinkle a little shredded Gruyère cheese into each ramekin.
9. Crack one egg into each ramekin and sprinkle with a bit of chopped chives.
10. Place ramekins in shallow baking pan, then pour boiled water into the baking dish halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Cover with aluminum foil.
11. Bake for 12 minutes and remove foil. Let bake for another 5–7 minutes. Let sit for 2 minutes before serving.

It’s no secret the Pope family enjoys a healthy share of competition and games. From large-scale, organized tournaments to the simplest of card games, we’ve always been drawn to coming out victorious. The reasons for this competitive preference are numerous but simple. First and foremost, playing a board game releases more endorphins when done with people you trust and know well. The human brain seeks both familiarity and interactivity; providing both through family games makes us feel happier. But that doesn’t fully explain why we play these games in the first place.

Since the dawn of humanity, people have been inventing games to play and glory to win. Evolutionarily, communities—such as a large family—benefit from activities that require communication to learn rules and strategize with cooperative partners. The parental brain recognizes that children often lack life experience for certain situations, making a low-stakes environment to learn helpful skills highly beneficial.

Games and joint activities provide a safety net for children while they learn. Most notably, they teach resilience—the ability to try and fail—which is one of the most important lessons to learn young. These vital practices have carried into the modern day, heavily shaping how we interact and spend time together.

Personally, I’ve always liked coming up with my own games. When you don’t have siblings and your friends are out of town, you learn to find ways to compete with yourself. A lot of times, I would take a game I played with my family and turn it into something I could play alone. Because the basis was already there, the rules just needed some minor tweaking. For example, after my dad introduced me to table football, I adapted it into a larger-scale game where I could play both sides of the ball. That’s why competing with my family is such a draw for me: I knew that even after the game was over, I could still get value out of it for years to come if I tried hard enough.

The prospect of winning can also appeal to a competitor wanting to prove something. On a subconscious level, a child might be proving their independence and self-reliance during a critical stage of growth. Or, an adult might be proving their capability to the family as an indirect measure of success. Games are ideal for this due to their low-risk nature. Losing a simple game doesn’t make someone unsuccessful or unable to function independently, and the thrill of winning greatly outweighs the risk of disappointment. Finally, for larger-scale events, someone usually worked incredibly hard to set it up, and no one wants to let their family down.