Pele
Edson Arantes do Nascimento
October 23, 1940 – December 29, 2022
aged 82, from complications of colon cancer
When I was a kid, my Mom told me that Pele was the greatest soccer player in the world. Maybe it was true at the time, who knows? That was probably around 1974/75, when the 34-year-old athlete came out of retirement to play for the New York Cosmos for two years. Mom told me a lot of stuff - like, J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world, and 9,999 was the biggest number before infinity. I remember in 1972, she told me that Robert Stanfield would be the next Prime Minister of Canada. (He wasn’t.) Mom also told my brothers and me that women became pregnant if men bumped into them. That really worried us a lot, and for a long time we were afraid of accidentally bumping into women on the street. We never had before, but who knew what could happen in the future?
Of course, I believed her, because I was a kid, and kids believe what their parents say. Or, maybe I was just impressed by superlatives. Or maybe both. Or maybe neither. In any event, I don't care for sports, unless and until they cross into the world of real news, and Pele did that. Muhammed Ali did that. Billie Jean King did that.
Long after his playing career was over, Pele was a great ambassador for soccer, for Brazil, and for international events like the World Cup. He never lost the mystical aura of The Great One that followed him. I suppose one meaning of the epithet “legend” is that you gain immortality through the survival of your reputation.