Read Ian's Featured Events
James' Title is Sweet Redemption
Johnson Smashes World Record and Completes Double
Ukrainian Outshines Kerrigan for Gold
For No. 1 and No. 2, The Court's Reserved
One For the Ages
Johnson Smashes World Record and Completes Double
Ukrainian Outshines Kerrigan for Gold
For No. 1 and No. 2, The Court's Reserved
One For the Ages
James' Title is Sweet Redemption
This was named best column of 2012 by the Pro Basketball Writers Association.
June 21, 2012
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/nba/2012/06/21/lebron-james-miami-heat-win-nba-title-redemption
MIAMI -- At last LeBron James walked away from his future.
For more than a decade, his future had defined him. Imagine what he could become? Imagine what he might do someday? The same questions that had provided him with the strength of confidence in his earliest NBA seasons were now being turned into accusations against James in recent years. His potential had given way to disappointment. The questions nagged at him, turning shrill and mean and confining, and James was unable to provide the only response that would ever matter.
"It means everything,'' he said as he celebrated his first championship on the victory stand following Miami's 121-106 win over Oklahoma City in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. "This is the happiest day of my life.''
For how many years was James supposed to have been the best player in the game? Before Thursday night, there had never been any proof to support the theory. No star was ever more talented, and if all of the NBA coaches could've summoned together the best qualities in one player then their simulation would've looked like James: Tall enough to play every position at both ends, with Michael's athleticism and Magic's vision and now, just now, Hakeem's footwork as taught to him last summer by The Dream himself.
All that had been lacking was the gold-plated championship trophy he cradled in his large hands as the confetti floated in the air like ashes stomped up from the ground. He smiled as broadly as the 16 year old he used to be, when his future was limitless, long before he had any idea how hard the game would become.
"It was the hardest thing I've ever done as a basketball player, since I picked up a basketball when I was nine years old,'' he said of winning the championship at the end of his ninth NBA season, to go with the MVP of the Finals that was awarded to him unanimously. "It just shows when you're committed and you give everything to the game, the game pays off and it gives back to you.''
Two years ago, he was vilified for the way he left Cleveland, and for believing that winning the championship would take care of itself now that he was playing with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. One year ago, he watched Dirk Nowitzki redeem his own career with a championship earned at James' expense. Two weeks after losing that championship, James was back in the gym. "I got back to the basics,'' he said. It was as if he was in recovery. He understood his promise better than anyone and how much he had let it slip away.
"I was playing to prove people wrong last year, and people would say I was selfish, and that got to me,'' said James. "That got to me a lot because I know that this is a team game. All last year I tried to prove people wrong, prove you guys wrong, and it wasn't me. At the end of the day, I was basically fighting against myself.
"The best thing that happened to me last year was us losing the Finals, and me playing the way I played -- it was the best thing to ever happen in my career because I got back to the basics. It humbled me. I knew what it was going to have to take, and I was going to have to change as a basketball player, and I was going to have to change as a person to get what I wanted. It happened, just one year later.''
His overwhelming talent had always created the false impression that the game would have to adapt to him. But in the last year he stumbled face-first onto the truth: That he would have to mold and re-form his physical skills to match the needs of his team and the demands of all players who have led their teams to championships. With the help of Hakeem Olajuwon, he taught himself to post-up, to do the humdrum back-to-the-basket work that he appeared to believe was beneath him, as if it wasn't worthy of his talent. As if he really believed he was The Chosen One.
Before Game 5, he sat alone at his locker in what was the strangest of all scenes. Three dozen reporters representing every corner of the world formed an arc three strides out from James' locker, like a kind of halo formed by his celebrity. They were staring or aiming their cameras or phones at him while hip-hop music thumped loudly in the locker room among them. It was like the crowds that used to gather around Jim Morrison's grave, or Elvis Presley's. Except those crowds gathered at the back end of the fame, while, in LeBron's case, the real fame was just about to begin.
Sitting at his locker, waiting for the game that would change everything for him, he was still famous for what he might yet accomplish. At 27, he was still a kind of teen sensation. He was desperate to leave that future behind, to earn the championship and turn the old promises into the new reality, and part of growing up is to not run away from challenges. So he sat at his locker and let it be, maybe because he liked the gawking attention, maybe because it meant nothing to him, or maybe because he didn't want to run away from it. He glanced around the room from time to time, making incidental eye contact with this reflection of his celebrity for the last time under these circumstances. He looked entirely calm and natural while pulling on his white game socks and scrubbing a brush against his short hair while the cameras and their larger audiences watched. When he walked across the room on a short errand, the cameras held up high craned to follow him like the heads of giraffes.
"Everything that went along with me being a high school prodigy when I was 16 and on the cover of Sports Illustrated, to being drafted and having to be the face of a franchise, everything that came with it, I had to deal with and I had to learn through it,'' he said. "No one had went through that journey, so I had to learn on my own. All the ups and downs, everything that came along with it, I had to basically figure it out on my own.
"I'm happy now that nine years since I've been drafted, that I can finally say that I'm a champion, and I did it the right way. I didn't shortcut anything. I put a lot of hard work and dedication in it, and hard work pays off.''
That was the irony of what he did. He was supposed to have been taking the easy path to a championship by moving to Miami, and instead it made his life miserable for two years. His life was far more difficult than it would've been if he had stayed in Cleveland. And at the same time the player who won the championship was not the player who had starred amid the unconditional love of his hometown team. This player on Thursday was tougher, more physical, more committed, less willing to lose and altogether complete, save for the one prize.
He earned it with a triple-double of 26 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds that was representative of his play throughout the Finals, the postseason and the entire lockout-tightened schedule. His teammates were converting more than 60 percent of their three-pointers -- 14-of-23 overall in Game 5, including 7-of-8 by Mike Miller -- and many of them were created by him. It was as if his passes carried goodwill, as if the cynicism had been transformed to optimism, as if the loans on his future were being cashed in at last. He was a three-time league MVP who had learned to carry his team all the way until there were no more games to play, and nothing more for him to prove.
"It took me to go all the way to the top and then hit rock bottom to realize what I needed to do as a professional athlete and as a person,'' he said. "I dreamed about this opportunity and this moment for a long time, including last night, including today. My dream has become a reality now, and it's the best feeling I ever had.''
The player he was supposed to be picked up the trophies, the larger one for the championship won by his team, and the other for becoming MVP of the Finals. The player who was always meant to hold those trophies was now 27, which makes him sound young, and doesn't begin to explain the in-between.
June 21, 2012
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/nba/2012/06/21/lebron-james-miami-heat-win-nba-title-redemption
MIAMI -- At last LeBron James walked away from his future.
For more than a decade, his future had defined him. Imagine what he could become? Imagine what he might do someday? The same questions that had provided him with the strength of confidence in his earliest NBA seasons were now being turned into accusations against James in recent years. His potential had given way to disappointment. The questions nagged at him, turning shrill and mean and confining, and James was unable to provide the only response that would ever matter.
"It means everything,'' he said as he celebrated his first championship on the victory stand following Miami's 121-106 win over Oklahoma City in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. "This is the happiest day of my life.''
For how many years was James supposed to have been the best player in the game? Before Thursday night, there had never been any proof to support the theory. No star was ever more talented, and if all of the NBA coaches could've summoned together the best qualities in one player then their simulation would've looked like James: Tall enough to play every position at both ends, with Michael's athleticism and Magic's vision and now, just now, Hakeem's footwork as taught to him last summer by The Dream himself.
All that had been lacking was the gold-plated championship trophy he cradled in his large hands as the confetti floated in the air like ashes stomped up from the ground. He smiled as broadly as the 16 year old he used to be, when his future was limitless, long before he had any idea how hard the game would become.
