Sucks to be a Penguin

ESPN.com - NHL - Super Mario in hospital

   Mario Lemieux's life sounds like a Canadian sort of Faustian Bargain.

   "OK, kid... you like Gretzky, huh? I'll let you be better than him, sort of the Great One with a serious checking game. You can win a few Stanley Cups. You can bang or whichever supermodel shows up at the game. Kids will grow up wanting to be you."

   I'd jump at that offer, and you can make an argument that hockey is only the #7 sport in America... depending on where you count Boxing and the WWE. I caught this guy's whole career, and he had the total package- power, speed, skill, and strength. He was what Lindros was supposed to be. Mario Lemieux was Blessed.

   He was also Cursed. In a sport as insane as hockey is, ML had it easy. He missed a lot of games with back and hip injuries, but those weren't gonna kill him. At the height of his power, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. He made a courageous comeback from that, and all seemed well for Super Mario... until yesterday.

   "Well" is a relative term for Mario. He blew out of the box like a greyhound, which is impressive after a 2 year layoff... but he was -18 (Mario was around +50 at the height of his power) in his last ten games, and he was pretty much definitely going to tell Wayne Gretzky (Team Canada's GM is on an Olympian recruiting trip while his team has a 6 day layoff) that his spot on TC would be better filled by a younger man.

   That's class, and Mario deserves to go out classy. Instead, he may be going out at a sudden press conference.. or worse, brought off the ice under a sheet.

   An irregular heartbeat isn't that unusual in the general population, but it sucks when one of your favorite athletes gets it. Reggie Lewis was the Boston Celtic who had taken the team over, post-Larry. He exploded into a supreme scoring guard, second in the East to only Jordan.

   He was in the playoffs against the Charlotte (now New Orleans-Oklahoma) Hornets, with LJ, Alonzo Mourning, and Kendall Gill. For the first half of game one, he was absolutely abusing the Hornets. The numbers escape me... but he had around 20 in the first half, and we were already wondering how the Bulls were going to handle McHale and Parish if the breaks went our way.

    Then, Reggie was coming down the court... he staggered, and he collapsed. He didn't die on the court... he was merely sitting there, looking scared. There was an irregular heartbeat diagnosis, a medical Dream Team was brought in, the ugly spectre of cocaine emerged... and he was dead by August.

   I was heartbroken. Reggie was a local (Northeastern) kid who had taken the baton from Larry. Getting a staaah like Reggie at #21 in the draft seemed to take some of the sting out of the Len Bias death. Instead, my favorite player was dead, and the Celtics have pretty much had their face buried in Chocolate City ever since.

   Now Pittsburgh- and the NHL in general- is losing another star... hopefully to retirement. It's a shame, and not only because the NHL can't really afford to lose a name that people still recognize.