America's Haitian hero
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In this June 28, 1950 file photo, Joe Gaetjens is carried off by cheering fans after his U.S. soccer team beat England 1-0 in a World Cup soccer match that still stands as one of sports' greatest upsets.
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This Saturday, the United States faces England in its first game of the World Cup. The two teams last battled over the cup 60 years ago. In one of the greatest upsets in the history of the sport, the United States won, 1-0, thanks to help from an unexpected place: Haiti.
The winning goal -- a beautiful diving header -- was scored by Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian man and onetime Columbia University student who lived and played soccer in New York.
In those days athletic officials were a little more flexible about citizenship requirements for teams. They let Gaetjens, as well as other immigrant players, slide onto the team if the players promised they would apply for U.S. citizenship.
Gaetjens determined the outcome of that game. There are no pictures of the goal -- all the cameramen were at the other end of the field, expecting the heavily favored English team to pummel the United States. But we do have an image of Gaetjens being carried off the field, the hero of the moment.
Unfortunately, the story ends in tragedy. Gaetjens went home to Haiti. There, under the Duvalier dictatorship, he was imprisoned and killed.
Gaetjens wasn't into politics -- he ran a laundromat and coached youth soccer. But some of his family members were, and that was enough. He died in Fort Dimanche, Duvalier's most notorious prison, where his only testament was his name scrawled on a wall, later found by one of his relatives.
Today, despite a book, movie and some recent articles on that 1950 World Cup game, few in the United States know the name of an athlete who gave us one of our greatest international sporting victories.
As the 2010 World Cup tournament takes the stage, for billions of fans throughout the world, time will slow down. Untold stories will play out before our eyes in the next few weeks. Some moments will become legendary, sustaining conversation for decades to come. Soccer transcends boundaries, and even as it divides people up into fans of different teams, it also brings them together around one common obsession.
Even though the United States is one of the few places on Earth that remains a bit aloof from the event, a lot of Americans will stop everything to watch four weeks of dramatic sport unfold. In fact, the largest number of foreigners going to the World Cup will be coming from the United States -- me among them -- in part because fans here are better off than fans in most places and can afford the long trek to South Africa.
First Published June 8, 2010 12:00 am