"It was the hardest thing I've ever done as a basketball player, since I picked up a basketball when I was nine years old,'' he said of winning the championship at the end of his ninth NBA season, to go with the MVP of the Finals that was awarded to him unanimously. "It just shows when you're committed and you give everything to the game, the game pays off and it gives back to you.''
Two years ago, he was vilified for the way he left Cleveland, and for believing that winning the championship would take care of itself now that he was playing with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. One year ago, he watched Dirk Nowitzki redeem his own career with a championship earned at James' expense. Two weeks after losing that championship, James was back in the gym. "I got back to the basics,'' he said. It was as if he was in recovery. He understood his promise better than anyone and how much he had let it slip away.
"I was playing to prove people wrong last year, and people would say I was selfish, and that got to me,'' said James. "That got to me a lot because I know that this is a team game. All last year I tried to prove people wrong, prove you guys wrong, and it wasn't me. At the end of the day, I was basically fighting against myself.
"The best thing that happened to me last year was us losing the Finals, and me playing the way I played -- it was the best thing to ever happen in my career because I got back to the basics. It humbled me. I knew what it was going to have to take, and I was going to have to change as a basketball player, and I was going to have to change as a person to get what I wanted. It happened, just one year later.''
His overwhelming talent had always created the false impression that the game would have to adapt to him. But in the last year he stumbled face-first onto the truth: That he would have to mold and re-form his physical skills to match the needs of his team and the demands of all players who have led their teams to championships. With the help of Hakeem Olajuwon, he taught himself to post-up, to do the humdrum back-to-the-basket work that he appeared to believe was beneath him, as if it wasn't worthy of his talent. As if he really believed he was The Chosen One.
Before Game 5, he sat alone at his locker in what was the strangest of all scenes. Three dozen reporters representing every corner of the world formed an arc three strides out from James' locker, like a kind of halo formed by his celebrity. They were staring or aiming their cameras or phones at him while hip-hop music thumped loudly in the locker room among them. It was like the crowds that used to gather around Jim Morrison's grave, or Elvis Presley's. Except those crowds gathered at the back end of the fame, while, in LeBron's case, the real fame was just about to begin.
Sitting at his locker, waiting for the game that would change everything for him, he was still famous for what he might yet accomplish. At 27, he was still a kind of teen sensation. He was desperate to leave that future behind, to earn the championship and turn the old promises into the new reality, and part of growing up is to not run away from challenges. So he sat at his locker and let it be, maybe because he liked the gawking attention, maybe because it meant nothing to him, or maybe because he didn't want to run away from it. He glanced around the room from time to time, making incidental eye contact with this reflection of his celebrity for the last time under these circumstances. He looked entirely calm and natural while pulling on his white game socks and scrubbing a brush against his short hair while the cameras and their larger audiences watched. When he walked across the room on a short errand, the cameras held up high craned to follow him like the heads of giraffes.
"Everything that went along with me being a high school prodigy when I was 16 and on the cover of Sports Illustrated, to being drafted and having to be the face of a franchise, everything that came with it, I had to deal with and I had to learn through it,'' he said. "No one had went through that journey, so I had to learn on my own. All the ups and downs, everything that came along with it, I had to basically figure it out on my own.
"I'm happy now that nine years since I've been drafted, that I can finally say that I'm a champion, and I did it the right way. I didn't shortcut anything. I put a lot of hard work and dedication in it, and hard work pays off.''
That was the irony of what he did. He was supposed to have been taking the easy path to a championship by moving to Miami, and instead it made his life miserable for two years. His life was far more difficult than it would've been if he had stayed in Cleveland. And at the same time the player who won the championship was not the player who had starred amid the unconditional love of his hometown team. This player on Thursday was tougher, more physical, more committed, less willing to lose and altogether complete, save for the one prize.
He earned it with a triple-double of 26 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds that was representative of his play throughout the Finals, the postseason and the entire lockout-tightened schedule. His teammates were converting more than 60 percent of their three-pointers -- 14-of-23 overall in Game 5, including 7-of-8 by Mike Miller -- and many of them were created by him. It was as if his passes carried goodwill, as if the cynicism had been transformed to optimism, as if the loans on his future were being cashed in at last. He was a three-time league MVP who had learned to carry his team all the way until there were no more games to play, and nothing more for him to prove.
"It took me to go all the way to the top and then hit rock bottom to realize what I needed to do as a professional athlete and as a person,'' he said. "I dreamed about this opportunity and this moment for a long time, including last night, including today. My dream has become a reality now, and it's the best feeling I ever had.''
The player he was supposed to be picked up the trophies, the larger one for the championship won by his team, and the other for becoming MVP of the Finals. The player who was always meant to hold those trophies was now 27, which makes him sound young, and doesn't begin to explain the in-between.
Johnson Smashes World Record and Completes Double
This world record lasted for 15 years. It is held today by Usain Bolt, who in 2009 ran the 200 meters in 19.19 seconds.
August 3, 1996
International Herald Tribune: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/03/news/johnson-smashes-world-record-and-completes-double
ATLANTA— His head and his legs were curved back as if his belt buckle had been tied to a speedboat yanking him along. Except for this: Michael Johnson wasn't wearing a belt.
He was on land.
He was running under his own power, faster than anyone has ever run before. He was running so fast that layers of personality seemed to be peeling off him.
The uptight layer peeled away immediately, revealing a mask of concentration. As he moved into the turn of the Olympic 200 meters Thursday night, he realized that he was running "faster than I've ever run." Then the look of concentration peeled away like a candy wrapper out the car window and he began trying to relax.
But there is a difference between trying to relax and relaxing without having to try. The latter always seemed beyond Johnson's reach. For eight years his work had defined and confined him, and now he seemed to be bursting out of himself. The gold chain around his neck was hopping back and forth from one side of his collarbone to the other, like a jockey's whip to each flank. His face was going through changes of expression faster than pages of a daily calendar torn free by the cinematic winds of time. He was shedding worry and anxiety as his cheeks were filling and refilling.
And then, blankly, he looked to his left, his legs still carrying him by rote. The clock read 19.32 seconds.
He ran the fastest, if not the finest, race that has ever been run. Johnson's time of 19.32 seconds in the Olympic 200 meters was 0.34 seconds faster than the world record he had set on the same track at the U.S. Olympic trials in June; it was 0.47 seconds faster than the previous record, which had stood like an obelisk for almost 17 years.
He also became the first man to win gold medals at the same Olympics in the 200 meters and 400 meters. The 400 meters, by comparison, is a race of endurance and strength. He won it Monday in an Olympic record 43.49 seconds.
Shedding a half-second from the 200, the second-shortest distance in athletics, was the primitive equivalent of the first sonic boom. At least the coaches and athletes at the Olympic Stadium seemed to feel that way. They talked about Michael Johnson as if they'd just seen proof of a higher being.
"I'm sure somebody in track is going to look at this and say it outdoes the old record more than Beamon's record did," said Johnson's coach and fellow Texan, Clyde Hart. "I was amazed. I didn't think I could get amazed. I didn't visualize him being able to do 9.32 not .32."
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Bob Beamon set a long-jump world record of 8.90 meters, or 29 feet 2 1/2 inches. No one else had jumped close to 28 feet before. It was probably the greatest achievement in athletics.
The 200 meters final was Johnson's eighth race in seven days, and he was expected to be pressed, if not overtaken, by Frankie Fredericks of Namibia, who had ended Johnson's two-year winning streak last month at Lausanne.
"When Michael ran 19.66 that was incredible enough," said Fredericks, whose silver medal time of 19.68 seconds would have broken the world record six weeks ago. "At 19.32, I don't know what to say about it — I don't think we can get close to it."
Said Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago, the bronze medalist in 19.80 seconds: "I said earlier that the man who wins the 100 meters is the fastest man alive, but now I think the fastest man alive is sitting to my left."
