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Sound Minds in Sound Bodies

20 smartest athletes include two Jews

by
Marc Tracy
September 28, 2010
Craig Breslow.(J. Meric/Getty Image)
Craig Breslow.(J. Meric/Getty Image)

Sporting News has a list of the “20 smartest athletes in sports” (as opposed to the 20 smartest athletes in … something that’s not sports? but nevermind). The Tribe claims two on the list, and the top spot (beating out Tennessee Titans safety Myron Rolle, who is a freakin’ Rhodes Scholar!).

• The smartest athlete is Oakland Athletics reliever Craig Breslow. If he weren’t sustaining a sub-3.00 ERA over five seasons, this Yale grad says, he’d be a doctor. [Insert requisite joke about how that’s what his mother would prefer anyway.]

• The ninth smartest athlete is veteran Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Brad Ausmus. A Dartmouth alum, he “just read The Lost City of Z, by David Grann. Moving on to The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich” (one of us! one of us!). His favorite book, however, according to his Wikipedia page, is A Schopenhauerian Critique of Nietzsche’s Thought, which was written by his father, a professor. Um, yeah, we like that one too.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.