“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out
how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them
better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who
comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt uttered those words while delivering a
speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, in April 1910, just over a year after
he left office as the 26th President of the United States.
It is among the most widely quoted passages
of anyone who ever served in the office.
One can draw a bright line from this speech, officially titled
“
Citizenship in a Republic,” but more commonly known as “The Man in the Arena,”
to the life and hockey career of perhaps the most accomplished, if not yet
complete, player in Washington Capitals history: Alex Ovechkin.
To say Theodore Roosevelt was a force of nature in his
lifetime and as a figure in American history is beyond argument.
He was born in New York City in 1858, the
second of four children.
He had the
misfortune of suffering from asthma as a child, but during one attack
he was sent away to recuperate.
On his way he
met a couple of boys his age who were in good health, but had enough of a
mischievous streak to make Roosevelt’s life miserable.
Roosevelt tried to defend himself, to no
avail, but it was a hard lesson upon which he built.
It was in that instance that he took stock of himself and decided to try and
physically train himself out of his deficiencies.
He learned to box, moved on to wrestling,
began horse-riding, he weight-trained and took up rowing.
He took up what he would call “the strenuous
life.”
Paired with a more natural
intellectual curiosity (he studied German, natural history, zoology, forensics,
and composition while at Harvard), and a father who had considerable influence
over Roosevelt by the example of his own active life, it made for an impressive
personality.
It served him well, even if he decided after only a year at
Columbia Law School to abandon that pursuit and begin a career in politics (he
still managed to do much of his work writing “The Naval War of 1812,” a book he
completed at age 23 and that is still thought to be a classic in military
history).
By the time he was 26 years
old, he won a seat as a state assemblyman in New York, where began a
career-long effort to confront corruption in politics.
That effort carried over to his activity in
the election of 1884 where, at the Republican convention, he aligned with
reformers (the “Mugwumps”) to try to influence the national ticket.
His efforts and those of the Mugwumps failed,
and in a fit of pique, noted that he would give “
hearty support” to any
Democrat, not the Republican candidate James Blaine.
He recanted and learned another lesson, that
if he was to play a larger role in the party, he had to avoid such displays.
After an unsuccessful run for Mayor of New York in 1886, he
headed west, building a ranch in North Dakota and serving in law
enforcement. He immersed himself in the
life of the west, taking up roping and hunting, and writing about the life on
the frontier. When his herd of cattle
was wiped out in a severe winter, he returned east.
From the time he returned he was once more active in
politics. He was appointed to the United
States Civil Service Commission by President Benjamin Harrison, where he served
for six years, then became president of the board of the New York City police
commissioners. He continued his war on
corruption as a police commissioner, often turning to walking officers’ beats
late at night to experience first-hand what was happening on the street and to
make sure officers were fulfilling their duties.
Two years later, Roosevelt was appointed Assistant
Secretary of the Navy by President William McKinley.
Despite his rank as an assistant secretary, he was influential in
preparing the Navy for war with Spain.
When war broke out after the U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in
early 1898, Roosevelt resigned his civilian office and formed a cavalry
regiment, the First U.S. Volunteers, commonly known as the “Rough Riders.”
Roosevelt’s regiment participated in their
most famous battle in July 1898, the “
Battle of San Juan Hill.”
His war record was a prominent feature of his campaign for
Governor of New York upon returning from the conflict. It helped provide the margin of victory, fewer than 18,000 votes
out of almost 1.4 million cast. The
narrow victory did nothing to slow the pace of his activity. He promoted what
he called a “square deal” that provided for "honesty in public affairs, an
equitable sharing of privilege and responsibility, and subordination of party
and local concerns to the interests of the state at large (G. Wallace Chessman,
“Governor Theodore Roosevelt: The Albany Apprenticeship”)." His attention to economic issues, especially
with respect to large corporations, trusts, railroads, and protections for the
poor, served as something of a warm-up for his turn on the national stage.
That came when President McKinley’s first-term Vice
President Garret Hobart died in office of heart failure in November 1899. Roosevelt was promoted for the position by a
number of Republican leaders and accepted nomination, serving as something of
the energetic “bad cop” in taking on the Democratic presidential nominee,
William Jennings Bryan, enthusiastically. The
McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won election, and fate would elevate Roosevelt to the
White House when McKinley was assassinated in September 1901.