At which point Johnson reached over from the left to shake Boldon's hand.
"I can't even describe how it feels to break the world record by that much," said Johnson, 28. "I thought 19.5 or 19.4 was possible. But 19.3 is unbelievable."
Until shortly after 9 P.M. Thursday, Johnson had approached athletics like a businessman. He had missed the 1988 Olympics with a broken leg and failed to win the 200 meters gold medal in 1992 because of food poisoning. Soon afterward he began talking about winning the two races at the same Olympics. He practiced by winning both at the world championships last year.
If Beamon's gold medal had been something of a surprise, then Johnson's two gold medals in Atlanta were taking on the uncomfortable air of assurance.
The Olympic schedule was rearranged so he could prepare for the next phase. Meticulous in his personal life, exacting, demanding and stoic, he ran through the heats upright and looking down his nose, as if rushing with his attaché case to catch a plane but not wanting to rush too much.
He was lacing up his gold shoes — gold! the audacity! — just before the 200 meters final when he realized what he had gotten himself into. He had smiled self-assuredly for every magazine cover and television interview as if the planning assured the doing. He was reserved, private and inaccessible. All of that vanished as he howled at the sight of his winning time.
"Pressure," he said, when asked what he had been feeling. "Just pressure. There has never been this much pressure on me my entire life. I was afraid. I was afraid I was not going to get this medal that I won." He smiled, a new kind of smile from him. "I like to be afraid. I like to be nervous. I run better when I'm nervous."
On the medal stand he was carefree, liberated. He smiled back at his reflection on the giant screen. Just three nights earlier, on the same spot, he had shuddered and cried under the weight of what he was trying to do. Then he ran so fast that he seemed to change. He might never be the same person again.
August 3, 1996
International Herald Tribune: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/03/news/johnson-smashes-world-record-and-completes-double
ATLANTA— His head and his legs were curved back as if his belt buckle had been tied to a speedboat yanking him along. Except for this: Michael Johnson wasn't wearing a belt.
He was on land.
He was running under his own power, faster than anyone has ever run before. He was running so fast that layers of personality seemed to be peeling off him.
The uptight layer peeled away immediately, revealing a mask of concentration. As he moved into the turn of the Olympic 200 meters Thursday night, he realized that he was running "faster than I've ever run." Then the look of concentration peeled away like a candy wrapper out the car window and he began trying to relax.
But there is a difference between trying to relax and relaxing without having to try. The latter always seemed beyond Johnson's reach. For eight years his work had defined and confined him, and now he seemed to be bursting out of himself. The gold chain around his neck was hopping back and forth from one side of his collarbone to the other, like a jockey's whip to each flank. His face was going through changes of expression faster than pages of a daily calendar torn free by the cinematic winds of time. He was shedding worry and anxiety as his cheeks were filling and refilling.
And then, blankly, he looked to his left, his legs still carrying him by rote. The clock read 19.32 seconds.
He ran the fastest, if not the finest, race that has ever been run. Johnson's time of 19.32 seconds in the Olympic 200 meters was 0.34 seconds faster than the world record he had set on the same track at the U.S. Olympic trials in June; it was 0.47 seconds faster than the previous record, which had stood like an obelisk for almost 17 years.
He also became the first man to win gold medals at the same Olympics in the 200 meters and 400 meters. The 400 meters, by comparison, is a race of endurance and strength. He won it Monday in an Olympic record 43.49 seconds.
Shedding a half-second from the 200, the second-shortest distance in athletics, was the primitive equivalent of the first sonic boom. At least the coaches and athletes at the Olympic Stadium seemed to feel that way. They talked about Michael Johnson as if they'd just seen proof of a higher being.
"I'm sure somebody in track is going to look at this and say it outdoes the old record more than Beamon's record did," said Johnson's coach and fellow Texan, Clyde Hart. "I was amazed. I didn't think I could get amazed. I didn't visualize him being able to do 9.32 not .32."
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Bob Beamon set a long-jump world record of 8.90 meters, or 29 feet 2 1/2 inches. No one else had jumped close to 28 feet before. It was probably the greatest achievement in athletics.
The 200 meters final was Johnson's eighth race in seven days, and he was expected to be pressed, if not overtaken, by Frankie Fredericks of Namibia, who had ended Johnson's two-year winning streak last month at Lausanne.
"When Michael ran 19.66 that was incredible enough," said Fredericks, whose silver medal time of 19.68 seconds would have broken the world record six weeks ago. "At 19.32, I don't know what to say about it — I don't think we can get close to it."
Said Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago, the bronze medalist in 19.80 seconds: "I said earlier that the man who wins the 100 meters is the fastest man alive, but now I think the fastest man alive is sitting to my left."
At which point Johnson reached over from the left to shake Boldon's hand.
"I can't even describe how it feels to break the world record by that much," said Johnson, 28. "I thought 19.5 or 19.4 was possible. But 19.3 is unbelievable."
Until shortly after 9 P.M. Thursday, Johnson had approached athletics like a businessman. He had missed the 1988 Olympics with a broken leg and failed to win the 200 meters gold medal in 1992 because of food poisoning. Soon afterward he began talking about winning the two races at the same Olympics. He practiced by winning both at the world championships last year.
If Beamon's gold medal had been something of a surprise, then Johnson's two gold medals in Atlanta were taking on the uncomfortable air of assurance.
The Olympic schedule was rearranged so he could prepare for the next phase. Meticulous in his personal life, exacting, demanding and stoic, he ran through the heats upright and looking down his nose, as if rushing with his attaché case to catch a plane but not wanting to rush too much.
He was lacing up his gold shoes — gold! the audacity! — just before the 200 meters final when he realized what he had gotten himself into. He had smiled self-assuredly for every magazine cover and television interview as if the planning assured the doing. He was reserved, private and inaccessible. All of that vanished as he howled at the sight of his winning time.
"Pressure," he said, when asked what he had been feeling. "Just pressure. There has never been this much pressure on me my entire life. I was afraid. I was afraid I was not going to get this medal that I won." He smiled, a new kind of smile from him. "I like to be afraid. I like to be nervous. I run better when I'm nervous."
On the medal stand he was carefree, liberated. He smiled back at his reflection on the giant screen. Just three nights earlier, on the same spot, he had shuddered and cried under the weight of what he was trying to do. Then he ran so fast that he seemed to change. He might never be the same person again.
Ukrainian Outshines Kerrigan for Gold
The most famous (or infamous) event in the history of figure skating developed late at night, leaving me with no more than a half-hour to file this story in time for my newspaper’s deadline.
February 26, 1994
International Herald Tribune
HAMAR— Nancy Kerrigan, the 24-year-old American whose knee was clubbed last month by a rival's camp, was beaten to the Olympic figure-skating gold medal Friday night by a 16-year-old Ukrainian shaped by more tragedy than Kerrigan has ever known.
There had been a sense that the sensational assault upon Kerrigan would deliver her first major international championship, but the story told by Oksana Baiul's free program was ultimately more compelling. She told it in four minutes, with eyes forever threatening to well over and a smile always one blink from sadness.
Behind Baiul and Kerrigan, the bronze medal went to 17-year-old Lu Chen of China, who exchanged places with Surya Bonaly of France following a disastrous performance by the four-time European champion. Former professional Katarina Witt, the 1984 and 1988 Olympic champion, finished a disappointing seventh, one place ahead of the self-destructive Tonya Harding, whose first attempt at her long program sent her off the ice in tears.
Baiul, the 1993 world champion, made the night hers in the manner widely anticipated for Kerrigan, who stood first Wednesday after the technical program, worth one-third of the total score. The vote was close, however, with Baiul and Kerrigan splitting the judges' first-place votes, 5-4.
