Had he picked the Yankees to win the World Series? Had he really expected LeBron to be a Knick?
Let's hope he didn't die of heartbreak — or at the hands of underwater bookies. Let's pray that the initial reports from the German aquarium on Tuesday were true, that Paul the Psychic Octopus "passed away peacefully during the night, of natural causes."
He deserves a dignified end. Paul was an original, a global superstar.
During this summer's World Cup, he inhaled Facebook and Twitter and spat them out in an inky trail. Even in his passing, he is a lock for People magazine's Cephalopod of the Year.
Eight for eight. It is a mark that may stand forever, like Joe DiMaggio's 56, Wilt Chamberlain's 100 and Rich Kotite's 4-28. That was Paul's record at picking the correct winners in eight matches at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
He was never wrong, and he wasn't a homer. That was what made Paul great. He predicted Germany would lose to Serbia, and he picked Spain to beat the Germans in the semifinals. Just for kicks, he picked Spain to beat the Netherlands. Boom.
How did he do it? Intense numerical analysis, of course. Paul relied on an undersea "war room" of sabermetric soccer experts who crunched the statistics from thousands of games before coming up with a reliable outcome.
OK, that's not really true. There were a couple of boxes with flags in them, and a mussel was put inside one. Paul went down and grabbed the mussel. That was it. It wasn't exactly Dancing with the Stars.
There were all kinds of theories as to how it happened — Paul was attracted to the oranges and reds in certain flags, the aquarium rigged the boxes and so on. People got freaked out by his success.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Paul as "Western propaganda."
When the World Cup was over, Paul retired. He walked away — swam away — at his peak, like Sandy Koufax and Jim Brown. He stayed for a month in the pool at the Chateau Marmont. He was briefly linked to Taylor Swift.
He died at 2 1/2. That sounds depressing until you realize it's about 25 percent longer than octopuses usually live. Still, his minders in Germany were said to be "devastated" and considering building a shrine to Paul at the aquarium.
When we heard about Paul, we thought about the few days we spent in South Africa after the World Cup. When the final was over, we took a trip around the bottom of the continent with a local nature guide from Cape Town.
The guide, who'd lived in South Africa her whole life, didn't care a bit about soccer. She could hardly name a player. She cared about birds, baboons, whales and caracal cats.
But Paul? She knew all about Paul. She adored him. He was her favorite thing about the World Cup.
That's something that people forget when they shower nine-figure contracts on superstars and pump sporting events into overhyped extravaganzas. All the bombast and cash can't make people love you.
There's got to be something else — a sense of wonder. Sometimes, it can come from a very extraordinary athlete. This time, it came from under the sea.
Wednesday night, in Paul's memory, pick the Knicks in their opener.
Hey, Paul's 8 for 8. It's in the books.
Let's hope he didn't die of heartbreak — or at the hands of underwater bookies. Let's pray that the initial reports from the German aquarium on Tuesday were true, that Paul the Psychic Octopus "passed away peacefully during the night, of natural causes."
He deserves a dignified end. Paul was an original, a global superstar.
During this summer's World Cup, he inhaled Facebook and Twitter and spat them out in an inky trail. Even in his passing, he is a lock for People magazine's Cephalopod of the Year.
Eight for eight. It is a mark that may stand forever, like Joe DiMaggio's 56, Wilt Chamberlain's 100 and Rich Kotite's 4-28. That was Paul's record at picking the correct winners in eight matches at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
He was never wrong, and he wasn't a homer. That was what made Paul great. He predicted Germany would lose to Serbia, and he picked Spain to beat the Germans in the semifinals. Just for kicks, he picked Spain to beat the Netherlands. Boom.
How did he do it? Intense numerical analysis, of course. Paul relied on an undersea "war room" of sabermetric soccer experts who crunched the statistics from thousands of games before coming up with a reliable outcome.
OK, that's not really true. There were a couple of boxes with flags in them, and a mussel was put inside one. Paul went down and grabbed the mussel. That was it. It wasn't exactly Dancing with the Stars.
There were all kinds of theories as to how it happened — Paul was attracted to the oranges and reds in certain flags, the aquarium rigged the boxes and so on. People got freaked out by his success.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Paul as "Western propaganda."
When the World Cup was over, Paul retired. He walked away — swam away — at his peak, like Sandy Koufax and Jim Brown. He stayed for a month in the pool at the Chateau Marmont. He was briefly linked to Taylor Swift.
He died at 2 1/2. That sounds depressing until you realize it's about 25 percent longer than octopuses usually live. Still, his minders in Germany were said to be "devastated" and considering building a shrine to Paul at the aquarium.
When we heard about Paul, we thought about the few days we spent in South Africa after the World Cup. When the final was over, we took a trip around the bottom of the continent with a local nature guide from Cape Town.
The guide, who'd lived in South Africa her whole life, didn't care a bit about soccer. She could hardly name a player. She cared about birds, baboons, whales and caracal cats.
But Paul? She knew all about Paul. She adored him. He was her favorite thing about the World Cup.
That's something that people forget when they shower nine-figure contracts on superstars and pump sporting events into overhyped extravaganzas. All the bombast and cash can't make people love you.
There's got to be something else — a sense of wonder. Sometimes, it can come from a very extraordinary athlete. This time, it came from under the sea.
Wednesday night, in Paul's memory, pick the Knicks in their opener.
Hey, Paul's 8 for 8. It's in the books.