Roosevelt served the remainder of McKinley’s term and a full
term of his own. In more than seven
years in office as President, Roosevelt aggressively pursued an agenda that
involved curbing the power of “trusts” and supporting organized labor. He took on railroads and what he believed to
be their corrupt business practices with respect to the shipment of coal and
commercial goods. Under his
administration, the Meat Inspection Act was enacted (legislation that still
serves as the basic authority for meat inspection programs), as was the Pure
Food and Drug Act (legislation that led to creation of the Food and Drug
Administration). His was an aggressive
administration in the use of executive orders, becoming the first President to
issue more than 1,000 orders in his administration. He was a champion of conservation issues,
extending Federal protection of lands, seeing the creation of the United States
Forest Service, and signing into law the establishment of several national parks and 18 new
national monuments.
His administration was not without its difficulties, though. Roosevelt’s relationship with the press was
complicated, using them frequently, even daily, to convey his message, but
coining the term “muckraker” to describe a dishonest journalist making false or
unsubstantiated charges. His second term
was characterized by a move to the ideological left with promoting an income
tax, limiting the role of courts in labor disputes, campaign reform, and
national statutes governing corporations.
None of the reforms were enacted under his administration (although some
were later), and the effort left him a somewhat diminished figure in his own
party.
It did not prevent him from successfully advocating for
William Howard Taft as his successor.
Taft won the party nomination and the general election of 1908 to
succeed Roosevelt. The trouble was that
Roosevelt tried to exert his influence on Taft after leaving office in a
persistent and obvious way. It led to a
split between Roosevelt, and Taft and the party. By 1912, Roosevelt was receptive to running
as a “progressive” and did so as the standard bearer for the new “Progressive
Party,” more commonly referred to as the “Bull Moose” party. His efforts were insufficient to move enough
Republicans away from the GOP, but he did cut deeply into Taft’s vote totals,
pushing Taft into third place in the Electoral College voting and providing
Democrat Woodrow Wilson with the opening he needed to win election.
Roosevelt hardly missed a beat in his activity after the
1912 election.
He participated in
a scientific expedition to South America in 1913 and was a strong opponent of the foreign policy of President Wilson upon his
return to the United States.
He even was
encouraged to seek the 1920 Republican nomination for President, but health
(the after effects of malaria he contracted in South America) prevented him from
mounting a serious challenge.
His health
issues and the death of his son, Quentin, in World War I, left Roosevelt
devastated.
In early January 1919 he
passed in his sleep at Oyster Bay, Long Island, the victim of a
pulmonary embolism.
If there is a force of nature in the NHL, one that transcends
the dimensions of the hockey rink to spill over into media and his private
life, it is Alex Ovechkin. No player of
this era combines his size, speed, skill, and willingness to deploy a physical
style of play in portions ladled out by Ovechkin on a night-to-night
basis. He is a player who inspires
respect and who conjures up visions of the “dirty” hockey player. He is praised for accomplishments unique to
him in this era of depressed offense, yet derided for his inability to lead his
team into the deeper rounds of the postseason.
And that doesn’t even address his international play, which features a
resume of world championships and Olympic disappointment. In an era of ubiquitous social media outlets,
his private life is chronicled to an extent perhaps greater than any player in
hockey. He is a sports icon on two
continents.
Born in Moscow to parents who themselves were athletes (his
father was a professional soccer player, his mother a winner of two Olympic
gold medals as a member of the Soviet Union women’s basketball team),
Alex got an early start in sports, and in hockey in particular.
By the age of 16 he was playing for Dynamo
Moscow and would soon be getting attention from the North American hockey
community.
In 2002, the 17-year old
Ovechkin was being described as “
Hockey’s Next Big Thing,” a player with more of a “Canadian” approach to the game…
"Ovechkin has what hockey people refer to as Russian
skills, which are distinct from Swedish or Czech skills. Russians stickhandle a lot, handling the puck
in traffic well. And they're explosive.
But he's not like [Boston Bruins left wing] Sergei Samsonov, who scores by
stickhandling. And he won't be circling like [Pittsburgh Penguins right wing]
Alexei Kovalev, looking like a ballerina, waiting for the perfect play. There's more of a Canadian approach that
Ovechkin combines with those Russian skills. He's not reluctant to shoot. He
already has an NHL-caliber shot, and he uses it – wrister, slap shot,
one-timer. He knows how to go high on a goalie."