But the least of Baiul's problems faintly resembled Kerrigan's. During practice Thursday, Baiul had collided with another 16-year-old, Tanja Szewczenko of Germany. Baiul required three stitches in her right shin, and more significantly, suffered an injury to her lower back. Olympic doping controls prevented her from taking painkillers.
Just 43 kilograms (95 pounds) and 1.59 meters tall, she appears fragile and light, weighed down by her thick brown hair and beige, seemingly oversized skates. Her makeup only emphasizes the girl trying to become a woman. She has done so without her father, her mother and her grandmother. If the injuries of Thursday were enough to set her off, she also is well-used to overcoming much greater losses.
As the scores were announced that shifted her to the top in place of Kerrigan, she fell sobbing into the arms of her coach, Galina Zmievskaya, who basically is the only woman left for her.
But first, if these Olympics have been shaped by Harding's entourage, then the climactic night could not survive without her remarkable input. Performing second among the third group of skaters - the group preceding Kerrigan's - Harding's name was announced to the crowd, which found itself applauding an empty rink. Tonya was not ready. She was given two minutes to appear and she arrived with less than a half-minute remaining, squeezing asthma spray into her mouth, then bending down to tie her skate.
She skated toward center ice, clasping her hands and shaking them in front of her, as if in prayer. It was both dramatic and unimportant, since she was 10th after the technical phase.
Her music began, the theme from "Jurassic Park," deep in bass and ominous as she skated backwards toward her opening triple-lutz. She leaped and completed one revolution, landing spread eagle on both feet, 45 seconds into her program. She came out of her spin crying, her face driven to a frown, and this will be the sour image that will survive her.
She skated directly over to the judges to complain as the music continued without her. Eventually they announced a problem with her skate and their decision - which was booed - to allow her to perform her program at the end of her group.
She skated it fairly cleanly, allowing her to move up two places overall, but the most important result was that Kerrigan was forced to watch her from the waiting pit. Later, when Kerrigan came out for her own program, a stuffed bear wrapped in a cellophane bag - meant for Chen - almost hit Kerrigan, and she looked up angrily for a moment.
The overwhelming hype applied to the Kerrigan incident came into focus as she performed to a medley of Neil Diamond hits. She did not match the hype, though no one expected that from her. Her program was sound but uninspiring.
Baiul did not complete a combination, but she danced to a medley of show tunes with everything in her lithe body. With each victorious landing her face seemed to explode in surprise. Her federation had said that she would not decide whether to skate until shortly before the competition began. In the morning practice, she had failed to complete her long program.
To watch her was to imagine that every problem emphasizes her loneliness and eventually strengthens her. Her life, which she declines to discuss, seems to play before you with each performance. Her father abandoned her when she was 2, and she was raised by her grandmother and mother. Everyone important to her died over a five- year period ending in 1991, when her mother succumbed to cancer. When her coach left for a better life in Canada, Baiul was rescued by Zmievskaya at the advice of Victor Petrenko, the 1992 Olympic figure skating champion. Zmievskaya basically has adopted her, and skating, it seems, is Baiul's means of forgetting the pain.
By the time she was done, the audience seemed spent - by Tonya, by Nancy, by this tragic dynamo. Baiul was first on five of the nine judge's cards, which could have changed with a strong performance by Bonaly. But early in her program she double-footed a single jump meant to be a triple, and she was uncharacteristically wobbly from that point on. What began as an opportunity to crown the first black Olympic figure-skating champion ended with her tumbling to the ice.
Her place on the podium was seized by Chen, who on this tense evening was smoother than all but those who finished ahead of her. The evening ended, anticlimactically, with Witt having to touch a hand to the ice twice. Her program, dedicated to Sarajevo, the site of her first Olympic championship, seemed more powerful in design than any of her competitors' programs played out as it was to the anti-war song, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"
But this was a night beyond design, when an orphan's will was stronger than the most sensational television script.
February 26, 1994
International Herald Tribune
HAMAR— Nancy Kerrigan, the 24-year-old American whose knee was clubbed last month by a rival's camp, was beaten to the Olympic figure-skating gold medal Friday night by a 16-year-old Ukrainian shaped by more tragedy than Kerrigan has ever known.
There had been a sense that the sensational assault upon Kerrigan would deliver her first major international championship, but the story told by Oksana Baiul's free program was ultimately more compelling. She told it in four minutes, with eyes forever threatening to well over and a smile always one blink from sadness.
Behind Baiul and Kerrigan, the bronze medal went to 17-year-old Lu Chen of China, who exchanged places with Surya Bonaly of France following a disastrous performance by the four-time European champion. Former professional Katarina Witt, the 1984 and 1988 Olympic champion, finished a disappointing seventh, one place ahead of the self-destructive Tonya Harding, whose first attempt at her long program sent her off the ice in tears.
Baiul, the 1993 world champion, made the night hers in the manner widely anticipated for Kerrigan, who stood first Wednesday after the technical program, worth one-third of the total score. The vote was close, however, with Baiul and Kerrigan splitting the judges' first-place votes, 5-4.
But the least of Baiul's problems faintly resembled Kerrigan's. During practice Thursday, Baiul had collided with another 16-year-old, Tanja Szewczenko of Germany. Baiul required three stitches in her right shin, and more significantly, suffered an injury to her lower back. Olympic doping controls prevented her from taking painkillers.
Just 43 kilograms (95 pounds) and 1.59 meters tall, she appears fragile and light, weighed down by her thick brown hair and beige, seemingly oversized skates. Her makeup only emphasizes the girl trying to become a woman. She has done so without her father, her mother and her grandmother. If the injuries of Thursday were enough to set her off, she also is well-used to overcoming much greater losses.
As the scores were announced that shifted her to the top in place of Kerrigan, she fell sobbing into the arms of her coach, Galina Zmievskaya, who basically is the only woman left for her.
But first, if these Olympics have been shaped by Harding's entourage, then the climactic night could not survive without her remarkable input. Performing second among the third group of skaters - the group preceding Kerrigan's - Harding's name was announced to the crowd, which found itself applauding an empty rink. Tonya was not ready. She was given two minutes to appear and she arrived with less than a half-minute remaining, squeezing asthma spray into her mouth, then bending down to tie her skate.
She skated toward center ice, clasping her hands and shaking them in front of her, as if in prayer. It was both dramatic and unimportant, since she was 10th after the technical phase.
Her music began, the theme from "Jurassic Park," deep in bass and ominous as she skated backwards toward her opening triple-lutz. She leaped and completed one revolution, landing spread eagle on both feet, 45 seconds into her program. She came out of her spin crying, her face driven to a frown, and this will be the sour image that will survive her.
She skated directly over to the judges to complain as the music continued without her. Eventually they announced a problem with her skate and their decision - which was booed - to allow her to perform her program at the end of her group.
She skated it fairly cleanly, allowing her to move up two places overall, but the most important result was that Kerrigan was forced to watch her from the waiting pit. Later, when Kerrigan came out for her own program, a stuffed bear wrapped in a cellophane bag - meant for Chen - almost hit Kerrigan, and she looked up angrily for a moment.
The overwhelming hype applied to the Kerrigan incident came into focus as she performed to a medley of Neil Diamond hits. She did not match the hype, though no one expected that from her. Her program was sound but uninspiring.
Baiul did not complete a combination, but she danced to a medley of show tunes with everything in her lithe body. With each victorious landing her face seemed to explode in surprise. Her federation had said that she would not decide whether to skate until shortly before the competition began. In the morning practice, she had failed to complete her long program.
