re: Who is the nicest pro athlete you've ever met

9+ pages and not one bad word about Will Clark.

I'm shocked.

Met him the day after he was inducted into the La hall. Very nice guy

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Justin Vincent

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I’ve met him a couple different times about 15 years apart, and he couldn’t have been nicer both times.

What I take from this thread though is that hockey players are awesome

Best: Diamond Dallas Page, Louis Lipps, TommienFrazier, Sai'vion Jones, Corey Webster, Bret Hart, The Ultimate Warrior, AJ Styles, Brooke Adams

Worst: Shawn Michaels, Brett Favre, Forrest Griffin

Fletcher Cox
Dan Bouchard

Corey Webster was nice when I meant him before he was in the NFL.

Nicest was Peyton Manning

I haven't met a bad one but I was once handsy with the Detroit Pistons owners son's girlfriend for a spell and she said Isaiah Thomas sucks beyond belief.

Shaq for me. We caught him outside of tiger stadium leaving an lsu game at halftime (leaving at halftime with my small kids). He was on his way out, but he was very gracious to stop and take pics with my kids.

I find these threads so interesting. These athletes aren’t necessarily attention whore divas. They’re just really good at what they do. They don’t necessarily want to be famous, but it’s part and parcel with their job. They might be really shy. They might be having a bad day. They might be dealing with a lot of pain. They just might not want to frick with your kids. But these interactions frame them forever for many people. Just interesting to me as an observer of humans.

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Bruce Matthews.

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Couldn't agree more.

Lived a few miles away from him for twenty years. First time I met him, we spent 20 minutes in the lumber aisle at Home Depot at 7am on a Saturday bullshitting about how to make a cool dog house while his pre-teen kid culled 2x4s. He was in his mid 40's, had been retired 5-6 years and looked like he could lift the damn lumber rack. Never once mentioned football. We went out and helped each other load the lumber in our respective trucks (as if we needed it, the kid jumped in and did it all without being asked). He was driving a 25 yr old square body Silverado. I got home and looked up his career earnings. $32M.

A few years later we helped a mutual friend dick around for a weekend getting an old Honda Big Red 3 wheeler running. When it finally got running, he looked like a 10 yr old at a birthday party.

His kid that loaded the lumber? Just went past the $150M mark in his 11th year in the NFL. His parents Bruce and Carrie still live in the same house he bought in his early years with the Oilers (it is an awesome property, once in the middle of nowhere but now surrounded by a subdivision), where they raised 7 kids. The youngest has Downs Syndrome and he ended up writing a book about raising her, his family, his faith and his life in football. And while he is arguably the best offensive lineman in history, very little of the book is about his football career

Bruce Matthews book

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Nicest: Muhammad Ali

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As a kid in the 80s, our family took a regular commercial flight cross-country on vacation....My Dad noticed Ali in the Airport terminal, signing autographs, just standing around, wearing a suit with people around him....my Dad had my little sister walk over to get his autograph and he signed it and kissed her on the cheek... She walked back blushing.

Turns out he was on our flight. It was LA to New York and pretty soon once in the air, all these old white dudes were congregating around Ali's seat, so he got up and stood in the galley and entertained those around him the ENTIRE flight (back when you could get out of your seat and roam) , just telling stories making everyone laugh.

This was early early 80s when Ali was probably still the most famous man on the Planet. Never forgot that. It was unique then and certainly would be unheard of today... That nice, eager to please, common man touch. Ali was something else.