Within the last few years, American sportswriters have taken up the term GOAT--"greatest of all time". So for example, one can argue whether Tom Brady is the GOAT among quarterbacks or Tiger Wood the GOAT among golfers. (As far as I know, nobody has suggested that we separate the sheep from the GOATs.) The position of quarterback has perhaps a hundred and fifteen years of history, if we count from the first legal forward pass. I suppose that professional golf has a few more. In any case, "all time" in such sporting contexts is both short and recent enough to be well documented and long enough not to sound ridiculous.
A bookstore that I've bought from sent an email last week, advertising among other books some new novels. Among them was one with a description including
Don’t miss out on maybe the greatest work of fiction published this season.
I can certainly believe in a best work of fiction published this season. But setting aside the mathematical or use of "greatest"--for example, the greatest common divisor of 128 and 198 is 2, and the greatest common divisor of any two mutually prime numbers is 1--one expects the greatest to be great. Is there a great work of fiction published every season?
The major American sports leagues have a Hall of Fame, admission to which ought to certify greatness, and name a most valuable player (MVP) every year. Sports buffs must know whether it is possible to have won an MVP award and not end up in the sport's Hall of Fame. I don't know, but I suspect that it has been done. Then there are arguments every few baseball seasons whether the MVP award should go to someone with outstanding numbers whose team finishes out of the playoffs, or to someone with less gaudy numbers whose contributions take the team to the playoffs, perhaps a championship. The question raised is whether "wins above replacement" count for that much when the team could have traded the star, found a replacement, and finished no farther out of the running. So perhaps GOTS--greatest of this season--would be a useful complement to MVP.
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