To watch her was to imagine that every problem emphasizes her loneliness and eventually strengthens her. Her life, which she declines to discuss, seems to play before you with each performance. Her father abandoned her when she was 2, and she was raised by her grandmother and mother. Everyone important to her died over a five- year period ending in 1991, when her mother succumbed to cancer. When her coach left for a better life in Canada, Baiul was rescued by Zmievskaya at the advice of Victor Petrenko, the 1992 Olympic figure skating champion. Zmievskaya basically has adopted her, and skating, it seems, is Baiul's means of forgetting the pain.
By the time she was done, the audience seemed spent - by Tonya, by Nancy, by this tragic dynamo. Baiul was first on five of the nine judge's cards, which could have changed with a strong performance by Bonaly. But early in her program she double-footed a single jump meant to be a triple, and she was uncharacteristically wobbly from that point on. What began as an opportunity to crown the first black Olympic figure-skating champion ended with her tumbling to the ice.
Her place on the podium was seized by Chen, who on this tense evening was smoother than all but those who finished ahead of her. The evening ended, anticlimactically, with Witt having to touch a hand to the ice twice. Her program, dedicated to Sarajevo, the site of her first Olympic championship, seemed more powerful in design than any of her competitors' programs played out as it was to the anti-war song, "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"
But this was a night beyond design, when an orphan's will was stronger than the most sensational television script.
For No. 1 and No. 2, The Court's Reserved
This was written during the tennis quarterfinals at Wimbledon, in anticipation of a women’s final between No. 1 Steffi Graf and No. 2 Martina Navratilova. But Navratilova was upset in her semifinal by No. 8 Jana Novotna, who went on to be beaten by Graf in the final.
June 30, 1993
International Herald Tribune
WIMBLEDON— Will you hit with me today? Steffi Graf seemed to ask her good friend.
I'd be glad to, Jennifer Capriati seemed to reply.
Graf reserved the court for 2 P.M. Tuesday. They both knew to be on time, because they only had it for 75 minutes. It's a grass court, a burnt back yard in appearance, with divots and hurricanes of dirt rising from overuse. The court was built years and years ago in what has since become a tourist area - especially this time of the year. There were probably 15,000 people within shout of the court when the players met there with a handshake Tuesday. It takes a lot of nerve to play with so many people nearby, but this is a popular court, and when a slot opens up you don't turn it down. They would do their best to ignore the bustle.
I haven't been training hard enough recently, Graf seemed to complain as they warmed up.
What's the problem? Capriati seemed to reply from across the net.
It's tough finding good partners, Graf all but said as she tossed practice lobs to her friend. In effect she admitted: I've got the club championship this weekend and I wonder if I'm ready.
I'll get you ready, promised Capriati, for by the fifth game of their match she was breaking Graf's serve. In the ninth game she was one point away from breaking Graf again for the set.
Now, only a few players at this club are good enough to break Steffi Graf, and only one has any confidence of winning two sets from her. The outcome of this confidence will be tested in the club championship Saturday. On that rare day when anyone else succeeds in taking a set from Steffi, it becomes a topic of discussion in the clubhouse, just as others might debate a major drop in the stock market on Wall Street, or the capture of a major fish from a lake somewhere.
Graf is a tall, slender blonde. When she plays tennis, she is definitely beautiful. She plays with a fluidity that might, in another personality, be expressed by dance. She never seems to sprawl or stumble or lose her balance - all of this without being stiff. The only point of contention about her game is that she rarely seems to enjoy it. The other women wonder, while they are inevitably losing to her, why does she play? What is her satisfaction in winning over and over, when she expresses so little joy? The answer to this, obviously, is that if celebrations were her intent, there wouldn't be nearly so much to celebrate, because then she'd be just like everyone else.
Capriati beat her last summer, in the final of a big amateur invitational somewhere, but the members wonder sometimes how much she actually likes tennis for someone who plays it all of the time. Other parents force the violin or piano upon their children; in Jennifer's case it was tennis lessons every day after school. It is their tennis that makes friends of Graf and Capriati, and they played Tuesday like any two competitive friends on any nameless, balding court anywhere in the world. And, this is the truth: If Capriati's forehand were any more dependable, she would have broken Graf to win that first set. As it was she couldn't even serve it out. She lost that set in the tiebreaker, and then the next one belonged entirely to Graf, which is not to say that Capriati did not contest it to the end.
When the clock said they were down to their last minute, they played the kind of final, back-and-forth point that you savor on the drive home. Graf won it, of course. One waited while the other gathered her things. Then they walked out together.
So who is it you're playing Saturday? Capriati seemed to ask, with the understanding that Graf now was officially ready.
Arching her eyebrows in apprehension, Graf smiled and would have said, should have said: Martina.
The court was vacant for a few minutes, and the surrounding noise of human traffic pressed its way in. Then Navratilova walked into the sunshine. It was a beautiful day, and she looked around, as she always does, marveling at the availability of her favorite court on a day without rain. She was accompanied by Natalia Zvereva, who is only 22 and, reasonably, in awe. But then, everybody who knows Martina Navratilova struggles to suppress or articulate some measure of awe for her.
She was born in Prague, but escaped what was then Czechoslovakia, somehow. People who are too old to play remember her appearing at the club as a teenager. She played like a person of duty, with the motivation of someone wanting every reward. She has won the club championship nine times, a local record, and in her day she was a fiercer Steffi. But Martina is 36 now, and she has matured without a relevant depreciation of her skills.
All along, everyone has known this championship would come down to Steffi and Martina. When it finally happens Saturday, in front of everybody who cares, Martina will be trying to prove something elementally different from anything else she has ever proved to herself. That's why anyone plays at this extraordinary level, to prove something. You sure can't say they do it for the money.
On Tuesday Martina had the court for less than an hour, knocking Zvereva playfully around on a whim. When she needed a rest, she sat in her courtside chair as the sun from behind drew a bright line around her white clothes and golden hair, and then she might as well have been sitting in the greatest tennis stadium in the world to tell by her sigh, a few days before she is destined to play Steffi.
June 30, 1993
International Herald Tribune
WIMBLEDON— Will you hit with me today? Steffi Graf seemed to ask her good friend.
I'd be glad to, Jennifer Capriati seemed to reply.
Graf reserved the court for 2 P.M. Tuesday. They both knew to be on time, because they only had it for 75 minutes. It's a grass court, a burnt back yard in appearance, with divots and hurricanes of dirt rising from overuse. The court was built years and years ago in what has since become a tourist area - especially this time of the year. There were probably 15,000 people within shout of the court when the players met there with a handshake Tuesday. It takes a lot of nerve to play with so many people nearby, but this is a popular court, and when a slot opens up you don't turn it down. They would do their best to ignore the bustle.
I haven't been training hard enough recently, Graf seemed to complain as they warmed up.
What's the problem? Capriati seemed to reply from across the net.
It's tough finding good partners, Graf all but said as she tossed practice lobs to her friend. In effect she admitted: I've got the club championship this weekend and I wonder if I'm ready.
I'll get you ready, promised Capriati, for by the fifth game of their match she was breaking Graf's serve. In the ninth game she was one point away from breaking Graf again for the set.
Now, only a few players at this club are good enough to break Steffi Graf, and only one has any confidence of winning two sets from her. The outcome of this confidence will be tested in the club championship Saturday. On that rare day when anyone else succeeds in taking a set from Steffi, it becomes a topic of discussion in the clubhouse, just as others might debate a major drop in the stock market on Wall Street, or the capture of a major fish from a lake somewhere.
Graf is a tall, slender blonde. When she plays tennis, she is definitely beautiful. She plays with a fluidity that might, in another personality, be expressed by dance. She never seems to sprawl or stumble or lose her balance - all of this without being stiff. The only point of contention about her game is that she rarely seems to enjoy it. The other women wonder, while they are inevitably losing to her, why does she play? What is her satisfaction in winning over and over, when she expresses so little joy? The answer to this, obviously, is that if celebrations were her intent, there wouldn't be nearly so much to celebrate, because then she'd be just like everyone else.
