July, 1997

Hi Jean, remember me?

Jean Beliveau, in Israel!
    And so few of us know who he is.
    Beliveau, a roving ambassador for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, is here as the honory chef de mission of the Canadian Maccabiah team. This year's "Jewish Olympics" include ice hockey for the first time, played at Metulla's rink.
    It would be a shame if Gentleman Jean came and went to indifference, for he is unforgettable to those who saw him play.
    Beliveau was one of the classiest athletes, in any sport, ever. Year after year he led his team to glory, yet the vanquished were spared humiliation, for it was the chivalrous Beliveau who beat them.
    He was a dashing idol who embodied everything that was beautiful about the sport in its heyday, a towering six-foot-three center who cut a majestic swathe across the white ice for 18 years as a Canadien.
He was breathtaking even before his rookie season. Beliveau was so meteoric as a minor leaguer that the Canadiens resorted to a remarkable tactic to secure him: they bought the entire league in which he played. He joined the dynastic Canadiens in 1953. Few rookies made the grade then, and those who did were fiercely tested by not only opposing players, but by their own teammates. One had to be both talented and courageous to survive. In a violent and combative league such as the National Hockey League of the '50s, there was no mercy for a kid who just wanted to play.
     He was harshly tested by the league's badmen for two years, and he politely declined to get involved. Word got around: the big new kid was a patsy. In his third year, however, the most hardnosed toughs of the league learned two lessons: you couldn't stop Beliveau from scoring, and you didn't want to get him mad. Get him mad, and he'll punch your lights out -- and just keep on scoring anyway. As soon as the message got out, the game belonged to him.
    What made Beliveau so wondrous was artistic playmaking, balletic smoothness and some absolutely impossible moves.
    Nowadays, hockey players just dump the puck ahead and hope a teammate gets to it before an opponent. Beliveau was pure finesse. He stickhandled (akin to dribbling in basketball) like no one else; he would dart and deke past one player, then another, skim a perfect pass to a winger, effortlessly turn on the speed, charge for the net and then suddenly glide as if in slow motion, taking the return pass and fooling a defenseman off his skates until only the goaltender was left. And that's when it got really interesting: teasing the goalie for the longest time, toying with the puck this way and that, forward and back. With the crowd on its feet roaring in delicious anticipation, he would finally tuck the puck home between the flailing goalie's legs or swoop around him and flick it in. Of course, sometimes he'd confound everyone by blasting it into the net before he even got close.
   Beliveau was special. He possessed a regal elegance so very rare among sportsmen, then and now. Claude Mouton, in his book “The Montreal Canadiens: A  Hockey Dynasty,” described him thus: "Beliveau was an unusually handsome young man. There was a look of nobility in his facial expressions as well as in the dignity with which he comported himself. He reminded one of the characters that Gary Cooper played, and just as Cooper in real life was as honest and decent as he seemed on the screen, so was Beliveau off the ice."
        The team captain, Beliveau spoke intelligently and diplomatically. He accepted fame and adoration with humility, never letting man or child turn away without an autograph or a handshake or a few friendly words. He was the most human of gods.

I WAS eight years old, in 1964, when I saw my first hockey game on TV. I still remember it: Danny Gallivan, describing the game, spoke the mellifluous name "Beliveau" with such reverence, I knew he had to be that tall number 4 I'd been watching all along. "Daddy," I announced after a few minutes, "Beliveau is my favorite player."
    My father approved (even though his favorite was Bobby Rousseau), and I felt as though Beliveau belonged to me.
    A couple of years later, I found myself in the same room as Jean Beliveau. That room was the Montreal Forum, and there were 16,000 other people in it, but it didn't matter. Even if I was way, way up in the upper grays, I knew Beliveau could hear my squeaky voice rooting for him. When the game ended (we beat New York 6-2), I clutched my father's hand as we wended through the crush. Then he stopped, and pointed down a wide, brightly-painted walkway, to a door. Hundreds of fedoraed men milled about that door. "That's the Canadiens' dressing room," my father said. The Holy of Holies.
Just then, the door opened and a couple of players stepped out. The congregation clamped in on them, demanding autographs and patting their backs, telling them "Great game, Fergie," or "Nice goal, Henri."
    I felt dizzy. I asked if perhaps the great Jean Beliveau might step through that door too. Yes, my father said, but it was much too late, far past my bedtime, we'd never get close enough, and anyway, he might already have left.
    "But Dad!"
    He was too polite to push through this whorling throng of French Canadians, but not I. This skinny little Jewish kid, kippa and all, snaked my way into the middle of it all, and waited, enveloped by the teeming gusto.
    And then I looked up, and there he was, the tallest, most dashing man I ever saw. Struggling to stay on my feet in the jostling riot, I held out my program among a flurry of others. He took it. He signed his name and returned it to my hand. And he let me touch him.
    I'd like to think Jean Beliveau still remembers the first time we met, 30 years ago. I intend to ask him, when I track him down in Metulla.
    That is, if I can get through the crowd of Israeli fans surrounding him.