SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
It was a cold Christmas. There was very little snow falling. Both the tubes and radios were playing the regular jingle bell tunes, those with X-Mas trees were still opening up their gifts, neighbors came calling, and to me there was the sadness of what I was writing on the holy day of Christmas Sunday.
That was five days before the everyday pain suffered by the legendary Edson Arantes do Nascimento was living and dying at the Albert Einstein Hospital in San Paulo, in his native land of Brazil where he was forever worshipped, where he was younger but admittingly the best soccer player on the streets, and where at age 15 he signed with the professional Santos, and at 16 signed with the Brazilian National Team, the goal of all who played the sport.
Thursday morning, the saddened nation had learned that the great Pele, at age 82, had passed away. From his wonder years of dominating on the pitch, bringing Brazil three World Cups, being named the globe’s Finest Soccer Player a grand total of nine times, making plenty of time for personal appearances, even making numerous movies, one which was “Victory” a most popular escape thriller from a prison in Germany in which he starred with Sylvester Stallone.
I remember it well, especially when time was ticking down late in the grudge match between prisoners and guards. There was a quick time out and when the teams took the field again, three, four times the prisoners worked the ball to the anxious Pele, when with an aggressive defense watching his every move, he used his legs to calmly put his famed bicycle shot into play, turning the ball up in front of him and quickly sending it into the goal as the final whistle sounded and his prison mates mobbed him.
Stallone picked him up and carried him past where those supporting the planed escape sat, and the movie ended with the prisoners and those from the stands joining up on the field and walking right out the stadium.
I loved it. Never forgot it. And will never forget Pele, from the time I first met him in 1975 after he came out of retirement to play for the New York Cosmos of the National Soccer League until in 1977 when he played his final match that came before a record full house of 82,327 at then Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
He wore his favorite No. 10, and in the first half, he wore the Santos shirt for the first time since 1957. In the second half, he wore his Cosmos shirt as their fans roared. I was able to interview Pete later in the clubhouse, but it took quite some time to wait my turn with the TV, radio and mass media taking up most of the space.
I saved the finale for last because it was the worst.
There were the times when Brazil hosted the Pan American Games and the Olympics, and no Pele. Those when he was too ill to take part in either one. No doubt he wanted to speak for the land he loved, but the doctors there didn’t agree.
From there it worsened. His family took the best care of him it could. He was in fact one of seven brothers. There were cancer infections he had to deal with after living such a divine life, first a soccer star, then a spokesman for the sport, and then traveled to the year 2012 when he had a colon cancer tumor removed, and other cancers were diagnosed.
But now it’s over, now you Pele, like the late Babe Ruth, the late Wilt Chamberlain, the late Maurice Richards, Wayne Gretzky, Jim Brown, Michael Jordan, and other legends are just that, at the top of the heap where you belong.
And in any language, RIP.
