- Jan 2019
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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As much as football meant to him, as much as it mattered to win, those things only counted for Ali if he was also staying true to Allah.
This is a very interesting statement. This boy has such strong values that if he won the game but disobeyed his god winning the game wouldn't mean anything to him.I think this is a really cool way to showcase this boys character.
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Mohammad also has a favorite cheerleader hold his peanut-butter sandwich on the sideline for iftar.
This sentence seems almost like comic relief? It kinda seems like it doesn't belong here...
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Boogaard took a swing with his long right arm. His fist smacked the opponent’s face and broke his nose. Coaches and scouts laughed as they congratulated Boogaard.He was 16.
This is the only praise this boy receives he's being trained at 16 to fight. It's not that he enjoyed it it's how he was taught.
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A coach tapped Boogaard on the shoulder. Boogaard knew what it meant. He clambered over the waist-high wall and onto the ice.He felt a tug on the back of his jersey. It was time.The players flicked the padded gloves from their hands. They removed the helmets from their heads. They raised their fists and circled each other. They knew the choreography that precedes the violence.
This is written like a dog fight. The coach sounds like a dog trainer and Boogaard sounds like the dog. This scene doesn't seem at all human
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he was approached by one of the few players bigger than he was. Boogaard had never seen him before. He did not know his name.“I’m going to kill you,” the player said.
This man was always big in stature and i think a lot of people take that to mean that he was also inherently mean. So this man had to conforms to these roles and fight because that's what everyone expected of him.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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For months, he could not bear the thought of his son’s death. Suddenly, he was forced to imagine the life his son might have been left to live.
Connecting back to the earlier statement. This father had to move from grief of losing his son, to the horrifying realization that he had already lost his son and was dead to the world before he died.
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The Rangers knew about Boogaard’s substance-abuse problem and time in rehabilitation, family members said. The team surely knew of his concussions and myriad other injuries.But any concern the Rangers had was outweighed by their eagerness for his brand of toughness and intimidation. They needed an enforcer, and they wanted the best.
This entire article kinda shows how this man became a tool, like many people in professional sports. They're used. traded, and thrown away like the cards that bear their image. These people KNEW how dangerous for this man to play but still continues to use him.
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Had Derek Boogaard lived, they said, his condition likely would have worsened into middle-age dementia.
Could you imagine after finding out that someone close to you died and finding out that even if they had lived that their life would've been miserable?
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It can be diagnosed only posthumously, but scientists say it shows itself in symptoms like memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, even addiction.
That's horrible. Can you imagine living your entire life with a disease that you know is there but can't prove until it's too late?
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On a stainless-steel table in the basement morgue, Dr. Ann McKee cleaved it in half, front to back, with a large knife. Much of one half was sliced into sheets about the width of sandwich bread.The pieces of Boogaard’s brain were labeled as SLI-76. They were placed into large, deli-style refrigerators with glass doors, next to dozens of other brains.
The style of writing here is extremely and purposefully dehumanizing. I believe that the author did this to kind of highlight the fact that this boy was used and destroyed in the name of hockey and once he was done playing he got turned into exactly that a broken tool, used and discarded.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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How would he write when he got old?When Boogaard closed his right hand, though, it was a weapon, the most feared in the N.H.L. The thought of Boogaard’s right fist kept rival enforcers awake at night. It made them alter their strategy and doubt their fighting acumen.
These two statements show two different worries for the same exact hand. How will he write when he's old? (spoiler..he doesn't get to be old) And how do I alter my strategy to avoid being hit by the hand? The authors asks us this to continue this theme of seeing this man as two different people.
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Whenever he opened his right hand, the fingers were bent and the knuckles were fat and bloody with scar tissue, as if rescued a moment too late from a meat grinder. That hand was, until the end, what the family worried about most with Boogaard. How would he write when he got old?When Boogaard closed his right hand, though, it was a weapon, the most feared in the N.H.L. The thought of Boogaard’s right fist kept rival enforcers awake at night.
So this piece of the text kind of brings back the constant theme of this man being seen as two different entities. The big scary brute of the hockey player and the timid son.
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www.si.com www.si.com
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Talk about a rebuilding year.
This line is an example of the words that have two entirely different connotations, in sports a rebuilding year can be where they replace players to improve their quality of their team, but in this situation these people have permanently disappeared and can't be "replaced" like a player in a game.
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