page_title: SportsCentury
section_title: SportsCentury: Top 50 American Athletes of the 20th Century (Original series)
hierarchical_section_title: SportsCentury / SportsCentury: Top 50 American Athletes of the 20th Century (Original series)
caption_attribution_description: English: American baseball player Babe Ruth in 1921
context_page_description: SportsCentury is an ESPN biography television program that reviews the people and events that defined sports in North America throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Using stock footage, on-camera interviews, and photographs of their athletic lives, who grew up.
  In 1999, ESPN counted down the Top 50 Athletes of the 20th Century, selected from North American athletes and voted on by a panel of sports journalists and observers, premiering a new biography highlighting each top athlete every week throughout the year. The episodes for the top two athletes, Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth, appeared on a special combined edition broadcast on Christmas Day on ABC. The top two names were announced in no particular order, and the final positioning was announced at the conclusion of the two episodes. An additional list of numbers 51-100 were announced on the ESPN SportsCentury website. Themed specials such as Greatest Games, Greatest Coaches, Greatest Dynasties, and Most Influential Individuals were premiered throughout the year, as well as six SportsCenter of the Decade programs.
  After the initial run was complete, the episodes were rerun at various times on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Classic.
caption: Babe Ruth was voted no. 2
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4250", "Image ImageLength": "6248", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "900", "Image YResolution": "900", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:11 22:34:18", "Image Artist": "Library of Congress", "Image ExifOffset": "280", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "418", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6302", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3970", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5944"}