O Captain, My Captain

I missed talking about this yesterday when it was actually happening. But on a day when the big news in Detroit sports is someone overstaying their welcome, I'd rather talk about someone who couldn't stay long enough. I'm talking, of course, about the honoring of Steve Yzerman the other night. He's only been gone from the team for a few months but already his number's been retired. It happened last night just before the Wings beat league leading Anaheim. I wasn't able to attend, of course, and was only able to catch the highlights on TV and the newspaper later. But it looked and felt like a stirring tribute to someone who's given the fans and the city so much over the years.

It's impossible, I think, to state to anyone who wasn't in and around the area at the time - the mid-to-late 90s - just what the stars of those Red Wings teams mean to people in the region. They're beyond just sports, they've moved onto the realm of heroics and legend. To those of who were here and who cared, the memories of them struggling to reach the top and then finally taking the championship one glorious summer only to have it all ripped away in a single car crash and then build something even greater from those ashes are going to be etched into our minds and our hearts for years to come. Unless you were one of those people who stayed up long into the night that one fateful evening, praying for some kind of miracle, I can't describe what it's like to see Konstantinov even struggling to walk onto the ice again. It was a magical time - especially for a young kid just starting to make sense of the world - and it rubbed off on the city and the players and the team. And, well, the Captain was always the greatest of them all.

I suppose, in ten or fifteen years this is what young people in the area are going to feel about the Tigers. Although they didn't quite make it this year, neither did the Wings at first. And all the controversies, all the trials, just made it all the more sweeter when they actually did. The Tigers, though, don't have anyone remotely close to Stevie Wonder leading them. And, in this day of free agency, I don't think there ever will be a superstar who stays with their team for their entire career. Just not going to happen. And it almost didn't happen with Yzerman - I remember when he was all but traded to Ottawa. Fortunately, someone thought better of that trade. Because it was Yzerman that made it all possible. It was his leadership, his example, and his hard work that everyone on the team followed. He wasn't just the team's captain, he was its heart and soul.

And it pumped Detroit's lifeblood through it. Ever since the days when he was a young kid drafted onto a team known as the "Dead Wings". A time when barely 2,000 people would go to the average game and the team had to resort to giving away cars in order to get people to attend. I know about it because, at the time, my father had season tickets that he shared with a few others at his law firm. All through the 80s, whenever we wanted we could go see a game. But, in the 90s, just as things started to turn around, the law firm moved and we gave up on the tickets. But through those dark ages, the one constant shining light was Yzerman. And even when he began to be surrounded by players, it was him flying on the ice, deftly turning and moving the puck, and doing all the little things that make a great player. When Bowman arrived and Yzerman worked to become a better defensive player, so did the whole team. He sacrificed and his teammates couldn't help but follow his lead and give up their individual stats for collective success.

The wonderful thing, though, about Mr. Yzerman is the fact that even though last night people stood and cheered for him for nearly three whole minutes, and would shower him with praise throughout the night and, hopefully, for years to come - he deserves it and more - the man's always been humble and uncomfortable about just how much he's meant to the average fan. He hasn't refused it, no. But he's always realized that his athletic skill don't automatically make him someone to admire and adore. It's everything else that does. He's a quiet person, a private person, and not one to brag or boast or bask in the limelight. He shares, he credits his team, his coach, his owner, and even the fans in the seats with everything he's earned. And it's because of all that we'd walk through the fires of hell itself if he asked us to. He is our captain, after all.

Over at the NaNo boards, someone was writing about hockey and they wanted some details about the Red Wings to add some realism to the story. I'm not sure how their's turned out but it sounded like a moving story about how an injured player came to volunteer at a hospital and realize something about themselves. And when they asked the local Detroit NaNoers for some advice and facts about the region and the players you can imagine they were flooded with them. Passion for sports and, especially, for the Red Wings runs incredibly high. But, well, mine was far from the most apt or moving but the story I shared was this one: On my wall, there are a few paintings and a few pictures. I like to have them there for the same reason I imagine most people do. Not just as decoration but as a sort of declaration - this is who I am and this is what I believe in. And it's always been that way through the years some pictures have come and gone but there's one that's always remained ever since I've gotten it. That one doesn't really fit well with the rest of what I have on display but, well, you'd have to pry it off the wall with a crowbar because that's how much it means to me. And that one is a framed and signed poster of Steve Yzerman. Stick raise, having just delivered a wicked slapshot - in my more fanciful moments, I imagine it's the one that's ended that epic overtime game against the Blues so long ago - a look of determination in his eyes. It's the Captain, getting it done.

And that's not the reason I keep it around. It's not even because of that signature. It's how it came to be on the poster. You see, my brother was on a little league team with the son of one of the Red Wings' employees. That was Al Sobotka, you might have heard of him, he used to get on TV a lot (At least in the area) because he was the building manager. He drove the zamboni and took care of the ice - which included scooping up any octopi that found their way there and whirling them over his head as he walked off the ice. He lived in my neighborhood, just down the street in fact, and when the Red Wings won the championship he'd get the Stanley Cup for a night and hold what still remains as the most awesome block party I've ever seen. There's a picture of me and my brother with that trophy - my brother has it. Me, I got to keep the poster. You see, it turns out that Mr. Yzerman is really as nice as he's made out to be because when my brother's team won their own championship that year, he did something very special for them. He invited them all to his house - which was also not far from the area - and signed a poster for each and every last one of them. Can you imagine? Opening the door to see that local legend, walking into his house, and getting a chance to talk with him while he scribbled his name down? It made the day, the week, the month for those kids. And for everyone around them. Mine, certainly, because years down the line my brother eventually gave that poster to me because he didn't have any room for it himself. As you can imagine, I treasure it like I was the one who stood there and watched it get signed myself. And it's what I always think of whenever I try and explain just what these people meant to the region.

Anyhow, before I go, I'd just like to share this poem from which the title of this post comes. It's from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and it's a rather famous one. I'm sure I'm not the only one to turn to it because it's a rather obvious pun but, I'd like to think, I'm one of the few who'll give it the proper context. Anyhow, here's O Captain! My Captain!

1

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!	5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;	10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,	15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

A bit grim, I suppose. But, then, it was originally directed towards Mr. Lincoln in the aftermath of the civil war. Mr. Yzerman's turn at the wheel, steering the ship of fate, is done. And even though he's alive and well, his time and his legend are only going to fade, fallen cold and dead. That's the way of these things. He'll become just another name, another note, in the long and storied history of the franchise. But not to those of us who were there alongside of him. Never to me. #19 will always be my Captain. Thanks for each and everyone of those 22 years and I'm only sorry we couldn't get 22 more.