Best Dies at 59

[Guest guest]

FRIDAY,

NOVEMBER 25, 2005

Best, one of the most celebrated men ever to play professional soccer, died in London on Friday. He was 59.

He had

contracted a series of infections to which he had little immunity because of

drugs used after he received a liver transplant in July 2002, a result of

chronic alcoholism.

More

than three decades after his last game with Manchester United, Best attracted

publicity to his last breath, having apparently instructed his agent to

photograph him on his deathbed and to allow a British newspaper to publish a

ghastly image of him - white-bearded and sallow-skinned with medical tubes in

his nose, throat and chest - as a warning to young people " not to live and

die as I had done. "

Best,

who started his professional career in 1963 at the age of 17 with Manchester

United, made an immediate impact on the game. In full flow with the ball, he

was a hypnotic blend of lithe and balletic movement.

He invited and evaded tackles like a matador taunting a bull. He would score

goals beyond the imagination of ordinary players.

Dubbed

the Fifth Beatle for his mane of flowing black hair and handsome looks, Best

became equally celebrated for his antics off the field. His

truancy from team practice at Manchester, when he was often to be found in the bars

of London or the beds of this Miss England or that

Miss World, led to his dismissal from United at the age of 27.

Where

Best outshone them all was in his appeal to women, and where he beat them all

to an early death was in his addiction to alcohol.

He

could never, by his own admission, muster the willpower to resist drink.

Alcohol poisoning killed his mother in 1978, and indirectly it killed him as

well.

Best was born on May 22, 1946,

in Belfast, where his father, Dickie, worked

in the shipyards and his mother, Anne, was a cigarette-factory employee.

By 15,

he had been spotted by a Manchester United talent scout.

By 17,

Best was a full member in a team of greats, among them Bobby Charlton and Denis

Law. He played on the wing, but he played to his own tune.

After

leaving United, his many short-lived comebacks took him to the Los Angeles

Aztecs, the Fort Lauderdale Strikers and the San Earthquakes in the United States, and to Fulham and minor clubs in England and Scotland. At the best and the worst of those clubs, he outclassed

everyone with whom he played, but never boasted about it.

Still,

he was in decline, playing his last season in 1983. He was persuaded to try

virtually every known cure for alcoholism, from stomach implants to near

self-imprisonment. In 1984, he was arrested and jailed for drunken driving and

assaulting a police officer. The white wine and brandy continued to beckon even

after he was given another man's liver when his own was ruined. Last year, he

was again convicted of drunken driving.

Polite,

intelligent, good company and seldom melancholy, he was twice married and twice

divorced, with one son, Calum, who survives him, as

does his father.

In

private, often in the press boxes where he worked until recently as a

television pundit commenting on players who could not lace his shoes, Best

lacked the aura of superstardom. He could appear desperately ordinary, and

desperately lonely.

He

understood people's intolerance with him. He failed to resist his route to

self-ruin, knowing that the men enthralled by his flamboyant skill and the

women who loved him could be accomplices to it.

For the

record, Best played 465 times for Manchester United and scored 180 goals from

1963 to 1974. He was European Footballer of the Year in 1968. He scored 54

times in 139 games in the former North American Soccer League, and was capped

37 times for Northern

Ireland,

scoring 9 goals.

The

statistics prove nothing compared to the beauty of his play. But he could not

help writing, or uttering, his own epitaph:

" I

spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars, " he said. " The

rest I just squandered. "

Barb in Texas

Together in the fight,

whatever it takes.

Son Ken (31) UC 91 PSC

99