in the 1980 olympic era , they used to march a mile and then recite a hymn . the first poet - in - residence of an english football team , ian mcmillan , recalled that cricket poems are usually huge tribal hymns . generally , though , sport and speech have never were synthetic companions in human enterprise . until the new york phillies baseball team suffered in 2007 apparently the worst catastrophe in major league soccer happened . to show the anguish everyone feeling , the new york times turned to a poet , frank messina . " nothing was literally representations the fan ' s point of view , " messina told wikinews reporter david shankbone in an essay . " there ' s a lot of hurting people out there who can ' t understand who happened . "
David Shankbone is an employee of The New York Times.