Capriati beat her last summer, in the final of a big amateur invitational somewhere, but the members wonder sometimes how much she actually likes tennis for someone who plays it all of the time. Other parents force the violin or piano upon their children; in Jennifer's case it was tennis lessons every day after school. It is their tennis that makes friends of Graf and Capriati, and they played Tuesday like any two competitive friends on any nameless, balding court anywhere in the world. And, this is the truth: If Capriati's forehand were any more dependable, she would have broken Graf to win that first set. As it was she couldn't even serve it out. She lost that set in the tiebreaker, and then the next one belonged entirely to Graf, which is not to say that Capriati did not contest it to the end.
When the clock said they were down to their last minute, they played the kind of final, back-and-forth point that you savor on the drive home. Graf won it, of course. One waited while the other gathered her things. Then they walked out together.
So who is it you're playing Saturday? Capriati seemed to ask, with the understanding that Graf now was officially ready.
Arching her eyebrows in apprehension, Graf smiled and would have said, should have said: Martina.
The court was vacant for a few minutes, and the surrounding noise of human traffic pressed its way in. Then Navratilova walked into the sunshine. It was a beautiful day, and she looked around, as she always does, marveling at the availability of her favorite court on a day without rain. She was accompanied by Natalia Zvereva, who is only 22 and, reasonably, in awe. But then, everybody who knows Martina Navratilova struggles to suppress or articulate some measure of awe for her.
She was born in Prague, but escaped what was then Czechoslovakia, somehow. People who are too old to play remember her appearing at the club as a teenager. She played like a person of duty, with the motivation of someone wanting every reward. She has won the club championship nine times, a local record, and in her day she was a fiercer Steffi. But Martina is 36 now, and she has matured without a relevant depreciation of her skills.
All along, everyone has known this championship would come down to Steffi and Martina. When it finally happens Saturday, in front of everybody who cares, Martina will be trying to prove something elementally different from anything else she has ever proved to herself. That's why anyone plays at this extraordinary level, to prove something. You sure can't say they do it for the money.
On Tuesday Martina had the court for less than an hour, knocking Zvereva playfully around on a whim. When she needed a rest, she sat in her courtside chair as the sun from behind drew a bright line around her white clothes and golden hair, and then she might as well have been sitting in the greatest tennis stadium in the world to tell by her sigh, a few days before she is destined to play Steffi.
One For the Ages
Birth records in his native land suggest that Danny Almonte, star of the Little League World Series, may have been a ringer
All credit to Luis Fernando Llosa, who discovered Danny Almonte’s birth certificate while reporting a separate baseball story in the Dominican Republic.
By Ian Thomsen and Luis Fernando Llosa
Special reporting by Melissa Segura
Sept. 03, 2001
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/vault/2001/09/03/309790/one-for-the-ages-birth-records-in-his-native-land-suggest-that-danny-almonte-star-of-the-little-league-world-series-may-have-been-a-ringer
The Little League World Series final at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in Williamsport, Pa., on Sunday had a thrilling finish that in other years would have served as the tournament's most unforgettable image. For the second time in three years the series was won by a team from Japan, as Tokyo Kitasuna scored both runs in its 2-1 victory over Apopka, Fla., on a bottom-of-the-sixth single by Nobuhisa Baba, a 5'1" third baseman. The Japanese had come from behind on their last at bat to win the international championship game as well as the series final and celebrated each time by sprinting madly out to the centerfield wall, where they threw themselves down in cartoonish genuflection before the bust of Lamade, who had donated the land for the ballpark.
But Sunday's events seemed almost anticlimactic after the show put on earlier in the series by Danny Almonte, a remarkably poised lefthander from the Rolando Paulino All-Stars of the Bronx. As his team advanced to last Saturday's U.S. championship game, in which it lost 8-2 to Apopka, Danny, a native of Moca in the Dominican Republic, seemed like a man among boys, using his lanky leg kick and effortless release to blind his overmatched foes with 70-mph-plus two- and four-seam fastballs – the equivalent, given that Little League pitchers throw from a mound just 46 feet from home plate, of 92-mph major league heat – and bamboozle them with sharp curves and changeups. Beginning with the no-hitter he threw in the Eastern Regional final on Aug. 14 in Bristol, Conn., Danny won all four games he pitched, including a perfect game, the World Series' first in 44 years, against Apopka in round-robin play on Aug. 18. In those appearances he gave up only one run (unearned) and three hits and struck out 62 of the 72 batters he faced. He was ineligible to pitch against Apopka in the U.S. championship game because he had thrown a 1-0 one-hitter against Oceanside, Calif., in the U.S. semifinal, and Little League rules prohibit a pitcher from taking the mound if he has thrown an inning or more in his team's previous game.
Such was Danny's celebrity that during the tournament he received a good-luck call from his idol, Cincinnati Reds centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr., and as a child version of the Arizona Diamondbacks' towering lefty Randy (the Big Unit) Johnson, the 5'8" Danny earned the nickname the Little Unit. Even before the tournamen this physical and mound maturity had caused some to wonder if he was, as the Paulino All-Stars claimed, 12 years old -- the maximum age for Little League eligibility. Last Friday the Newark Star-Ledger reported that a group of adults associated with a Little League team on Staten Island had paid $10,000 this summer for a private investigation into the Paulino players' ages. The detectives had found no evidence that the boys were too old.
Apparently, they did not inquire at the oficialia civil -- the civil records building -- in either Moca or Santo Domingo, where they could have found further reason to question Danny's age. According to birth ledgers in Moca examined by SI, Danny's birthdate was registered with the Dominican government in December 1994 by his father, Felipe, as April 7, 1987. (In the Dominican Republic it is not uncommon for parents to wait years before officially declaring the birth of a child.) That means that when Danny Almonte was blowing away batters in Williamsport last week, he was officially 14 years old.
"When he was a little boy, he always walked around with a little stick, hitting things, batting," Danny's mother, Sonia Margarita Rojas Breton, 28, said last Saturday in Moca, an agricultural town of 70,000 about 90 miles north of Santo Domingo, as she waited for the U.S. championship game to begin on television. Danny's love of baseball came from his 36-year-old father, who in 1992 started a youth league in Moca that still bears his name -- Liga Felipe de Jesus Almonte. Three years later Felipe Almonte, long since divorced from Danny's mother, immigrated to the Bronx.
In the spring of 2000 Danny joined his father in the Bronx, where Felipe was working at a bodega in a Dominican section of the borough. Danny began pitching and playing centerfield in the Bronx league named after its founder, Rolando Paulino, a sportswriter for Noticias del Mundo, a Spanish-language newspaper based in New York City. Paulino, also a Dominican immigrant, serves as a coach of the All-Stars as well as league president. His success with the team has brought in a $50,000 sponsorship from Merrill Lynch and made him a popular man in New York's Dominican community.
Danny was one of the mainstays on last year's All-Stars, who lost in the Eastern Regional final. This season Danny became the star. Last Thursday the Paulino team manager, Alberto Gonzalez, said that Danny was accused of being overage because he is so smart on the mound. "He's just a little more mature than other kids right now," Gonzalez said hours before Danny's gem against Oceanside. "The biggest plus is his mental approach. His mind is very focused. You tell him something once, and he will never forget."
Danny's dominant performances in Williamsport led to intensified media interest in accusations that Paulino was using players older than 12. Before hearing of the birth records located by SI, officials at Little League headquarters said they were tired of listening to questions about the eligibility of the Bronx team. "We don't have a shred of evidence that these kids are overage,"said Lance Van Auken, Little League director of media relations, last Thursday. Van Auken said that the team had followed proper procedures concerning age verification, submitting birth certificates and/or passports to a district administrator, who presented the team with an affidavit certifying the players' eligibility. Because of the suspicions surrounding the team, officials at Little League headquarters had taken the unusual step of examining each of the players' documents.
