Captain, My Captain
"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" (Walt Whitman, O Captain! My Captain!).
Herb stared down at his list of twenty-one players that he had to whittle down to twenty either tonight or tomorrow. Slashing out that one ill-fated name would cut through his heart because he knew that he would be killing the Olympic dream of one of his boys who had given him every ounce of sweat and tears over the past few months. He knew exactly how it felt to be the last one cut from an Olympic team—to give his best and then to be told that it wasn't good enough even for a shot at a medal—and he would have to inflict that same soul-crushing, numbing pain on one of the boys on his team.
Part of him had died the moment he had been cut from the 1960 Olympic team, and here he was, twenty years later, about to kill another part of himself by putting another player through the anguish that he could still remember, as though it were yesterday, experiencing. He had to have been a sadist or a masochist (and the line between the two was really so thin) to have sought this job, fully aware of what agonizing decisions devising the final roster inevitably entailed.
Sighing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. After he had been rejected from the 1960 Olympic team, and failed to medal in '64 and '68 when he made the cut, he had set himself a new goal: to coach a team of young men to the gold that had been denied him. In the end, he could never do anything about the fact that the road to gold was always paved with the tears and broken bodies of both the winners and the losers.
Sometimes, he wondered if he would ever be able to sleep smoothly through the night even if his team did manage to achieve what everyone—even he, in his weaker moments—regarded as impossible. If his team won gold—which most people familiar enough with hockey to recognize how to hold a stick right side up deemed about as likely an occurrence as the sun suddenly starting to orbit the Earth—the American public would be too blinded by the glimmer of the medals to consider what it cost in flesh, spirit, and blood for a bunch of boys fresh out college and the minor leagues to earn them. Lipservice about the team's hard work epitomizing everything that made America great, but they wouldn't really want to know how hell must really have seemed to freeze over for that team of twenty young men, trapping them in the ice rink of the ninth circle for several months, never completely sure if they were undergoing training or torture.
There was no point in tormenting himself with unanswerable questions of whether he had pushed his team too far for gold. The past could not be undone. Only the future remained, and he needed to focus all his attention on deciding whom to cut, as that choice could very well determine the future of his team in the Olympics.
For what had to be the hundredth time this week, Herb picked up a pen and let it hover above Michael Eruzione's name. His rational mind screamed that he had to but Rizzo, because if he couldn't land a puck in the net during practice or the comparatively low-stress games they were playing to get in shape for the Olympics, he could not be relied upon to deliver points during an game against the Soviet Union, or anywhere else for that matter. Yet, some intuitive voice in his gut, which he always tried to squelch as a sentimentality that would win no medals in Lake Placid, told him that if he trusted Rizzo enough to put him on the final roster, the young man would not let him down when all the chips were falling…
A rap on the post of his open door provided a welcome distraction from one of the most difficult choices of his life, and he glanced up to see Rob McClanahan standing on the threshold in street clothes. Since Mac was the most precise players Herb had ever met when it came to preparing and storing his equipment, it wasn't a shock to discover that he was still at the rink when the rest of the team had left, but it was unusual to have him knock on Herb's door wearing his most serious, intense face.
"Got something you need to say to me, Mac?" he asked, waving the young man into his office
"Don't cut Rizzo," Mac said, stepping into the room with an expression that would not have been out of place on a kamikaze pilot, resigned to his fate, about to drive his plane into an enemy ship.
"Who says I'm planning to cut Rizzo?" Herb arched an eyebrow.
"You did," replied Mac calmly, and Herb couldn't prevent his eyes from widening slightly in alarm. His gaze locking on Herb's, Mac continued, "Just now. Surprise—I couldn't find it in your eyes when I told you not to cut Rizzo, but I could see it when I said that you had told me you were thinking of cutting him. You are about to cut him, then."
"Don't sound so accusing." Herb shook an admonishing finger. "Any coach worth his salt would be considering cutting a player from an Olympic team if he couldn't find the back of a net without the aid of a compass, guided map, and glowing signpost."
"Rizzo works harder than anyone else on this team." Mac lifted his chin. "You can't say that he doesn't play as though he wants to go to Lake Placid."
