Dom Amore: When Pelé's remarkable soccer life took him to Hartford; 'big Hall' ballot for Cooperstown and more in the Sunday Read

By Hartford Courant (TNS)December 31, 2022

Pelé was recognized and loved in every corner of the world and Hartford was hardly immune to the phenomenon. When he stopped in town during his days with the New York Cosmos in the 1970s it was a mob scene.

“It was the usual frantic arrival,” remembered Jim Trecker, a West Hartford native who was the media relations director for the Cosmos in 1976 and ‘77. “Everybody seemed to know where we were, though we didn’t promulgate our hotel information. When we came to Connecticut in 1976, he wanted to get away and we wanted to get him safely away from the hubbub to prepare for a game.”

Trecker whisked Pelé away from the Sheraton in downtown Hartford to his parents’ home in West Hartford for lunch, and then to his brother Jerry’s home three blocks away for a nap. When he awoke, Pelé decided to kick the ball around the back yard with Jerry’s 5-year-old son Jamie.

“It was an amazing afternoon,” said Jerry Trecker, who covered a ton of soccer during his long career as a Courant sportswriter. “I can say Pelé and Wayne Gretzky are the two most gracious athletes I was ever fortunate enough to spend time with, both so sure of their gifts and so open and friendly.”

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé, who died this week at 82, has been compared to Gretzky, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, all the great and most consequential athletes and entertainers of the 20th Century. People just couldn’t help themselves around these celebrities. Everyone just wanted a glimpse.

Pelé, who led Brazil to World Cup victories in 1958, 1962 and 1970, was in his mid-30s when he signed with the Cosmos and the North American Soccer League, determined to grow soccer’s appeal in the U.S. His personal magnetism brought attention to the game it had never had before in the U.S., and hasn’t had since.

“He invented the magic we now take for granted,” Jim Trecker said. “... And he did it without ego, no pretention.”

He first came to Hartford in July 1975, where he did a press conference in a packed ballroom at the Sheraton, speaking in English, Spanish and Portuguese. “This is one of the reasons I came here, to meet people and talk to them,” he said that day. But he could not promise he would play as he was dealing with a strained hamstring. He sat the game out, but more than 9,000 jammed Dillon Stadium just to see him on that Aug. 1. Pelé was introduced, and walked to midfield to speak to the crowd in Portuguese and clasped his hands above his head to acknowledge the cheers, then signed autographs all night.

“Not only was he a wonderful player, but he was just a human being,” said Henry McCully, who moved from Scotland to Connecticut as a teenager and was playing for the NASL’s Hartford Bicentennials at that time. “He was courteous. As great a soccer player as he was, he was just good for the game of soccer in America.”

The following May, the Cosmos returned. “I am very happy because everybody in the world knows there is football in America,” Pelé told The Courant’s Bohdan Kolinsky in the Sheraton lobby. “Soccer is not any more a dream in America, it is reality.”

Before another full house of 9.000, the Cosmos beat the Bicentennials 3-0, and though he didn’t score, Pelé helped create all three scoring opportunities.

“The guy transcended soccer,” said McCully, who played on the Hartford Italian-American Stars’ national amateur cup champions in 1967, and later with the U.S. National team. “Everything in soccer is about control of the ball. I went to watch him play once, at Randall’s Island, before I became a professional player myself. If the ball hit this guy in the nose, he’d control it. If hit him in the ear, it dropped at his foot. I watched him score a goal where a corner kick came over, he tapped it with his left foot and hit it with his right foot, a bullet, into the back of the net.”

The Bicentennials relocated to the Yale Bowl in 1977, where Pelé played for the last time in New England before 17,000, helping to set up a goal in the Cosmos’ 3-2 victory on May 8. He was mobbed on his way out.

“One of the kindest, finest gentlemen I’ve ever been around,” Jim Trecker said. “He had a keen, keen understanding of the role he wanted to play in the United States. A man of incredible grace. He’s a huge loss to the athletic world because of the type of person he was. It’s very, very hard to capture.”