Van Auken was especially nettled by the persistent questioning of Danny's age. Almonte's talent, impressive as it is, didn't support such scrutiny, according to Van Auken, who said, "There have been better pitchers here. The difference is, most of them have been white. In some of the e-mails I get, the racism is thinly veiled; in others it's overt." He said he had received close to 50 such e-mails regarding the Bronx team, most of which complained that its members should be playing for the Dominican Republic, where three of the 12 Paulino All-Stars were born.
Still, the questions kept coming. On Friday, Paulino was surrounded by reporters asking to see copies of Danny's birth certificate. Paulino retreated to the team's dormitory on a hill overlooking the Little League complex and came back carrying a forest-green portfolio. "This is the last time I'm doing this," he declared, and from a pile of documents he pulled out what he said was Danny's birth certificate. The typewritten birth date had been highlighted in yellow ink -- 7 de abril 1989. April 7, 1989. On the backside were red and green stamps of authenticity. The certificate, referring to the system of ledgers used to record births in the Dominican Republic, was indexed: "4 libro, 54 folio." Book 4, folio 54.
All birth records in the Dominican Republic are kept in hardbound 9-by-11-inch books. Each birth is recorded in two books -- one kept in the central office in Santo Domingo and the other in the local oficialia civil.
An SI reporter checked with the Santo Domingo office and found Danny's birth record indexed as book 267, folio 144. The reporter then traveled to the regional oficialia in Moca, which is housed in a large one-story building with a single room. Within minutes a clerk located the entry for Danny in the book of original birth records. The reporter looked at the book and confirmed that the entry listed Danny as having been born on April 7, 1987, to Sonia Margarita Rojas Breton and Felipe de Jesus Almonte. The entry listed personal identification numbers -- the rough Dominican equivalent of U.S. Social Security numbers -- for both Sonia and Felipe.
At a cost of 30 pesos (just under $2), a copy, or acta, was prepared for SI listing the date and birth information. In appearance, the acta was similar to the document exhibited by Paulino in Williamsport. The reason for that soon became clear: Paulino's document had apparently been created from a second Dominican birth record for Danny -- an official but highly suspect entry.
SI found this birth record right where Paulino's document said it would be: book 4, folio 54. The record, which was in the central office in Santo Domingo, stated that on March 21, 2000 -- just weeks before Danny moved to the U.S. and launched his spectacular career in the Rolando Paulino Little League -- Felipe registered the boy's birth again. This time, according to the birth record, Felipe claimed that Danny had been born on April 7, 1989, thus shaving two years off his son's previously registered age.
To eliminate the possibility that two sets of parents with identical names had had sons named Danny de Jesus Almonte -- one of them born on April 7, 1987, and the other two years later to theday -- SI compared the personal identification numbers given for Felipe and Sonia on the 1994 and 2000 birth records. The numbers matched.
When Paulino was told on Sunday of the 1994 Dominican birth record that SI had found, showing that Danny was 14, he said, "The document we have here is official and legal. It's possible the [SI] reporter got someone with the same name. There must be a mistake." He expressed exasperation and retired to the team's dormitory. Reversing the vow he made earlier, he returned with the conflicting birth certificate as well as Danny's passport, which similarly gave the youth's birth date as 1989.
"Every time a Hispanic team, even though the majority of [the players] were born here, triumphs, people will look for whatever way to take away what they've done," Paulino said. "Most of those people are bad losers, poor sports. No other team, not even those from abroad, has been scrutinized like us. Do you know what envidia [envy] means? Celos [jealousy]? With all the money people have spent investigating us, they could have started a new league or helped the kids."
Paulino said that both the birth certificate and the passport he was relying on had been supplied by Felipe. He noted that the passport indicated that Danny had made a trip to Puerto Rico. "The truth is that Danny has never been to Puerto Rico," Paulino said. "Sometimes the government makes mistakes."
Felipe Almonte could not recall when he registered Danny's birth. He said that the Dominican government must have made a mistake. Paulino pointed out that if Danny were 14, then he and his older brother, Juan, would be only six months apart. "So it cannot be true," Paulino said. (SI did not locate a birth certificate for Juan.)
When informed on Monday of Danny Almonte's conflicting birth certificates, Van Auken described the news as "disheartening." He said he could not recall a case of age tampering by a contending team in the 54-year history of the World Series. (In 1992 a team from the Philippines forfeited its World Series championship, but that was because it had used players from outside local league boundaries.) On Monday afternoon the Little League announced that it would investigate the birth-certificate discrepancy. Said the organization's president, Stephen D. Keener, "Anyone who would knowingly undermine the trust in Little League is guilty of doing serious harm to children."
How, in the future, might Little League tighten its procedures for checking birth dates? Van Auken shook his head as he went over the numbers: Little League oversees nearly 35,000 teams in 10 tournament age divisions and 105 countries. "We have one employee for about every 25,000 players in our program," he said. "There is no way we can go and check the birth date of every player. All we can do is continue to depend on the honesty of our volunteers and the parents who are signing their kids up."
By Ian Thomsen and Luis Fernando Llosa
Special reporting by Melissa Segura
Sept. 03, 2001
Sports Illustrated: https://www.si.com/vault/2001/09/03/309790/one-for-the-ages-birth-records-in-his-native-land-suggest-that-danny-almonte-star-of-the-little-league-world-series-may-have-been-a-ringer
The Little League World Series final at Howard J. Lamade Stadium in Williamsport, Pa., on Sunday had a thrilling finish that in other years would have served as the tournament's most unforgettable image. For the second time in three years the series was won by a team from Japan, as Tokyo Kitasuna scored both runs in its 2-1 victory over Apopka, Fla., on a bottom-of-the-sixth single by Nobuhisa Baba, a 5'1" third baseman. The Japanese had come from behind on their last at bat to win the international championship game as well as the series final and celebrated each time by sprinting madly out to the centerfield wall, where they threw themselves down in cartoonish genuflection before the bust of Lamade, who had donated the land for the ballpark.
But Sunday's events seemed almost anticlimactic after the show put on earlier in the series by Danny Almonte, a remarkably poised lefthander from the Rolando Paulino All-Stars of the Bronx. As his team advanced to last Saturday's U.S. championship game, in which it lost 8-2 to Apopka, Danny, a native of Moca in the Dominican Republic, seemed like a man among boys, using his lanky leg kick and effortless release to blind his overmatched foes with 70-mph-plus two- and four-seam fastballs – the equivalent, given that Little League pitchers throw from a mound just 46 feet from home plate, of 92-mph major league heat – and bamboozle them with sharp curves and changeups. Beginning with the no-hitter he threw in the Eastern Regional final on Aug. 14 in Bristol, Conn., Danny won all four games he pitched, including a perfect game, the World Series' first in 44 years, against Apopka in round-robin play on Aug. 18. In those appearances he gave up only one run (unearned) and three hits and struck out 62 of the 72 batters he faced. He was ineligible to pitch against Apopka in the U.S. championship game because he had thrown a 1-0 one-hitter against Oceanside, Calif., in the U.S. semifinal, and Little League rules prohibit a pitcher from taking the mound if he has thrown an inning or more in his team's previous game.
Such was Danny's celebrity that during the tournament he received a good-luck call from his idol, Cincinnati Reds centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr., and as a child version of the Arizona Diamondbacks' towering lefty Randy (the Big Unit) Johnson, the 5'8" Danny earned the nickname the Little Unit. Even before the tournamen this physical and mound maturity had caused some to wonder if he was, as the Paulino All-Stars claimed, 12 years old -- the maximum age for Little League eligibility. Last Friday the Newark Star-Ledger reported that a group of adults associated with a Little League team on Staten Island had paid $10,000 this summer for a private investigation into the Paulino players' ages. The detectives had found no evidence that the boys were too old.
