I was born six years after the last championship, and now I’ll have to wait at least one more.

Sorry Fulbright—this week, you played second-fiddle to an around-the-horn obsession with the World Series cause of my Dodgers. ESPN breaks in the bathroom stall, one earbud in during weekly chapel, and every 10-minute break trying to find a working stream. Were it not for my contractual obligation to stay in Jeonju, I’d have been on the first flight back to Chavez Ravine for Game 6 or 7.

Co-workers suspicious of me openly streaming the game in the office were met with an explanation that I’d seen Chan-ho Park pitch in 2001 as a Dodger, Hyun-jin Ryu in 2016, and I wasn’t about to let their judgment stop me from seeing the 2017 season through.

Luckily, sports run through the veins of this campus—about 15 percent of the students show up 20 mins late and leave right after lunch because they’re almost full-time athletes as well as students, members of the Jeonbuk Hyundai regional U-18 soccer team—a feeder into the professional team of the same name. They live and breathe the sport, and understandably so — it’s a fast-track ticket to the top for the few that make it.

I never made it to the top and certainly never put as much time and energy into being an athlete as these Korean high schoolers do. Past Fulbright teachers have been frustrated, even angry at these athletes’ general refusal to stay awake during our one-hour-a-week conversational English class, but I’ve come to empathize.

English—and certainly not a single 50-minute class with some random American—is not their life. Football is life, where success and failure is meted out in shots on goal and saves, rather than memorizing random dates and studying for better grades. The dichotomy isn’t that black and white, but their priorities are crystal clear.

Reflecting on this nudged me to pull up my final Crimson article; what we call a “Parting Shot.” It’s a mental reminder of why watching the Dodgers halfway across the world (and skipping lunch more than once) was worth it, and why my soccer students are probably learning skills on the pitch that are far more important for their future than simply being in the classroom.

I’ve pasted it below, but if you’d like to read it as it was originally published, it’s here too.
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Living Through Sports: Parting Shot

By CALEB LEE, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
May 25, 2017

Growing up in suburban Los Angeles in the early 2000s naturally meant that I was a Lakers fan. Kobe’s 30-plus shot nights at Staples, Shaq’s rim-rattling dunks, Derek Fisher’s last second daggers, Pau Gasol’s midrange J’s—all these are forever stained into my memory.

Our family didn’t believe in cable television, or so I was told—Saturday mornings were meant for the Little League diamond down in the Arroyo, not for staring at a screen. But they believed in sports, so there were these weekly moments when the Lakers would be on the local analog KTLA-5 channel, and I could alternate between watching the game and adjusting the antenna with its makeshift tinfoil cover so that the screen wouldn’t be too grainy.

This happy compromise meant that my father could sit there for a 7:30 p.m. start time with me and catch snippets of the game as well, even if that meant dozing off during a fourth quarter 30-second timeout.

I forgave him then because he was a Celtics fan. There was no forgiveness in 2008 when Boston won, and no forgiveness given during 2010: redemption year. The devastation that came with the 2008 Game 4 comeback and 39-point drubbing of my purple and gold in the decisive Game 6 and the jubilation of sweet, sweet revenge two years later still stick with me now.

The original big three of KG, Ray Allen, and the Truth for the goons in green meant that there was no sleeping to be had in May and June. Suddenly, the gentle ribbing of a Mamba brick turned into playful arguments, which turned into fierce verbal competitions, and these games meant the world to me. We fought for the fan support of my four-year-old brother; I had bought him a youth XS Lakers shirt, to which my father parried and riposted with a Garnett shirt of his own. Cackling and laughing at the added attention, my brother would run around the room carrying the gold shirt in his left hand, shamrock green in his right as we would try to convince him to wear the “right” shirt and cheer for the “right” team.

The two of us—my father and I—sat on opposite ends of the couch to emphasize our rivaling fandom. I imitated Kobe’s tongue wagging while he did his best KG trash-talking. As the two future Hall of Famers jabbed at each other across the court, so would we across our living room.

In those moments, we couldn’t have been any closer. Kobe and KG could leave the court at the buzzer and not see each other until the next contest, but we shut off the TV and returned to being family. The games intertwined with our relationship, becoming a bedrock in our shared trust. That continues, Kobe and KG retirement notwithstanding.

Sports can tell stories, but once in awhile, sports are the story. The narrative that stretched through my life up to college was dictated by sports, with personal maxims that were rooted in the game, whatever that game was.

To never walk between the white lines of the baseball diamond—always run and give the game the respect it deserves. That championships are won when the worst players become the best worst players in the league. That your coaches’ criticism means that you’re worth fighting for. That the right attitude can be worth more than talent. That practice doesn’t make perfect—perfect practice makes perfect. To treat the bench as a test of responding to adversity.

Though I was never cut out to be a Division I athlete, The Crimson sports board gave me access to telling these stories of the game that evolve into the lessons of life. Fencing or golf, baseball or squash, any true sport has the power to reflect character and lives beyond the strip, court, or field. If journalism is the first draft of history, then my foray into sports journalism must have been the first draft for who I am to become.