World class

 This began in the shadows.

It began at his brother's elbow in a cramped room at South Side High School, family and friends and coaches crowding close, all the oxygen squeezed out of it as the filled space heated up fast on this last day of February. 

Everyone watched as Jamar Beasley picked up a blue-and-gold pen. A yellow tag with a red arrow instructed him to "Sign here." He pressed pen to paper, and his signature spilled across the designated line.

On side of him, looking on, was his mother. 

On the other, leaning in close, was his younger brother, DaMarcus.

He was watching Jamar, a senior in high school, sign a contract with the New England Revolution of MLS, and here the shadows begin to recede. Someone nodded toward DaMarcus and whispered he was going to be even better than his brother. 

Twenty-five years, a whole quarter century,  have spun by since then. Whoever whispered those words -- and the details are lost to time -- proved to be a prophet and then some.

Because he went on, DaMarcus did, to play in the MSL  with his brother. He went on to play in the World Cup at 20, helping the U.S. reach the quarterfinals for the first time in 72 years. He went on to play in four World Cups, more than any American ever, and to accumulate a record 126 national team caps and 17 goals, and to score 46 goals and play in 422 games for everyone from PSV Eindhoven to Manchester City to Glasgow Rangers to the Houston Dynamo of MLS.

Where he received a standing ovation when he subbed out of his last professional game.

For all of that, two days ago, DaMarcus Beasley went down to Texas to be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

 Half of Fort Wayne, it seemed, followed him there. His father, Henry, slipped the red HOF jacket on his son's shoulders. Which was entirely appropriate, because DaMarcus will tell you everything he did was because of his parents and his brother and his aunts and his uncles and ... well, pretty much everyone who shoehorned his or her way into that tiny room 25 years ago.

That was his brother's day. 

Saturday was DaMarcus'.

But it was all one, we see now. All one.