An­dre E Bap­tiste

Yet again, we are faced with a sit­u­a­tion, where a sport­ing per­son­al­i­ty has passed away and records of his per­for­mances are ei­ther un­avail­able or in­ac­ces­si­ble. On this oc­ca­sion, it is Michael "Joey" Carew-no or­di­nary sport­ing hero, but a man of tremen­dous val­ue and im­por­tance to the crick­et­ing and sport­ing land­scape that is not con­fined to T&T but spreads across the world. This is a man ac­cred­it­ed as be­ing the most knowl­edge­able in his field over the last 50 years.

Ev­i­dence of this was seen at his fu­ner­al ser­vice on Fri­day 14 at St There­sa's RC Church in Wood­brook, where Fa­ther Ger­vais Girod presided over a mov­ing cer­e­mo­ny. A galaxy of fa­mous West In­dies stars head­ed by his third "son" Bri­an Lara and in­clud­ing Michael Hold­ing, Joel Gar­ner, Wes Hall, Lance Gibbs, Gor­don Greenidge, Michael Find­lay, Char­lie Davis and Col­in Croft were all present to pay trib­ute to a man who had been an in­te­gral cog in their own ca­reers.

But here is the prob­lem. Where is the archive of Carew's life that can be ac­cessed so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions can fol­low and un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of his con­tri­bu­tion to sports? The fact that so many in the me­dia and at both the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) and T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) were falling back­wards to find in­for­ma­tion on this na­tion­al icon and could not do so, tells a woe­ful tale of the im­por­tance (or lack of it), which this coun­try places on sports and the he­roes who emerge from it.

Why is it we had to de­pend on the Carew fam­i­ly in their time of need to pro­vide the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion on his life?

We should all be ashamed for not putting in place an archive of sport­ing he­roes and hero­ines and their suc­cess­es or fail­ures. When you lis­ten to the many charis­mat­ic sto­ries on Carew's life, they are both re­veal­ing and in­ter­est­ing and pur­pose­ful­ly de­scribe a man who played the game, in­tent at all times on win­ning. These re­al life de­scrip­tions of our sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties will al­ways ap­peal to our youth and en­hance their spir­it and be­lief in sports and, more im­por­tant­ly, en­cour­age their par­tic­i­pa­tion. It is there­fore time for some­one to step for­ward and put mech­a­nisms in place to en­sure the his­to­ry of our sport­ing icons is record­ed and safe­ly stored for us­age at any time.

Ide­al­ly, each as­so­ci­a­tion should es­tab­lish a sys­tem so they can have a prop­er mech­a­nism in place to record the his­to­ry of their con­stituents. They need to re­mem­ber that the strength of their as­so­ci­a­tion will have been de­ter­mined by the his­tor­i­cal sport­ing trail set by many from the dis­tant past. How many know how the as­so­ci­a­tion they rep­re­sent to­day start­ed? It may be dif­fi­cult and quite a lot of work for these as­so­ci­a­tions to in­de­pen­dent­ly per­form this sim­u­la­tion and col­la­tion of in­for­ma­tion but we des­per­ate­ly need to start some­where, even if we be­gin archiv­ing from the 70s, 80s or 90s. It will be a start and all that will be need­ed, is con­tin­u­a­tion.

To de­pend on the me­dia is a vir­tu­al waste of time. I re­mem­ber as far back as 2008, Valenti­no Singh, cur­rent sports ed­i­tor of the T&T Guardian, of­fered his ser­vices to the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Sport­ing Archive-a four-year project-that was in­tend­ed to put to­geth­er a Web site with in­for­ma­tion on every sport­ing per­son­al­i­ty who rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try since 1962. Then Sports Min­is­ter Gary Hunt, in typ­i­cal style, nev­er fol­lowed up and the pro­pos­al re­mains in abeyance, prop­er­ly stored in a file some­where on Aber­crom­by Street.

This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for cur­rent Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, Anil Roberts, a mil­lion times more knowl­edge­able on the sport­ing needs of the coun­try than his pre­de­ces­sor, to quick­ly put in place a re­view of what is need­ed to be­gin this process, soon­er rather than lat­er. As for Joey Carew, it would be won­der­ful and cer­tain­ly make the mem­o­ry of this great char­ac­ter called "The Boss" by Michael Hold­ing last week, hap­py and proud, if his pass­ing can lead to a mech­a­nism that will en­sure our sport­ing he­roes will nev­er be for­got­ten.

The archives could do well to utilise some of the great crick­et­ing in­for­ma­tion on Joey to start this process. That too, would be an­oth­er great trib­ute to this man. Min­is­ter Roberts will do well to get his Min­istry of Sports and the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T to join hands and op­er­ate like "one" team to en­sure this goal is achieved. Many of us in this gen­er­a­tion can think of icons who have left us but whose sport­ing con­tri­bu­tions de­serve recog­ni­tion and com­mem­o­ra­tion. In a few years time, how­ev­er, they will be on­ly a fad­ed mem­o­ry-noth­ing but dust.

There has been a tremen­dous out­pour­ing of love for the life of Joey Carew, and un­less we do some­thing quick­ly, many young­sters will have no knowl­edge of him due to our na­tion's fail­ure to un­der­stand that we must pre­serve our his­to­ry if we are to suc­ceed in the fu­ture. If you want ev­i­dence on how neg­li­gent we have been, I re­fer to Is­ports Sat­ur­day on i95.5fm last Sat­ur­day when vet­er­an T&T for­ward Steve David could not re­call how many goals he scored while wear­ing the red, white and black colours. He knows "it is a lot."

This is the sort of guess­work that needs to be avoid­ed. It would have been won­der­ful to have a Hall of Fame, for some of our great­est sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties, where per­sons of all ages can vis­it and watch, lis­ten and read about their per­for­mances, their thoughts and their role in the re­spec­tive sport. In the case of "Joey" Carew, it would prob­a­bly take more than 48 hours to un­der­stand the del­i­cate com­plex­i­ties, but wide­ly hu­mane touch and in­sa­tiable love of fam­i­ly (beau­ti­ful and car­ing wife Mar­i­on, sons Michael Ju­nior, David and adopt­ed son Bri­an Charles Lara) of this man. It is not too too late. We can on­ly hope there is not too much brava­do in get­ting this done as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

In life, we ap­pre­ci­ate the pow­er and ne­ces­si­ty for mem­o­ries. We all have pho­tos and video record­ings of crit­i­cal mo­ments in our life, so we should not be sur­prised to ex­pect that sport­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors should al­so en­sure that in their re­spec­tive sports, this ba­sic in­gre­di­ent is in place to cap­ture spe­cial peo­ple who have giv­en us so much to cheer on. Every­one needs to know who Michael Con­rad "Joey" Carew was and what he did for our coun­try. If we fail to en­sure that, we would have failed our coun­try's sport­ing lega­cy.

We miss you, Joey, here's hop­ing your name will al­ways live on.