THE ALTON GIANT

That's what they called him. Robert Pershing Wadlow. All 8' 11.1" of him. The tallest person ever recorded. One and a half feet taller than Yao Ming. More than three feet taller than the average man.

He lived from 1918-1940 in Alton, Illinois. One time my dad met him and shook his hand. He thought that was pretty neat.

By looking closely at the picture, you can see he was pretty well proportioned. Check out his hands. Wow.

That's not a little boy he standing next to. That's a grown man. Imagine getting to meet someone like that. I shook George Bush's hand when he was Ronald Reagan's veep, and I got to meet and talk to former President Ford about the Tigers in 1984, and I thought both of those were real thrills. But there have been other Presidents. Nobody but nobody, except in Biblical times, has ever been that tall.

And Robert was from southern Illinois. Like a lot of other giants. Even if they were not nearly nine feet tall.