![]() (We all put stuff in boxes or suitcases and stick them in a closet or an attic or under a bed. And there they sit.) Bob Seel had no shortage of varsity letters – 10 in four different sports at the college formerly known as Philadelphia Textile, now Thomas Jefferson University. This letter popped out of a cardboard box recently – a large “J” from Jamaica High School in Queens, where Bob was the star and captain of the soccer team, as a senior, merely 67 years ago. He called me to say, "I found my letter." I can attest to his skill and leadership. I was a defender of no known skill or experience, when Bob was playing in goal. In his shrill voice, Bob would bark commands at me, as if that would help. By mid-season I was on the bench, which meant I had the privilege of watching Bob Seel -- one of the best players in the city. “We both played two positions,” recalls Dr. Robert Mindelzun, still teaching radiology (via Zoom) at Stanford University, but then a survivor of the terrors of the Holocaust, finding a refuge in Queens. (I wrote about his life not long ago.)
“If Bob was playing up front, I would play goalkeeper, and if Bob was in goal, I would play up front,” Mindelzun said the other day. Mindelzun earned honorable mention in our county, and later played for Queens College before settling in Palo Alto. (By my count, five teammates became doctors.) Dr. Mindelzun recently watched the World Cup, including the tie-breaker device of penalty kicks, that decided the championship for Argentina over France. He doesn’t think he or Captain Seel ever had to deal with a penalty kick because “there was only one ref, and they were not about to call penalties.” If the game was tied, the visitors would get back on the subway and go home. That raised my question: in this modern era, goalies wear gaudy glow-in-the-dark Captain Keeper outfits – yellow, purple, green, red – to differentiate from field players. But in those prehistoric times, keepers wore the same kit as the field players. If we needed a goal, Bob Seel might switch to center forward, and Bob Mindelzun would move back into goal, same outfit. Somehow, the game got played. Seel already had a large varsity “J” from his junior season at Jamaica, which was sewed on a long white sweater. He has no idea what happened to that sweater, but another letter remained in the family home, in a box, until the Seels downsized, a few years ago. “We moved from New Hyde Park to Seaford,” he said. “We had to move because I’m in a wheelchair.” This superb athlete has neuropathy, often connected to nerve damage from one trauma or another. Bob’s wife, Barbara, says he got it from playing too many sports – get this: four years of college soccer (three of them as captain), three years of basketball, two years of baseball and one year of tennis. As a senior at Philadelphia, he was named the outstanding athlete and was given a watch – “which I still have,” he said, adding that it does not work. Most old sports stuff, blessedly, gets tossed out. Pretending to be an athlete, I had my one varsity “J” sewed on a blue satiny jacket with red trim, with on it, and I wore it so often that it was dirty and ragged –– until it got junked in my mid-20s. Bob Seel and I lost contact while he worked as an agent for the Treasury Department and I went into journalism, A couple of decades ago, we met at a reunion and I had a flash of memory of his leadership and his fire and his skill. (Meantime, the geniuses who run New York schools terminated Jamaica High a decade ago, putting three or four smaller schools in that beautiful hilltop building.) While working on my soccer book, “Eight World Cups” for 2014, I talked to Bob about his background in soccer. He told me his dad learned the sport in the Kaiserslautern region in southwest Germany, and then his family moved to the soccer hotbed of Glendale-Ridgewood-Maspeth in Queens. Bob played youth soccer near the hallowed soccer field known as Metropolitan Oval. (I once played defense there against Grover Cleveland High, facing the city skyline and the late afternoon sun, while a curly-haired marauder named Bubbi Herink flitted past me and scored several goals past poor Captain Seel.) Bob and Barbara Seel now live in a complex on Long Island, where he can scoot out to a clubhouse and play cards and schmooze with his pals. I have never heard him complain. Recently, the Seels were sorting through an extra cardboard box, left from their move, and there was the “J” – in pristine condition. What will he do with the letter? “I have no idea,” he said. Their son Steve took a photo of the Captain, flashing that modest, pragmatic smile, holding the “J,” 1/21/2023 11:15:38 am
I hope this wonderful description of Bob Seel's indomitable spirit makes me stop complaining about my arthritis.
GV
1/21/2023 06:04:58 pm
Lee, good point -- although I do notice that a lot of old people (i.e. my age) trade information about one malady or another. That's different from complaining, no? GV
Ed Martin
1/21/2023 01:21:46 pm
Thanks for introducing us to Bob Seel and Jamaica HS, (once again).
GV
1/21/2023 06:15:55 pm
Ed: the only game we played that had followers was at the Met Oval -- because Grover Cleveland HS always had a good team, and also because the Met Oval is in the center of a traditional soccer community with clubhouses and training centers -- like Delphi, Greece. When we went there, we realized why it is called "The Navel of the World." -- a geographic center. The Met Oval didn';t have a blade of grass in those days -- stones, broken glass, bottle caps, etc. But early in this century, the Oval was upgraded to really good green artificial turf --one game after another, wth the city (i.e. Manhattan) looming to the west. I jogged on the new field at the opening and could plant my feet and make a turn...where was that surface when I was a visiting player?
Walter Schwartz
1/21/2023 06:20:55 pm
Bob Seel was certainly one of the greatest all-around athletes Jamaica High in its more than 100-year existence ever produced. Not only that, he was a great leader and inspirer. His coaches and teammates selected him to captain not only the soccer team, but also tennis,bowling and maybe one other. But basketball was the big sport at Jamaica in the mid-fifties and with a New York City championship and the number one player in the City, Alan Seiden, Bob Seel’s exploits took a back seat as did every other great schoolboy athlete. Bob made us proud. (By the way, George, you forgot to identify the pudgy soccer player behind Lew Landsberg in the photo, so Let me say it’s you. Thanks for reminding us of Bob’s accomplishments.)
GV
1/22/2023 09:55:56 am
Chief, you were on the track team...do you remember a basketball game in the gym between the track team and the soccer team,winter of 55-56? I have no idea how it was arranged -- but full court, ref, actually some kids in the stands....Anyway, Bob Seel was The Captain, a very good Press League player in Queens, knew all our varsity players, etc.
Ernest Kirchman
1/21/2023 10:16:30 pm
Hi George, Have been greatly enjoying your articles, which all expand our connection with people and times.
GV
1/22/2023 10:02:11 am
Ernie, great to hear from you. I might have cut practice that day..I was known to do that.,...great memory. You played a lot of defense that year, and had a great view of Bob when he moved up on offense...those long legs, shifting gears. Gretzky-like, indeed! I was in awe that a human body could twist and shift directions like that, I remember Mr. Seel picking up Bob and aother teammate after practice, already dark out....He had learned the sport in Kaiserslautern and Ridgewood....Thanks for the vivid recollection. Best to you both G
Altenir Silva
1/22/2023 05:09:12 am
Dear George, Great story about Bob Seel and your past as a defensive player. Talking about penalties, I remembered a quote by the late João Saldanha (the coach who faced the military dictatorship, was fired, and became the best intellect in Brazilian soccer). Mr. Saldanha said, "The penalty is the most important thing in a soccer game that the team owner should kick."
GV
1/22/2023 10:07:15 am
Dear Altenir: That is a great concept. Make the owners take the field.
Alan D. Levine
1/22/2023 01:12:28 pm
...with five banished attorneys ready to grab the rebound.
GV
1/22/2023 03:04:02 pm
Alan: Five Banished Attorneys sounds dangerous.
Ed
1/22/2023 06:03:44 pm
5 banished attorneys--sounds like Trump white house. Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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