Away Games
The first time I questioned my decision to move from Hawaii to Korea was, not surprisingly, winter. Back home, cold doesn’t happen without consent. Not so in Korea. If my first winter in Seoul taught me anything about existential threats from the north, it’s that Siberian winds make daily life a lot more unlivable than any nuclear artillery. I took fatalistic comfort in knowing that if North Korea ever attacked, at least we’d all die together. I felt just as helplessly unprepared for the winter, but I had to face the cold on my own.
I was lucky, for that reason and others, that I knew Jay—that’s the Englishified version of Jong-il (yes, like Kim)—and that he was sympathetic to the plight of a warm-weather waygookin (foreigner) living in a blustery Asian city. I was luckier still that he’s a basketball fan and was willing to scoop me up from work to watch the showdown between Anyang KGC and the Seoul SK Knights in the Korean Basketball League. I hadn’t seen a live basketball game of any sort since college, but it seemed like a better way to deal with the miserable cold than my usual routine of hibernating in my apartment and overeating.
At the arena, a surprisingly large crowd pushed their way inside. Jay and I joined in on the jostling, but he soon disappeared into the shuffle ahead of me. I became acutely aware that I was the only foreigner in the mix. Yet unlike other Asian countries where being 5’11” is enough to feel towering, most Koreans are my height or taller. I didn’t stick out so much as shrink in.
Inside the arena, the oversized face of starting small forward Yang Hee-jong stared at me from the side of a large, shiny pillar. There was a phalanx of similar pillars, each with the image and name of an Anyang KGC player plastered across it in a Mercator distortion. I stared back at Yang, feeling a strange and sudden urge to bow. I had been living in Korea long enough to develop the habit of bowing reflexively in all manner of situations: as a greeting, a farewell, or a simple acknowledgement of someone else’s existence. But bowing as a real function of communication had never felt any less awkward or unnatural than bowing at – bowing to? – an inanimate object.
I was even less sure how to engage with the pillar depicting foreign import Mario Little. The slick surface of the pillar reflected the bright lights in the room, making it look like he was dribbling a basketball somewhere in the distant cosmos. Which is probably what it feels like for a former Kansas Jayhawk playing halfway across the world. Space is also a cold, lonely place.
Up an escalator and outside the snack stand/gift shop, beside the gymnasium doors, was the pillar of Lee Jung-hyun. “He’s the ace,” Jay told me as we stopped to admire him. Unlike the rest of the team, Lee Jung-hyun’s picture was all upper body, his chin propped up by his fist like a modeling headshot. I bought myself a Lee jersey, because why wouldn’t you, and some fried chicken, because that always seems like the right thing to do. We went inside the arena to find our seats. The game was about to begin.
The smell of chicken-mu, a pickled Korean radish meant to squelch the burn of spicy fried chicken, wafted through the narrow aisles. The walls of the gym had English words and phrases like “speedy” and “go beyond the bounds!” written on them. The latter struck me as bad basketball advice, but my mind didn’t linger on it too long; weird English catchphrases are a quotidian reality in Korea, and when courtside seats are just $20 USD, it’s unlikely that going beyond the bounds would involve spilling a drink on anyone too important.
Anyang got first possession, and the crowd broke out into polite, pleasant applause. Seoul SK settled into a defensive zone, with two players positioned close to the free throw line and the other three spread out beneath the basket. Anyang’s offense was stifled. Lee Jung-hyun, the ace, cut to the baseline and popped back up at the elbow, forcing the defense to bend in the middle. Another player took this as an opportunity to penetrate the lane, promptly dribbling the ball off his foot. He was too speedy for his own good; he had Gone Beyond the Bounds.
The game continued like this for most of the first quarter: slow halfcourt sets, zone defenses, guards inexplicably picking up their dribble, sloppy reach-in fouls, lots of picked-off lobs into the post, and enough missed layups to make high school coaches want to snap their clipboards. “They are just warming up,” Jay assured me, slightly embarrassed. I was still cold.
Teams are allowed a maximum of two freebooting foreigners on their roster – unless the foreigner is ethnically Korean, in which case they can have up to five. At any point in time, the best players on the court are American, and not very good by American standards. That’s a fitting metaphor for life in Seoul in general; everything is American enough to feel familiar, but also different enough to feel worse. But if the overall quality of play was somewhere around high-level Division II, the crowd didn’t seem to care. They were there for something else, something harder to pinpoint, something other than top-tier basketball.
A dedicated cheerleading squad was captained by a man dressed in what looked like Colonel Sanders’s evening wear, who deftly switched between signs with the words “offense,” “defense,” and “free throw” written on them. His tireless screams goaded and guilted the crowd into a steady wave of cheering. The response was warmer, or at least more unified, when female cheerleaders did their best one-minute K-Pop concert impersonation at the quarter break, while neon-colored spotlights beamed every which way.
On the first possession of the second quarter, Anyang KGC sent the ball to their imported post player, the well-traveled (as in Latvia, Korea, Spain, Turkey, back to Korea) Mississippi State product Charles Rhodes. At 6’8, Rhodes was the tallest person on the court by several inches, and he pressed his advantage over Seoul SK’s 6’5 center Kim Woo-kyum. The crowd erupted in cheers when Rhodes palmed the rock, and stayed loud as his hook shot clanged off the front rim. It was then that I first noticed the computerized laser PEW! sound that accompanied every Anyang shot. It sounded the way the 2000s sounded in a 1980’s arcade, like a neon-purple lightning bolt. It made sense, and it didn’t.
