Having grown up in Michigan during the 1980s, I will confess to a lack of objectivity on Trammell (I would also have selected his double-play partner, Lou Whitaker) -- although his accomplishments hold up well to more careful scrutiny.
However, Wichita State's accomplishment holds up well against some other Cinderella teams, including Louisiana State in 1986 and George Mason in 2006, both of which made the Final Four as No. 11 seeds.
That accomplishment holds out the prospect that even patients with no control over their limbs might one day be able to choose a virtual arm--or two--and send them forth to turn on lights, punch in a phone number or type a letter.
And in all of those years, I think one of his greatest accomplishments was holding onto his happiness as much as his health.
Among his numerous accomplishments, Jordan holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game).
When Stoudemire played for Phoenix, he shared the spotlight with Steve Nash and sometimes felt his accomplishments were not held in as high regard as those of Nash, a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award.
However, in his chapter on Workman, Pauly writes that "the few recent accounts of Fanny Workman have tended to slight or belittle her achievements, but contemporaries, unaware of the far greater accomplishments to come, held the Workmans in high regard".
A place and time when childhood heroes were Tetris masters, and the life of a top end video game player seems strangely sad, where accomplishments that were held so highly in the mind of the kids are irrelevant in the adult world.
But to keep millions more Americans from falling into poverty during a deep recession is a genuine accomplishment that holds a vital lesson: the safety net, fortified by stimulus, staved off an even more damaging crisis.
It's an uphill climb for Obama to even mildly criticize Mitt Romney for being a vulture capitalist given his lack of accomplishment in holding anyone on Wall Street accountable for the economic carnage they wreaked and for maintaining the bipartisan servitude to the big banks (even when the public was ready to tear them apart).
