Word: mythic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...under the weight of the family legend. The third generation of Kennedys once included 29 cousins. Like his sister Caroline, John Jr. managed to carry his celebrity lightly, acknowledging the claims of his ancestry without being burdened by them. He even went to Brown University to avoid the mythic baggage of being a Kennedy at Harvard. And many of the Kennedy cousins inherited the public-spiritedness of their parents' generation. Bobby's daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is Maryland's Lieutenant Governor. Ted's son Patrick is a Congressman from Rhode Island...
...planning to pull the car over. The Lincoln speeds up, and Atkinson goes to his lights and siren. His next radio transmission is one word--bailout; it quickens the pulse of every cop who hears it. Across the west side, squad cars bearing the raised-wing symbol of the mythic Phoenix change direction like birds in flight...
Pele is therefore a different phenomenon from the baseball or football star. Soccer stars are dependent on their teams even while transcending them. To achieve mythic status as a soccer player is especially difficult because the peak performance is generally quite short--only the fewest players perform at the top of their game for more than five years. Incredibly, Pele performed at the highest level for 18 years, scoring 52 goals in 1973, his 17th year. Contemporary soccer superstars never reach even 50 goals a season. For Pele, who had thrice scored more than 100 goals a year, it signaled...
...mythic status of Pele derives as well from the way he incarnated the character of Brazil's national team. Its style affirms that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Its players are the most acrobatic, if not always the most proficient. Brazilian teams play with a contagious exuberance. When those yellow shirts go on the attack--which is most of the time--and their fans cheer to the intoxicating beat of samba bands, soccer becomes a ritual of fluidity and grace. In Pele's day, the Brazilians epitomized soccer as fantasy...
...York Cosmos. He was no longer as fast, but he was as exuberant as ever. By then, Pele had become an institution. Most modern fans never saw him play, yet they somehow feel he is part of their lives. He made the transition from superstar to mythic figure...