He was even being compared to Hall of Fame Pittsburgh
Penguin Mario Lemieux…
in Pittsburgh.
It was said that but for his birthday, two days after the cut-off for
eligibility for the 2003 draft, he might have been the first overall pick of
that draft.
In fact, the Florida
Panthers tried a novel approach to the matter of Ovechkin’s birthday.
Panther General Manager Rick Dudley argued
that if leap-days were factored into the eligibility equation, Ovechkin would
turn 18 four days earlier than his birthday of record and thus would have been
eligible for the 2003 draft.
Dudley
tried to draft Ovechkin in four separate rounds of the 2003 draft, but they
were rebuffed by the league each time.
Ovechkin was eligible for the 2004 draft, but when the Caps
finished with the third-worst overall record in the 2003-2004 season, their
chances of leapfrogging the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins to win
the 2004 draft lottery looked slim. But
win it they did, and when Washington General Manager George McPhee announced
his name with the first overall pick in the 2004 Entry Draft, Ovechkin was a
Capital, the cornerstone of the rebuild they began with their selloff of players
in the 2003-2004 season to set the stage for his selection.
Since then, Ovechkin has not disappointed his fans, with one
exception. He has won 14 personal awards
since coming into the NHL in 2005-2006:
- Hart Trophy/Most Valuable Player (3 times)
- Maurice Richard Trophy/Top Goal Scorer (6, most of any
player since the award was established)
- Ted Lindsay Award/Outstanding Player (3)
- Art Ross Trophy (1)
- Calder Trophy/Top Rookie (1)
He is a seven-time selection to the first NHL All-Star team
(he won selection to the first All Star team as a right wing and to the second
team as a left wing in 2012-2013), the only player in NHL history to have been
selected to the first team in each of his first five seasons. He has been selected NHL player of the year by
various publications, including The Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, and The
Hockey News. He is a seven-time winner
of the Kharlamov Trophy as the top Russian hockey player of the previous season (Pavel
Datsyuk is the only other player to have won it more than once). He has been an all-star in world
championships (2005 as a junior, 2006, 2008) and in the Winter Olympics
(2006). He has three World Championship
gold medals (2008, 2012, 2014). He has
seven 50-goal seasons on his resume; only Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky have
more in NHL history (nine apiece)..
But with all the offense is a physical dimension almost
unprecedented, particularly in the modern era of hockey. For example, since he came into the league in
2005-2006, concurrently with the league beginning to record “hits” as a
statistic, Ovechkin has recorded more hits (2,268) than all but four players
(Dustin Brown, Chris Neil, Brooks Orpik, and Cal Clutterbuck). The flip side of that is that Ovechkin has
been suspended three times in his career for hits outside the rules, once in
2009 for a hit on Carolina’s Tim Gleason (two games), once in 2010 for a hit on
Chicago’s Brian Campbell (two games), and again in 2012 for a hit on
Pittsburgh’s Zbynek Michalek (three games).
Ovechkin has been the rare athlete who has not been confined
within the lines of his sport. In addition
to playing it, he has been a hard-working promoter of the sport…
He hasn’t been afraid of trying his hand at other sports…and
doing in his first try what people who play it spend a lifetime hoping they can
accomplish…
And he has managed to share moments of “adventure” with
teammates…
And he has even shared the office Teddy Roosevelt once
occupied…
The disappointment that stands as an exception to his record
of accomplishments, of course, is Ovechkin’s lack of success on the biggest of
stages – an Olympic gold medal or a Stanley Cup. The best that can be said for that is he is
still compiling his body of work, and it is too late to close the door on
either of those accomplishments being added to his resume.
Theodore Roosevelt and Alex Ovechkin are two of a kind,
outsized personalities who are perhaps unsurpassed as examples of “The Man in
the Arena.” Roosevelt overcame illness
in his youth and personal misfortune (his first wife, Alice, died two days
after giving birth to their daughter, Alice Lee) to become one of the most
impressive figures, not just in American politics, but in American
history. Alex Ovechkin overcame personal
misfortune of his own (his older brother, Sergei, died in a car accident when
Alex was ten years old), and the cultural and language barriers the came with
entering the NHL to become not just one of the greatest players in NHL
history, but an athletic icon with a fearless attitude to experiencing life outside of hockey. In the nature of
their accomplishments, their personal history, and their personalities,
Theodore Roosevelt and Alex Ovechkin each occupy a place that “shall never be
with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