Apparently, they did not inquire at the oficialia civil -- the civil records building -- in either Moca or Santo Domingo, where they could have found further reason to question Danny's age. According to birth ledgers in Moca examined by SI, Danny's birthdate was registered with the Dominican government in December 1994 by his father, Felipe, as April 7, 1987. (In the Dominican Republic it is not uncommon for parents to wait years before officially declaring the birth of a child.) That means that when Danny Almonte was blowing away batters in Williamsport last week, he was officially 14 years old.
"When he was a little boy, he always walked around with a little stick, hitting things, batting," Danny's mother, Sonia Margarita Rojas Breton, 28, said last Saturday in Moca, an agricultural town of 70,000 about 90 miles north of Santo Domingo, as she waited for the U.S. championship game to begin on television. Danny's love of baseball came from his 36-year-old father, who in 1992 started a youth league in Moca that still bears his name -- Liga Felipe de Jesus Almonte. Three years later Felipe Almonte, long since divorced from Danny's mother, immigrated to the Bronx.
In the spring of 2000 Danny joined his father in the Bronx, where Felipe was working at a bodega in a Dominican section of the borough. Danny began pitching and playing centerfield in the Bronx league named after its founder, Rolando Paulino, a sportswriter for Noticias del Mundo, a Spanish-language newspaper based in New York City. Paulino, also a Dominican immigrant, serves as a coach of the All-Stars as well as league president. His success with the team has brought in a $50,000 sponsorship from Merrill Lynch and made him a popular man in New York's Dominican community.
Danny was one of the mainstays on last year's All-Stars, who lost in the Eastern Regional final. This season Danny became the star. Last Thursday the Paulino team manager, Alberto Gonzalez, said that Danny was accused of being overage because he is so smart on the mound. "He's just a little more mature than other kids right now," Gonzalez said hours before Danny's gem against Oceanside. "The biggest plus is his mental approach. His mind is very focused. You tell him something once, and he will never forget."
Danny's dominant performances in Williamsport led to intensified media interest in accusations that Paulino was using players older than 12. Before hearing of the birth records located by SI, officials at Little League headquarters said they were tired of listening to questions about the eligibility of the Bronx team. "We don't have a shred of evidence that these kids are overage,"said Lance Van Auken, Little League director of media relations, last Thursday. Van Auken said that the team had followed proper procedures concerning age verification, submitting birth certificates and/or passports to a district administrator, who presented the team with an affidavit certifying the players' eligibility. Because of the suspicions surrounding the team, officials at Little League headquarters had taken the unusual step of examining each of the players' documents.
Van Auken was especially nettled by the persistent questioning of Danny's age. Almonte's talent, impressive as it is, didn't support such scrutiny, according to Van Auken, who said, "There have been better pitchers here. The difference is, most of them have been white. In some of the e-mails I get, the racism is thinly veiled; in others it's overt." He said he had received close to 50 such e-mails regarding the Bronx team, most of which complained that its members should be playing for the Dominican Republic, where three of the 12 Paulino All-Stars were born.
Still, the questions kept coming. On Friday, Paulino was surrounded by reporters asking to see copies of Danny's birth certificate. Paulino retreated to the team's dormitory on a hill overlooking the Little League complex and came back carrying a forest-green portfolio. "This is the last time I'm doing this," he declared, and from a pile of documents he pulled out what he said was Danny's birth certificate. The typewritten birth date had been highlighted in yellow ink -- 7 de abril 1989. April 7, 1989. On the backside were red and green stamps of authenticity. The certificate, referring to the system of ledgers used to record births in the Dominican Republic, was indexed: "4 libro, 54 folio." Book 4, folio 54.
All birth records in the Dominican Republic are kept in hardbound 9-by-11-inch books. Each birth is recorded in two books -- one kept in the central office in Santo Domingo and the other in the local oficialia civil.
An SI reporter checked with the Santo Domingo office and found Danny's birth record indexed as book 267, folio 144. The reporter then traveled to the regional oficialia in Moca, which is housed in a large one-story building with a single room. Within minutes a clerk located the entry for Danny in the book of original birth records. The reporter looked at the book and confirmed that the entry listed Danny as having been born on April 7, 1987, to Sonia Margarita Rojas Breton and Felipe de Jesus Almonte. The entry listed personal identification numbers -- the rough Dominican equivalent of U.S. Social Security numbers -- for both Sonia and Felipe.
At a cost of 30 pesos (just under $2), a copy, or acta, was prepared for SI listing the date and birth information. In appearance, the acta was similar to the document exhibited by Paulino in Williamsport. The reason for that soon became clear: Paulino's document had apparently been created from a second Dominican birth record for Danny -- an official but highly suspect entry.
SI found this birth record right where Paulino's document said it would be: book 4, folio 54. The record, which was in the central office in Santo Domingo, stated that on March 21, 2000 -- just weeks before Danny moved to the U.S. and launched his spectacular career in the Rolando Paulino Little League -- Felipe registered the boy's birth again. This time, according to the birth record, Felipe claimed that Danny had been born on April 7, 1989, thus shaving two years off his son's previously registered age.
To eliminate the possibility that two sets of parents with identical names had had sons named Danny de Jesus Almonte -- one of them born on April 7, 1987, and the other two years later to theday -- SI compared the personal identification numbers given for Felipe and Sonia on the 1994 and 2000 birth records. The numbers matched.
When Paulino was told on Sunday of the 1994 Dominican birth record that SI had found, showing that Danny was 14, he said, "The document we have here is official and legal. It's possible the [SI] reporter got someone with the same name. There must be a mistake." He expressed exasperation and retired to the team's dormitory. Reversing the vow he made earlier, he returned with the conflicting birth certificate as well as Danny's passport, which similarly gave the youth's birth date as 1989.
"Every time a Hispanic team, even though the majority of [the players] were born here, triumphs, people will look for whatever way to take away what they've done," Paulino said. "Most of those people are bad losers, poor sports. No other team, not even those from abroad, has been scrutinized like us. Do you know what envidia [envy] means? Celos [jealousy]? With all the money people have spent investigating us, they could have started a new league or helped the kids."
Paulino said that both the birth certificate and the passport he was relying on had been supplied by Felipe. He noted that the passport indicated that Danny had made a trip to Puerto Rico. "The truth is that Danny has never been to Puerto Rico," Paulino said. "Sometimes the government makes mistakes."
Felipe Almonte could not recall when he registered Danny's birth. He said that the Dominican government must have made a mistake. Paulino pointed out that if Danny were 14, then he and his older brother, Juan, would be only six months apart. "So it cannot be true," Paulino said. (SI did not locate a birth certificate for Juan.)
When informed on Monday of Danny Almonte's conflicting birth certificates, Van Auken described the news as "disheartening." He said he could not recall a case of age tampering by a contending team in the 54-year history of the World Series. (In 1992 a team from the Philippines forfeited its World Series championship, but that was because it had used players from outside local league boundaries.) On Monday afternoon the Little League announced that it would investigate the birth-certificate discrepancy. Said the organization's president, Stephen D. Keener, "Anyone who would knowingly undermine the trust in Little League is guilty of doing serious harm to children."
How, in the future, might Little League tighten its procedures for checking birth dates? Van Auken shook his head as he went over the numbers: Little League oversees nearly 35,000 teams in 10 tournament age divisions and 105 countries. "We have one employee for about every 25,000 players in our program," he said. "There is no way we can go and check the birth date of every player. All we can do is continue to depend on the honesty of our volunteers and the parents who are signing their kids up."
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