Sometimes, the Maple Leafs' Tie Domi will tap the little dying kid above the heart. "Fight," he will say.
Athletes and dying kids have been linked since Babe Ruth promised to hit a home run for a youngster who, like his hero, has long since faded into time.
To call the bond between the stricken child and his sports hero a cliche is to place a grain of wheat where a full silo should be.
But none of that diminishes the truth that somewhere in some clubhouse or dressing room, in some continent or time zone, an athlete is stooping to clasp the hand of a dying child.
"Unfortunately," the Leafs' Gary Roberts was saying yesterday, "it's true. It's not fair, but kids get sick."
You see the visits most nights in this job, and you see only a fraction of them. The kids are too tongue-tied to say much. Parents, the same ones who will bury their children in a few weeks, put aside the stress and beam.
KIDS ARE INNOCENT
"The kids, they're so innocent, they don't have any bad ideas," Alexander Mogilny said. "They don't want to exploit you. They just want to look at you, to touch you, to hear your voice."
Cameras bought just for the occasion are put to use and there always is some minor merriment. Everyone who gathers around the wheelchair pretends this will happen again soon.
The last lie is always left to the athlete. "See you again, buddy," he always says.
It is an unspoken understanding among athletes, in this case the vibrant young men of the Maple Leafs, that they must be on deck, however briefly, for the dying young or those whose lives have been viciously torn apart.
We do not ask bankers or venture capitalists or lawyers or newspaper reporters to meet the kids most of us can't bear to consider. It is a noble burden explained between players.
"For Nieuwy (Joe Nieuwendyk) and I, the guy who made us understand our responsibility in that was Lanny McDonald in Calgary," Roberts said. "He was always organizing things for the children's hospital. He taught us so much about being more than players, about trying to be good human beings."
Staff co-ordinate the meetings, but the truth is, most moments happen informally. Someone knows someone, kids are brought into the Leafs dressing room or a player is brought to them.
It happens below the radar, in dressing rooms and clubhouses and hotel lobbies everywhere.
"Every time we go into a city on the road, there is a special needs kid waiting there for Tie, or Ed (Belfour) or Mats (Sundin)," a Leafs official said. "Every city. Now imagine the demands at home."
Domi is the most ready example, but many players go to funerals of kids they helped shepherd from this world to the gates of the next.
Domi remembers the first time walking into a kids cancer ward.
"There were all these beds and, I noticed, the kids were so sick, all the parents were in the beds with them.
"I'm better at dealing with it now but that first bunch of times, I had someone else do the driving home."
The kids like the fighters, the Domis, the Darcy Tuckers, the Robertses. Both parties understand pain and odds and showing up for however many rounds the battle requires.
INSPIRATION
The word you hear most often in describing the meeting between the mighty and the dying, is perspective. The players give but they also get. There is, between the strong and the dying, a quiet exchange of energy and inspiration for wisdom.
"We're like anyone else, we have days, we complain about things," Roberts said. "I guarantee you, two minutes with a kid in that situation, you think about yourself and your family and you realize 'I've got no problems.' "