An older woman scooted through the bleachers passing out laminated sheets that you could fold into a fan. It looked like a handheld corrugated roof, and when you smacked it against your knee it rang out with the same clapping noise of a heavy raindrop dropping on sheet metal. It soon sounded like monsoon season in the gym every time Seoul SK had the ball. But it didn’t help the home team much. At halftime, Anyang KGC was trailing 51-41, and Lee Jung-hyun was failing to live up to my friend’s description as “the ace.” I took off my winter coat and placed it on the ground under my seat. The heat of a few thousand bodies was starting to fill the gym.
The players were ushered off the court and the lights dimmed. The big screen keyed in on a couple in the stands. It was a halftime show, but a bit less familiar than what I’d expected. The male half of the chosen couple was given a large bucket to hold on top of his head. The other, presumably his girlfriend, had one minute to fling shoes crosscourt into the bucket with her feet. I can’t tell you where all the shoes came from, since the woman only wore two herself and neither of them were used. But I can tell you that she tuckered out her partner with a progression of less and less accurate shoe flings. When time was up, the man turned the bucket upside down to reveal exactly zero shoes inside, then promptly put the bucket over his head. The audience roared. The fairer half got some flowers; the bucket-wearing dude got some light cardio. And then we were back to basketball.
Lee Jung-hyun, ace that he is, was the first one out of the locker room for the second half. On Anyang’s first possession he demanded the ball and launched a three. He missed, but the whistle blew. Everyone jumped out of their seats. A song echoed in the gym—a beat, really, lasting about seven seconds. The beat ended with a BOOM BOOM BOOM kick, over which the crowd chanted LEE JUNG HYUN.
His first free throw hit the backboard and went in. The crowd cheered, but I struggled to join them. Watching someone bank a free throw is like seeing a friend wearing Crocs and sweatpants in public; I respect the end result, but not how you got there. Lee couldn’t have done it on purpose.
His second attempt hit the backboard and went off the side of the rim. He banked in the third. Root, root, root for the home team.
Whatever. Momentum was building, and I was getting wrapped up in it. Sweat started to bead around my forehead. I had no reason to support or oppose either team, at least not beyond my crisp new Lee Jung-hyun jersey. Next thing I knew, Mario Little went to the line. The crowd chanted WHOOMP MA-RI-O to the Tag Team beat. He did not bank any of his free throws, which gave me a brief tinge of national pride.
Anyang KGC momentarily took the lead in the third quarter, but Seoul SK ended the frame with a short run that put them ahead going into the fourth. This doesn’t matter, but it somehow did at that moment.
Before the fourth quarter started, the cheerleaders taught the crowd a short follow-along dance that involved the same thwacking laminated fans from earlier. Performed in unison it was trance-like, our synchronized mimicry of rudimentary semaphore whipping the gymnasium into a frenzy. I put my Lee Jung-hyun jersey on over my shirt. We were ready.
By the final frame of regulation, the goofy mistakes and terrible turnovers were no longer a concern. I wiped the sweat off my face with my shirtsleeve. It felt less like a gym and more like a jimjilbang, a Korean sauna. The air grew thick with excitement. My own cheers and claps joined the collective warmth emanating from the crowd.
On the court, Lee Jung-hyun was heating up, too. He got fouled on two more three-pointers, and I found myself screaming LEE JUNG HYUN to his personalized beat. He banked all six of his free throws and I high-fived my fellow fans after each one. I was all-in, imbued with the in-the-moment adrenaline that makes the game what it is—ephemeral and essential, an escape and a return. Anyang KGC tied it up at 87 apiece, and they had the final possession.
The shot-clock was off. Official ace Lee Jung-hyun had the ball. The crowd stood, hands on top of our heads, wanting to cover our eyes but knowing better. I hoped only for a legitimate opportunity to arise. Please, I thought, don’t dribble off your knee or lob a pass over the backboard.
Lee passed through the full-court press and got the ball back a foot off the three-point line. He stutter-stepped and drove to the elbow, pulling up for a mid-range fadeaway. It was a beautiful move, straight out of Kobe’s playbook. The shot hit the backboard, then the right side of the rim, falling into Seoul SK hands at the buzzer. We’d get another few minutes of meaningless, free-of-charge basketball.
If you’re keeping score, Anyang KGC went on to lose, 96-93. The magic of the moment was only briefly felt and faded fast. I was already back in Regular Life—a stranger in a strange land, where the weather sucked. But as I moved with the crowd out of the arena, I was rapt with the embrace of our collective heat. Sweat beaded on my forehead; the friction of thousands of basketball fans brushing past each other felt, fleetingly, like the humidity of Hawaii. I kept my winter coat in my hands and entered the newly familiar cold in my Lee Jung-hyun jersey. If this was the new normal, it felt more than tolerable. It felt good. It was a basketball game, and so it was home.
Note: a version of this essay first appeared as an article for The Classical (2015).
Eric Stinton is a writer and teacher from Kailua, Hawaii. He writes a weekly column for Sherdog and his fiction, nonfiction, and journalism have appeared in or are forthcoming in Bamboo Ridge, The Classical, Harvard Review Online, Honolulu Civil Beat, Medium, Talking Writing, and Vice Sports, among others. He lives with his fiancée and dachshund.