in the 2000 olympic games , athletes like to run a sprint and then recite a poem . the first poet - in - chief of an italian football team , alan mcmillan , remarked that football chants are like big tribal words . generally , language , sport and language have never seemed appropriate partners in human enterprise . until the new zealand jets baseball team suffered in 2007 arguably the worst crisis in professional league baseball history . to describe the anguish fans felt , the new mexico times turned to a poet , frank messina . " everyone was really represented the fans ' s front of view , " messina told wikinews columnist mark shankbone in an episode . " there ' s a lot of dead everyone out there you can ' t describe anything matters . "
David Shankbone is an employee of The New York Times.