Sports serve to connect the world
It’s a crisp fall morning in Southern Californian suburbia, the kind where leaving the warmth of home makes my breath create wispy streams of condensation that trail me as I run to the end of our driveway, where the day’s copy of the Los Angeles Times sat in the same spot every morning for almost 10 years.
To anyone else, this unremarkable lump of gray paper contained the day’s news: It described the previous day’s events and foreshadowed what was to come. To an 8-year-old kid who ripped open that cellophane cover or pulled off the plastic tie and rifled through to section C (and later, section D), it was entering into another world: It was a matter of how the Lakers won or lost, of whether or not Wilton Guerrero was the rookie that would turn the tides of the Dodgers’ franchise. What did J.A. Adande, Bill Plaschke think? Most importantly, knowing what was happening in sports was the way an 8 year old who spoke mostly English could communicate with a father who spoke exclusively Korean. In other words, to me, that unremarkable lump of gray paper meant the world.
In my younger years and through adolescence, my father couldn’t communicate very complex concepts to me due to my limited grasp of the Korean language. My understanding of my father was limited to an emotional binary: when he was upset (at which point I was generally in fear) and when he wasn’t upset, which was the default setting. The only time I could get to know my father on more than a surface level was in his evaluation of sports events.
I would decipher these happenings and player performances through hard statistics, obsessing over the analysis of Mark Heisler and poring over the NBA statistical leader boards and box scores, and my father would point things out purely from his observations. At the zenith of Michael Jordan’s powers, my father was the one pointing out the play of Scottie Pippen and how the lanky Arkansas native was guarding the passing lanes and limiting the cutting ability of opposing players.
“Pippen is a gentleman, a real man,” my father would tell me in Korean. “He does a lot of the hard work, and Michael Jordan gets most of the glory, but Pippen is what a man should be.”
And such were the lessons from my father. Pippen was impressive on the stat sheet, but I would argue my face blue about Michael Jordan’s vast statistical, and thus actual, superiority. There was something particular about my father’s observation, though, that transcended simple statistical analysis. It takes keen spectatorship to point out how Pippen would hand-check a man in the post precisely as the wing dumped the ball off, like a defensive back contesting a quarterback’s pass, leading to an easy steal.
In sports, scoreboards tell a simple story, but it takes experiencing the visual spectacle to appreciate its beauty. The only way to relive that spectacle is through video, radio or the written word. “The Shot.” “The Flu Game.” The words invoke indelible images, things that can’t be caught in the box score. Sharing these things with my father was a point of emotional connection with him that simply could not be matched. Reading the L.A. Times brought back the images I had seen on television the night prior but added a richness and depth that I wouldn’t be able to put in my own words — at least not yet. But my father only needed to bring up a player’s name or a single, pithy observation about Derek Fisher getting torched by younger point guards for us to connect on a level that transcended a language barrier. Immediately, father and son track on the same narrative, the archetypal story of a man struggling with age.
I wanted to write about sports because it does this: It connects people of different languages and different backgrounds. It spurs discussion, helps people relive the thrill of victory or stokes outrage after a loss. Most importantly, it cemented a bond between a father and son where otherwise that bond could not have existed. It helped a man facing a language barrier teach his son values and principles to carry for a lifetime by describing a single player.
The barbershop-style debates would eventually come with time, as my father and I developed a relationship that became deeper and more richly colored still through a mutual affinity for sport. The language barrier between my father and me became less pronounced through the years as my Korean improved, but when we need to illustrate complex concepts, our conversation always turned to sports analogies. My wish to write about sports at the Daily Trojan stemmed from a desire to put the visual spectacle in words so that we could forge bonds that transcend them. I hope I have been successful in doing so. It has been an honor to serve as your eyes and ears.
Euno Lee is a senior majoring in English literature. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan. His column, “Euno What Time It Is,” ran Tuesdays.