"Five-year-olds learning to skate and hold a hockey stick at the same time also want to go to the Olympics, Rob," pointed out Herb crisply. "Would you stand before me and argue that they should all be allowed on the team because they think it would be fun to have a chance to play hockey in the Olympics? Should I consider replacing you with some kindergartener who can't shoot straight but has a lot of heart?"
"That's the biggest strawman I've ever seen anyone build." Crossing his arms over his chest, Mac glared at his coach. "Five-year-olds aren't even permitted to play in the Olympics, because a five-year-old Olympian just screams child abuse to viewers at home. Even the Soviets, sick as they are, don't send five-year-olds as gymnasts, much less hockey players."
"My point is that the desire to play in the Olympics isn't the only factor in who makes the team." Herb's lips thinned. "If age is a consideration, so is talent. Plenty of people dream of going to the Olympics and try their best to make that a reality, but, when it comes down to it, they aren't good enough to make the cut. The Olympics isn't a recreational league just anyone can play in, and medals of any color wouldn't be worth more than pennies if they were handed out like party favors."
"Rizzo played for the BU Terriers," Mac reminded him heatedly. "That takes talent, doesn't it?"
"It's been a long time since Rizzo skated like it did." Herb shook his head.
"I know that you want to kick Rizzo off the team," began Mac, fires erupting in his cheeks, "but—"
"I want to send Rizzo home?" repeated Herb in a soft voice that contained enough force and danger to silence Mac mid-sentence. "Please tell me all about what I want, McClanahan, since you seem to be so well-informed. I bet you even know what I want better than I do."
"I wouldn't presume to do that, Coach," Mac responded quickly, backtracking off a path that obviously led to a dragon's lair.
"Oh, but you would, because you've always been one to presume a lot." Herb's eyes pierced into Mac's tense face. "For the record, I don't make the rules; I just play by them. I do what I have to do—not necessarily what I want to do—to guarantee that this team has the best chance possible of winning a medal."
"You don't have to kick Rizzo off the team." Mac's face was even paler than usual, almost ashen, and his resolute dark eyes stood out in stark contrast, as he went on in a tone that barely trembled, "You can cut me, instead."
"You?" echoed Herb coldly, as if he were indifferent to how much it must have cost Mac to throw his own neck on the chopping block. Mac was forever ready to encourage a teammate on the bench or in the locker room after a bad period, but there was no denying the fact that the young man was constitutionally incapable of treating anything as less than an important competition. He couldn't kick a soccer ball around on the green with friends without playing with an intensity that wouldn't have been out of place at a World Cup match, and, if he was in the gym playing a round of tennis with some buddies, he acted as if it was Wimbledon rather than a miss-and-giggle game. After all, he had been a decorated high school soccer and tennis player in addition to a celebrated high school hockey forward who had been offered places on several Division I teams. Of course, while having this impressive high school athletic career, Mac had never let his studies slip, getting into the National Honor Society and being named the top student athlete his senior year. At heart, Mac would always see himself as someone who should be the star, so admitting that somebody else should be given a chance to shine in his place would feel like a betrayal of his very self. "Your shots have been going into the goal. Rizzo's haven't. There's no reason for me to cut you in favor of Rizzo."
"This team needs Rizzo," insisted Mac, and Herb was reminded, once again, why during his years at the U, Mac had twice been voted by his teammates to receive the award for the most determined player. As a player, Mac was more a threat because of his speed than his aggression, and, in the locker room, he was too reserved and methodical to be much of a shouter, but if he started picking on a bone he would gnaw at it until all the marrow had been extracted. "This team is like a stack of blocks. You have to find a block that you can remove that won't send the whole structure plummeting, but you couldn't find a worse block to take out than Rizzo. He's the one who really eliminated the rivalry between Massachusetts and Minnesota, and made the boys from Michigan and Wisconsin not feel like odd men out. If you take him out, this team will fall, and there won't be enough time to rebuild before the Olympics. You'll just have a lot of little piles of blocks telling you that they are one building and knowing that you aren't buying it. Take out any other block but Rizzo, and the structure wobbles but finds equilibrium again. Remove Rizzo and everything we've managed to build since the Trials will come crashing down like the walls of Jericho. That's not exactly a formula for Olympic greatness, Herb."
"Is that your sales pitch, Mac?" Herb asked. At the U, Mac had been the sort of business major who took Finance Poetry if he had to fulfill a liberal arts distribution requirement, and sometimes that really showed.
