I recently posted a teaser story for the Motor City Open position round re-air on Xtra Frame, which mentions Chris Barnes in the same breath with Walter Ray Williams Jr. as "legends" of the sport. Several fans took exception to this, saying things like, "WRW is a legend, PDW is a legend. Barnes is a top current player but he is not a legend! I am tired of hearing this."
Well, I simply could not disagree more. Here's why:
In 2009, Barnes was selected as the 26th greatest player in PBA history, which is a pretty nice honor and probably enough, in itself, to refer to Barnes as a legend. Of course, that same year, he took home Player of the Year honors, then followed that up with another outstanding season in 2009-2010 (although he considered it a failure despite two seconds in majors that he'd led heading into the TV show and lost in one-game matches)...these performances would certainly have moved him up on the list at least a few notches.
In fact, if we're allowing for projecting out the rest of Barnes career and re-jiggering the 50 greatest list altogether, I even give Barnes a (very good) shot at making the top 10 of all time, putting him somewhere in the neighborhood of the 9th-ranked Marshall Holman (who also happens to be the player I feel Barnes is the most similar to in terms of career stats and strengths and weaknesses).
Sure Barnes has struggled on TV, but no worse than Holman, who took home "just" 22 titles despite making a staggering 110 TV appearances. And Barnes, statistically, makes a higher percentage of TV shows than anyone in history, including the great (technically the second greatest) Walter Ray Williams Jr.
By the numbers, Williams has bowled on TV 177 times in 724 career events, a 23% rate, meaning Williams makes the show once in every 4.09 starts. Barnes, in contrast, has 71 shows in 261 career events, a 27% rate that converts to a telecast every 3.67 events. Not only that, but several players ranked ahead of Barnes on the 50 greatest list (Couch, Cook, Husted, Durbin, Davis, Webb) have TV-to-tournament ratios well above 6, 7, 8 and higher.
Statistically, then, Barnes has put up legendary numbers indeed. Not to mention the fact that he's been a legitimate candidate (top 5 or better) for PBA Player of the Year in 11 of his 12 Tour seasons (nobody but Earl and Walter Ray have shown that level of consistency for that long a period of time).
Obviously, I'm not saying that Barnes is the Great-est ever. And now, at 40, there's probably not enough time left for him to make a run at that title, especially with WRW winning PoYs at the age of 50. The other thing that may have hurt him is the comparatively fewer events he's been able to bowl in a season (in Holman's day there were 35-40 events a year...for the bulk of Barnes' career it's been 20-25). But by the time Barnes hangs them up, like him or not (I like him, but believe me that has absolutely no bearing on my argument here), you simply have to acknowledge that he's not only been a Hall-of-Fame-caliber player, but one of the sport's all-time greats.