A Sheet of Ice Puts A Man In Motion At Impossible Angles

The Stanley Cup playoffs are now in full swing as the Philadelphia Flyers face off against the Chicago Blackhawks for hockey’s holy grail. And what better way to honor ice hockey than with a poem from Richard Harrison’s memorable collection devoted to the game, Hero of the Play. Here is “The Greats” — a poem that elevates the game’s heroes to a different sort of heroic status:

Next To Humanity, Nationality Is Trivial

With a little bit of luck and one big goal, Joe Gaetjens led the U.S. to a surprise upset over England in the World Cup 60 years ago. It was the goal heard around the world — well, everywhere but America that is. But 14 years later, Gaetjens was abducted in his native Haiti and was missing until confirmed dead until 1972. Alexander Wolff explores the mystery of “The Hero Who Vanished” for Sports Illustrated:

A Ravishing Woman In A Hockey Jersey Moved To Pity And Serial Fornication

With the Stanley Cup Finals fast approaching, now is as good a time as any to knock the dust off a forgotten, out-of-print volume from 1980, Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League, by Cleo Birdwell. The book’s fiction, of course. The first woman to play in the NHL was Manon Rhéaume. Birdwell never laced up a skate, let or played in the NHL — she was the pseudonym of a young novelist named Don DeLillo. Gerald Howard has an appreciation over at Bookforum.

The Man Who Died Dedicated Everything to Soccer

At ESPN, Wright Thompson tells the story of two men named Yves who left a room at the Haitian Football Federation’s headquarters in Port-Au-Prince seconds apart on the day of the quake. One lived and one died.

It was a one-sided battle: He always chose soccer. Even the languages he learned were those of countries where people excelled at the game; he could speak Portuguese, Italian, English, French and Spanish. All his children received soccer-related names. His reputation spread, not only as an obsessive student of the game, but as a calming force, slow to anger, a peacemaker. Handling the conflict inside himself must have taught him how to handle conflict between others. Labaze was the only one who worked for both the Football Federation and the Haitian Ministry of Sport, two organizations that got along like the Jets and the Sharks. Rival teams let him watch their practices. Everyone trusted Labaze. He worked hard to earn this trust. He traded everything for it.

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You Can See the Rust, But You Can Also See the Glitter

Maggie Jones profiles former five-time Olympic medalist Marion Jones for The New York Times. After serving her six-month sentence in federal prison, the disgraced Olympian (now 34 years old and the mother of three children, including a 10-month old) attempts to be the rare professional athlete to pull off a comeback in a second sport — this time with the WNBA.

It was the culmination of one of the most dramatic and tangled descents of a sports hero. Years after adamant denials of doping, Jones pleaded guilty in 2007 to lying to a federal agent about taking performance-enhancing drugs during the 2000 Olympics. Within a few days, the United States Anti-Doping Agency banned her for two years from track-and-field competition, and representatives from the U.S.A.D.A. and the United States Olympic Committee knocked on her front door to collect her five medals. Her track-and-field times from the 2000 Games onward were wiped from the record books — as if she never existed.

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Despite the Best Efforts of the Computerized Swinging Friar on the JumboTron

As baseball season gets underway, here’s a story from the San Diego Reader’s Matthew Lickona. Lickona went to see his hometown Padres play ball last season, and he reflected on the current state of the sport — not so much how the game is played, but rather how it is experienced.

Looking around the Park at the Park, tucked in behind the outfield wall, you can almost believe that all is well with America and that baseball is still our national pastime. Cooling shadows are beginning to stretch over the outfield to my left, and the air surrounding all those cream-colored girders is fine and clear. Up there on the right, atop a grassy knoll, stands a statue of Tony Gwynn (“Mr. Padre”) in midswing — a monument to old-style baseball. His whole remarkable career with one team, his excellence arising from consistency and mechanics instead of power and raw athleticism on the lawn. Before him, a father plays catch with his son; the boy, barely more than a toddler, gleefully heaves a tennis ball toward his dad. Down the slope, parents guide their children through a round of Wiffle ball on the miniature diamond. What soccer moms?

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