"Yes." Mac bit his lip. "You thinking of buying?"
Ignoring this question, Herb shot Mac a sharp, scrutinizing glance. "It was your idea to confront me about Tim possibly replacing somebody on this team, wasn't it?"
"What makes you think it was me?" Mac's forehead furrowed.
"You were very defensive about the idea not being Rizzo's, so I knew it was yours," Herb said dryly.
"I admit that I asked Rizzo to back me up when I told you that replacing one of us with Tim would be unfair," Mac confirmed after a moment's hesitation. "I knew that he could be calm and stubborn, so he was a good person to have on my side in an argument. Then OC overhead me speaking to Rizzo in the locker room about confronting you, and he wanted a piece of the action. Only an idiot would try to keep OC from a fight he was spoiling for, so, of course, I said he could back me up, too. Then shy Johnson also wanted to speak up, and I figured it was stupid not to let the star player join my little protest if he wanted to pitch his tent with us. So, I may be standing alone right now, but that's only because I think that the whole team is behind me in spirit."
"Very well, Rob." Herb gave a brusque nod. "I'll take your words under advisement."
"That means that you're already filing them as irrelevant in your head, aren't you?" Mac sighed, shaking his head.
"It means that I'll think about them when I'm deciding on the final roster," Herb responded tersely, shooting Mac a repressive look. "But I'll also be thinking about the fact that this is an Olympic team, not a charity home for lost hockey players. Everyone on this team has to fulfill a special role and carry their own weight, or else they'll be nothing but a liability in Lake Placid. This team is too much of a long shot for any medal to afford any extra weaknesses."
"Rizzo carries his own weight." Truculently, Mac's jaw tightened.
"The only way that his points could be lower, Mac, is if he closed his eyes whenever he shot and just relied on sonar techniques like a bat to find the back of the net." Herb snorted. "For someone who majored in business, you're demonstrating a remarkable ignorance of statistics right now."
"Rizzo is just under a lot of pressure, because he is afraid that you're going to cut him if he doesn't start scoring," Mac protested. "That skews the statistics against him a ton, Coach."
"To be in the Olympics is to represent your country in front of the whole world," Herb countered. "Any pressure I could put on you boys in practice utterly fails in comparison to the strain of the reality of that."
"Rizzo can't score a goal to save himself right now, but, in the Olympics, if our team needed him to score, he could do it." Mac's eyes locked on Herb's. "He's the ultimate team player, and he always manages to rescue us when we need it most."
"That's quite a risk." Herb tapped his pen against his desk. "Why should I take such a gamble?"
"Because you've already invested in character over talent." Mac gave a typical college boy shrug. "Plenty of people on this team can score goals, including me. What this team needs isn't another goal scorer. It needs a captain. That's the special part that Rizzo could play so you can be sure that he's carrying his own weight."
"As I said, I'll take your words under advisement." Herb gestured dismissively toward the door of his office. "Get out of here now. I think I can hear the bar calling you to get drinking so as to destroy your few remaining brain cells."
As Mac, apparently satisfied that he had argued every point that he possibly could, left, Herb pinched the bridge of his nose and stared down at his roster again. Cox or Eruzione? It was a difficult choice, but Mac, without knowing it, had echoed so many of the thoughts that had been resounding inside Herb's head over the past few weeks, keeping him from cutting Rizzo. If both his instincts and Mac's were telling him to not only hold onto Rizzo but also elevate him to captain, could he ignore his gut for something as flimsy as statistics?
Statistics could be manipulated to say anything anyone liked, and so they were meaningless compared to the intangibles that made up a quality player and a winning team, he decided and drew a single, black line through Cox's name. He felt like an executioner of hopes more than a coach at that moment, but he thought that all the carnage could be blamed on the number twenty. Twenty was the number that had broken and made so many dreams, defining both those players allowed on the team by this arbitrary number, and those who didn't fit into a slot. Rizzo would be one of the twenty to go to Lake Placid, and Cox wouldn't. It was only a pen stroke and an arbitrary number that separated their fates, but Olympic heartbreak and triumph had surely been decided on narrower margins before. That's what Herb told himself anyway, but the young man he had been in 1960 still grieved for everyone who gave everything and ended up with nothing, not even a footnote in history, to show for their efforts.