The power of Sports

10a5 황민엽

I am a huge fan of Korean baseball, and I especially like the LG Twins. Despite the team’s superb pitchers, stable catcher, and firing batters, the Twins failed to enter the post-season for 9 years straight. It’s the longest failure in the history of Korean baseball, much longer than the Lotte Giant’s 7 years of failure. However, I am a faithful fan of the team since 2002, and my loyalty will not change.

The Korean baseball league started in 1982, very recent compared to Major League Baseball in the USA. It started the same year that Korea won the “Baseball World Cup” held in Seoul. The Baseball World Cup allows only amateur players to compete in the league, so the Korean Baseball Association(KBO) delayed the entrance of the best players in Korea from entering the league for one year. Therefore Korea was able to compete with its most competitive players and was able to be first place in the championship beating Japan at the finals. One year after the “Baseball World Cup”, all the members of national team were assimilated into the new league, which made the league more interesting. That’s how the Korean baseball league started, and baseball has been gaining more popularity ever since. The skills and status of the athletes are always improving.

Unlike in the past, recently there is one strange thing about the league. When looking around the seats at the ball park, one can easily spot couples wearing different uniforms and supporting different teams. Also, sometimes all the members of a family support different teams and wear different uniforms to the park. It also became a hot issue when a boy was found in the ball park wearing a uniform which was covered half by that of Samsung Lions, and the other half was covered by that of the Kia Tigers. His father seemed to be supporting the Samsung Lions, and his mother was supporting the Kia Tigers, so people called him ‘The Liger Boy’. The boy became a trademark of peace in Korea, and people realized the powerful effect of sports in gathering people together.

These situations can seem bizarre, but they could also be thought of being normal. The goal of sports is to entertain each other and get to know each other through engaging in various activities. The fact that people are able to get together and enjoy their time together is more important than the result of the game.

My father sometimes talks about zealous baseball fans back in the 80s and 90s. The competition between fans was so fierce that fights between fans were seen very often during games. It was impossible to find fans from different clubs watching the game together in harmony. Also, the number of fans for each team changed every season, according to their performance.

Therefore, we can conclude that baseball has the power of uniting audiences into one, and enabling them to cooperate with each other without any discord. There are more examples of sports contributing to harmony of people. “That Ping-Pong Diplomacy ended the Cold War shows that table tennis destroyed the ideology barrier that separated the world into two, and was the start of the open-door policy of China(Boggan 184). When no American was able to talk or even meet Chinese people, table tennis aroused the attention of people in the two countries and triggered a talk between the two countries. After that, in 2008, Hu Jintao, the president of China, played a friendly match with a professional ping-pong player of Japan with the skill of a professional, and was able to catch the attention of the people around the globe. With such attention, he emphasized the importance of many exchange matches of diverse sports between China and Japan. This episode shows that China has been constantly doing the Ping-Pong Diplomacy since 1971, the time of the first match between China and the United States.

There is a reason why sports can integrate people together and accumulate diverse subjects of conversation. “Sports is able to improve stamina, make one happy, and make one build diverse communication skills. Sports activity with another person destroys the barrier between the two people and makes a connection between them”(MaxMedia 81). This sentences clearly emphasizes that sports itself can become a great subject of conversation between two people. When two people find a connection between each other, they feel as if they are similar and they feel intimate with each other. Sports act as the connection and it triggers players to search for more similarities between each other. As the number of connections between players accumulate, players steadily become close and are able to open their thoughts and feelings to each other.

In addition to the players themselves, the audiences can also come together through sports. First of all, audiences supporting the same side will obviously build connection with each other. They cheer at the same moments and get frustrated just the same. They act as one same group, considering the stadium as a small society. Furthermore, audiences on different sides also become unified during the game. When the audiences see the athletes they support shaking hands and hugging each other after games, they realize that the fans on the other side are not their opponents, but just the same people that enjoyed the game together as a whole. When the athletes cry together, the audiences also cry together and share the same feelings.

There are vast amount of cases of sports changing the world just like Ping-Pong Diplomacy. Jackie Robinson, an African American baseball player, can be said as the man who demolished the remaining racism altogether in 1940s. He is the first African-American to play baseball at Major League Baseball(MLB) in USA. Before that, African-American baseball players had their careers at the Negro League Baseball, which segregated black players from white players. With extraordinary talent at batting, Jackie Robinson was able to make a contract with the Montreal Royals at Minor League AAA. Despite all the discrimination he faced at having a professional debut, he managed to make four hits including a three-run home run in his debut game. He later carried on into MLB and made astonishing results throughout the game, even contributing his team’s victory in the World Series. With the start of Robinson, other teams also started to get players from the Negro League, and in a few years, every team in MLB had at least one African-American player. Jackie Robinson was the man who destroyed the color barrier in baseball, but he can also be said as the man who demolished racism itself, since the desegregation of baseball league had a great impact on people’s mind. After Robinson’s debut in MLB, white audiences and African-American audiences cheered at the same teams and same players, and when they watched the games together, they were able to realize that they are not that different from each other. The white people’s stereotype of blacks was able to flow away naturally.

 The 1988 Seoul Olympics is also a good example that portrays the power of sports. The Seoul Olympics was the first Olympic after(or during) the cold war in which all communist and capitalist countries participated. The Olympic games right before Seoul was played with half the members, with the members of the other side of ideology not participating. Even though the USSR and USA didn’t have much communication with each other through the 80s, their relationship grew enormously in the 90s. The Seoul Olympics played a key role in this phenomenon. While competing and sweating together, people of different ideology realized that the people on the other side are just the same as themselves, and the only difference is the way they see the world. They realized that their difference in viewpoints can be tolerated, and this leaded into cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union and ended with Gorbachev and Reagan shaking hands.

The various examples of sports acting as a diplomatic tool throughout the world shows that sports has the power to change the world. If it wasn’t for ping-pong, Coca-Cola won’t be available at Chinese convenient stores, and if it wasn’t for Jackie Robinson, we wouldn’t have been able to see Barry Bonds hitting a home run. Therefore, when solving conflicts between people, small or big, the best way to do it is by playing sports. The importance of sports as a tool of friendship and diplomacy cannot be emphasized enough. So every day, we should grab a baseball bat and get outside to get one step ahead in changing the world.

Sources:

—김영록 기자(Reporter Kim Young-Ruk).

“아빠는 삼성, 엄마는 KIA…‘라이거 소년’ 화제(Dad a Samsung, Mom a KIA… ‘The Liger Child’” 스포츠동아(Donga Sports) 18 July 2011 pg.21

—최민규 기자(Reporter Choi Min-Kyu). “프로야구 600만 관중… 한국인 삶 접수하다(6 million spectators in Korean baseball… A part of life)” 중앙일보(JoongAng Daily) 14 Sept 2011 pg.37

— Famous People. Posted in 27 May 2006 Richard Nixon Biography

<http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/richard-nixon-62.php>

Posted in Famous People, Political Leaders, Richard Nixon

— Nina Agrawal. “Playing Sports for Peace”/

Americas Quarterly, 23 Spet. 2011.

Posted in International Conflict, Social Conflict, Sports, Youth

<http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2904>

—맥스미디어 편집부(MaxMedia Editing Crew).

스포츠는 세상을 바꾸는 힘이다(Sports is the Power of Changing the World).

Seoul: 맥스미디어, 2011

—Boggan, Tim. The History of U.S. Table Tennis. New York: United States Table Tennis Association, 1999