College athletic scandals. Drug indictments. Hard-to-believe salaries. Rape. Violence. Sometimes it's simply hard not to despair about sports.

Then there is Bobby Duval. He climbs out of bed this morning in Pétionville in the hills above Port-au-Prince and drives down to Cité Soleil, which is as filthy a slum as there is on the face of the earth. If you have never been to Cité Soleil you might as well skip Dante's Inferno, because you can't comprehend the one without the other. And now Haiti is in turmoil again, and it can only grow worse for people who are sick and starving and without hope.

Bobby Duval is Haitian. He can trace his ancestry back to the slave riots of two centuries ago. He is of the Creole elite, the ones who mostly live luxuriously behind high walls, with hired gunmen at the gates. He was educated in the United States and Canada, a bright, handsome man who could live regally. Instead, Bobby Duval drives down the potted roads to Cité Soleil.

What he does is teach the most hopeless children in the world soccer and basketball and track. He started doing this a decade ago because he loved his country so and, not knowing quite what to do, he decided that maybe sport could help . . . some. He found a field -- well it was a dump -- and convinced the bottling company to let him borrow it. He cleaned it of the waste and the glass shards. He began to bring children in -- not only to teach them sports, but to feed them and pay for their schooling. Now there are 650 children from Cité Soleil who play there every day -- if they abide by Bobby's rules. Thousands more dream to get in.

Boys and girls in this sad land can play games, which is what even the poorest children anywhere should be able to do. And, in one way or another, so many have been saved. But Duval's staff numbers 40 now. And there is the food and the maintenance. Every month he must come up with $20,000.  Somehow he finds it. Because he believes he must.

If sports means anything in this world, you will see it at the Athletics of Haiti. If Bobby Duval does not redeem sports, then nothing can.

Why is he even still in Haiti? In 1975, Baby Doc Duvalier put him in that infamous hellhole called Fort Dimanche for speaking out for freedom. He was there 17 months, watching his friends die about him. Duval weighed 190 pounds when he got in, 90 when he was miraculously released. But he stayed and eventually decided that if he could not save all Haiti with politics he could at least save some of its children with sport.

Last week, Duval was driving from Port-au-Prince to the town of Les Ceyes. There was a roadblock, anxious men with guns and bullets, ready to -- well, ready to do almost anything that nerves and fervor might trigger. Then one of the gang shone a flashlight in Duval's face. "That's Bobby," he said. That was enough. They cheered and passed him through.

President Aristide has closed Athletics of Haiti for the last few days, as he has shuttered much of the country to try and calm things. He's allowed it to open again on Wednesday, the start of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a day of penitence for Christians, but whatever your faith, when you read the sports pages this week, it is a good time to think of Bobby Duval and his children, just having fun, playing games in one sad, desperate place.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.