Everyone it seemed had a Pele’ story. Mine was quite random, and since it was just before great cell cameras I don’t have a picture of it, but I have a great mental image, and it’s a story I tell all the time.
It was early December of 2007, and the New Jersey Ironmen, playing their first and only season in the Major Indoor Soccer League, had a special opening night that their owners, Jeff Van Der Beek and Mike Gilfillan, and Commissioner Steve Ryan, had invited me and my family to (I almost became the GM of the team but that’s a story for another day).
We were in the crowded bunker suite at the Prudential Center with a who’s who of soccer, when my very young son Andrew spied a table full of fruit that he was looking for. He made his way across the crowded room as I followed, but just before he got there, a side door opened and, accompanied by handlers and security people was Pele, who was brought in as he was many times as a soccer ambassador for the special night. The issue was now that the world’s greatest soccer player and ambassador for the sport was now blocking my son from his stash of grapes. So, as any hungry young kid would, he tried to maneuver his way around the phalanx of people to retrieve his stash, but to no avail. However he was not going to give up, so he pulled on the suit coat of the smiling man in front of him and said “Hey mister can you help me get some grapes?” The world’s greatest player looked down, laughed, picked my son up, kissed him on the head and deposited him at the table to retrieve the fruit before moving on.
Andrew got his grapes with an assist from Pele’, without ever knowing his brush with fame, but I got to see it all.
It is that type of inclusion and grace, especially towards young people, that put Pele in such rare air not as an athlete, but as a citizen of the world…someone who is probably in the group of Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Jackie Robinson, Magic Johnson, maybe Tiger Woods, and probably few others who transcend, sports, media, social responsibility and leadership from various areas…they were self aware enough to realize there was, and is, a higher calling which their p3edastil was meant for them to stand on, and it never stopped going higher.
That aspiration also should include Roberto Clemente, who passed away 50 years ago today on a humanitarian mission to aid victims of a Nicaraguan earthquake.
None of these people now or in the past were without flaws in a very public life. Yet they realized the impact they could have beyond just being a great athlete, and in many cases embraced the fame and the ability to use that for humanitarian good.
The posts and the pictures of the brushes with Pele ranged from the soccer pitch, especially when he came to the US to bring the world “The Beautiful Game” through the crazy pop culture phenomenon of the New York Cosmos and the ill fated NASL, to his work with global partners like Subway and MasterCard to his work with the UN and his foundation. Now there were also the nefarious doings of various “agents” and managers over the years who looked to exploit the Pele brand for the dollar to any extent, but his smiling face, his way to sign an autograph, his way to pay a child on the head, always seemed to superseded the various handlers who tried to hawk his brand for their own good.
I have read recently about how his daughter Kely is carrying on his legacy through his foundation that was recently launched, and how is manager at the time of his passing, our colleague and fellow New Jersian Joe Fraga, has set his legacy on the right path for decades to come, and that very heartwarming, because all the elements of Edson Arantes do Nascimento may have come because of his legendary career on the soccer pitch, but they lived on because of his actions, his grace, his persona, his joy as a person from humble origins in Brazil to being a citizen of the world.
He was the best example of what maximizing the spotlight could be…for decades…and the notes and posts about those who were lucky to have met him even for a few seconds in the bowels of an arena in Newark, are truly priceless, and set the standard for what we should all do to pay it forward.
Aspire higher…RIP Edson, and thanks for the grapes for Andrew.
