ON KOBE BRYANT

On August 2, 1979, I was at Three Rivers Stadium to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play the St. Louis Cardinals.  The Pirates were on their way to a World Series Season.  We were sitting in the best seats I had ever had, about ten rows up from the third base line, close enough to the Pirates bullpen to see our heroes like “Teke” (Kent Tekulve) warm up.  But before things could get under way, an announcement came.  Thurman Munson, the all-star catcher for the Yankees had been killed in a plane crash earlier that day.  

Pittsburgh understood what it was like to lose a hometown hero.  Just seven years earlier, Roberto Clemente, a legend of baseball, had the same fate befall him.  For me, on this day I was nine years old and witnessed for the first time what a sports tragedy could feel like.  The stadium fell silent. The air felt heavy.  The game changed in the moment.  It no longer felt important.  It felt almost like the fact we had to watch a baseball game cheapened that day.

I didn’t know Thurman Munson other than he was represented as a disc shaped card that fit into a spinner for a game called “All-Star Baseball Game.”  He was one of the few catchers that had larger than normal number for singles and had a decent sized 1, which sat at the twelve o’clock position and was what you had to spin to hit a homer.  But after that day, watching the great Reggie Jackson hanging his head in tears in tribute to his lost teammate, I felt I knew who Thurman Munson was; how much he meant to his team, to the Yankees organization and to the city of New York.

I didn’t know Kobe Bryant.

He arrived three years after I did in Los Angeles.  Nobody knew who he was, except that he was the player picked up for Laker fan favorite Vlade Divac. 

I watched his career blast off like a rocket in the late 1990’s like everyone else.  I went to Game 2 of the NBA Finals games versus New Jersey, which was a lopsided affair of Shaq and Kobe tearing a part a clearly overmatched team. 

I didn’t know Kobe Bryant, but I haven’t felt this kind of sadness since that day in 1979.  The air feels heavy.  Oxygen seems to have left the atmosphere.  The world feels lighter, as if it might float away out of control.  Words feel complacent and inconsiderate.  Smiles are impossible.

Kobe Bryant, larger than life itself, has left his time here with us.  And it was with us.  He was a legend of the basketball court yet felt indelibly human.  For all his feats of magic on the floor, he was full of foibles and imperfections that made you feel like you knew him.  He was like a brother.  I loved him when he made me proud.  I hated him when he didn’t.  He frustrated me with the same arrogance that made him the reason he earned the name Black Mamba, his unwillingness to do anything but be the guy to take the last shot when the game was on the line.

His retirement ceremony, wherein Kobe poured out his poetic love letter, Dear Basketball, brought us all to tears.  Here was this little boy, now in his man-like body, exposing his heartfelt love affair with the game, the same feelings many of us can identify with for things we love; showing us that little boy that many of us know if we’ve ever had the dream of sinking the final shot as the clock ran out to win a game.

Kobe showed us that education need not always be garnered in college.  A student of many languages, having spent a better part of his life abroad, he learned cultures and differences and seemed to embrace all of them.  

I didn’t know Kobe Bryant. 

But just like you, I feel this loss as if he was one of my own.  One of my heroes.  One of my family.  One of my friends.  One of my deepest loves.  And things won’t ever be the same.