Thank you, Grant Wahl, for opening my eyes to the magic of soccer and importance of storytelling. May I have the courage to do the same for the sport that pulses within me.
Name a better drama than sport. I’ll wait.
The only thing that I can think of that compares to the epic drama of sport is, well, life. Sport is life, in all of its beauty and messiness (feel free to read Messi-ness). The twists and turns of fate. The emotional rollercoaster. The confrontation with the best in us and the worst in us. The relationships. The succeeding. The failing. The beginning. The ending. The quest for greatness. The falling short. The rising. The losing. The finding. The redemption. The prevailing. The grappling. The unknown.
Sport evokes awe and wonder and madness. It captivates the soul.
Yesterday, in the Men's World Cup Final, two soccer stars were pitted against each other in the biggest moment of their careers, and in an event that may go down as the pen-ultimate sporting event in history and set against the back drop of conflict (not just any conflict but the prevailing conflict in human history, money and power versus human rights), these stars - Messi and Mbappe - and their teammates, delivered. They shined with breath-taking brilliance.
Captivated, mouth agape, I watched in awe as the drama unfolded. The more awe I felt, the more I thought of Grant Wahl and how cruel the hand of fate had been to him and his family. That he wasn't there, in the stadium, in the flesh, to witness this miraculous unfolding, and tell us how to deepen our understanding of it.
I didn't know Grant, yet I followed his storytelling. Somehow his story-telling made me feel like I knew him. I trusted his voice. It was honest, passionate, and relentlessly pure. His voice made me want to follow soccer. He opened my eyes to the magic of the game. He helped me see the human thread weaving through it. I felt equal parts invitation and biblical-type decree in his storytelling. His words seemed to decipher a secret language for us.
As I watched, I thought about what Grant would see, and what he would write. I can't even pretend to know. I feel such cruel anguish that we will never know. But what I do know is that yesterday, it was the love that captivated me the most. The love of a a passionate and devout nation pouring itself completely into the hope of a man, named Messi, wearing the number ten.. The love of the players for a game that pulsed in their veins. The love of the fans who clung to their seats and watched through tears. The love for the game. The sport. For life. ; I could see the love because Grant showed me the love.
Grant's storytelling is what I brought me to this moment. Storytellers are the code-breakers who help us decipher the beauty and brilliance of sport. They position us perfectly to understand the great unfolding of the drama; they help us appreciate and understand the arcs of our favorite characters. They help us understand how each character has come to this precise moment in time, and how each decision will define the future.
Sport is the greatest form of storytelling. When you watch a sport, you watch the ending write itself. You watch the magic unfold. Without the storytellers, we could not marvel at the mastery or muse in the mystery.
Without storytellers, we would be blind to the brilliance in the biggest moments. We would not be able to see the magic. I think about all the magic that we are missing in women's sport because we don't have storytellers teaching us how to see the magic.
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