Nick McGregor - The Carrboro Freight Trains live by the spirit of sandlot baseball, which in its simplest form welcomes anyone and everyone—no matter where they're from, what they look, or how skilled they are on the field. In the Carolina Sandlot Collective, we like to say that "Becoming a better baseball player is optional, but becoming a better member of the sandlot community is mandatory." John "Yogi" Choi embodies that principle, always stepping up to be a better teammate who tells funnier jokes and contributes to the overall vibe of our baseball experience. Sometimes that means skipping the game to set up an elaborate taco bar behind the backstop. Sometimes it means DIY-ing a portable field drag. And sometimes it means sharing your own underdog story, something John does beautifully below:
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A stubborn drizzle kept five-year-old me confined in our 11th-floor apartment in the center of Seoul, fidgeting with disinterested toys. But I wasn’t really keyed on the playground — I was waiting for my dad, who had been away on a work trip. Or rather, I was waiting to see what presents he had brought my sister and me. He always got us something after being away. Most of the time, it was sweets, sometimes a small toy — or, if the gift gods were generous, both.
He finally arrived to impatient children racing to the door to greet him — partly to express that we missed him, mostly to thank him in advance for the presents. I was ready to eat some candy. Hopefully, he had bought the right ones. But instead of the usual medium-sized paper bag, he was carrying a wooden baseball bat skewering a baseball glove in one hand and a catcher’s mask in the other. Big toys jackpot!
I had seen baseball on TV, even been to a KBO (Korean Baseball Organization) League game (a wild story for another time). One of the annoying ADHD things I did as a kid was trying to get people to play catch with me. Small fruit, rolled-up paper, matchbooks — anything deemed worthy of a sesh.
After messing with the mask (of course) and doing weird kid things with the bat, I tried on the glove. My father told me to use my right hand to squeeze the webbing and catch the ball with both hands. He wasn’t a baseball player at any level. Baseball hadn’t been a priority during his childhood after the Korean Civil War. His parents were preoccupied with playing find-some-food-ball. But his baseball instincts were right.
He threw me a ball in our apartment living room a few times. We had to go outside. I don’t remember if the drizzle had stopped, nor if the sun had come out, but what I do remember is my father throwing the ball from 200-plus feet away and me catching the first ball ever thrown to me (using both hands). (There is no evidential record of the distance thrown, so this story will remain 200 feet until disproven.)
A year or so later, my father came home late from work one night, tipsy — a celebratory beer buzz. He announced that we were moving to America. For my sister and me, America was a mythical place where kids could have everything they ever wanted. We knew all about it from watching dubbed episodes of Dukes of Hazzard or Dallas, and reading an old Sears catalog someone had given us. Star Wars toys were on the back cover. The inner back cover had the train set. Flip a few pages left — Barbie. A few more — kitchen playsets.
My father bought me a lot of toys — all the things he didn’t have in his post-war childhood. I loved them all. I was told we would not be taking anything but clothes — not even the trophy I had won for a kindergarten art contest (my proudest accomplishment to date). Not a good day. I did manage to convince them to take my catcher’s mask and glove. The bat did not make the cut. I wore my Korea national team baseball uniform on our flight to America. (I also had really bad pinkeye — another story for another time.)
Fast-forward a year later — I was still adjusting to a new life in Williamsburg, Virginia. McDonald’s was great and bananas were cheap (immigrant Koreans reading this will know), but not speaking the language where you live is a giant pain in the ass, especially when it comes to friendships. It didn’t help that my sister and I were the only Asian kids in the school — nor that we were the only Asians our classmates had ever been exposed to, outside of Sunday morning VHF kung fu movies. Juvenile racism is like adult racism, just less subtle. All Asians were apparently kung fu fighters named “Ching-Chong” who periodically needed to be reminded that their eyes were slanted — in case we forgot. (When sushi started entering America 10 years later, subtlety was obliterated.)
One Saturday morning, my father took me to Deer Park — a city park down the street — so that he could throw a ball to his ADHD son. A man came up to my father and they talked. Turned out he was a coach for a Little League team and suggested I sign up. Paul Coffey was a steelworker at the local shipyard. (Note: “Local shipyard” sounds quaint, but this local shipyard built nuclear carriers.) His children had all grown up, and he missed being a dad to kids. He remained a family friend for years afterward.
The season started the next day. I signed up, got my uniform, and played my first baseball game that same afternoon. I was #4 on the Cubs. I got the last Cubs jersey, which was too small. The rest of the season, I needed help putting it on and taking it off. (Still not as bad as the pink uniform I wore all season one year because a red sock snuck into the wash. ANOTHER story for another time.) Being on the Cubs was great because I wasn’t a kung fu fighter or a “slant-eye” model, but a pitcher, a shortstop, someone to hype up for ABs — a friend. Team sports are neat like that.
A few years later, on the Richneck Little League Giants — #11 — there were four Johns on the team, and we needed nicknames. (I learned years later that The Waltons TV show was a popular inspiration for baby names in the ’70s. That’s not why I got to be John. ANOTHER story for another time.) The coaches had used up the usual “Big John” and “Little John.” Since I was the catcher, one of the coaches — Doug, who, like Paul, had grown children but coached because he missed being a dad to kids — suggested “Yogi,” after the famous Yankees catcher Yogi Berra.
The musical montage of the next few years of baseball as “Yogi” includes summer travel games, blowing out my shoulder trying to throw the ball over the center field fence, a heat stroke, and striking out Allen Iverson (!). It shows me doing all these things with good friends. Baseball is neat like that. Childhood friends still call me “Yooooog.” My sandlot jersey for the Carrboro Freight Trains has “Yogi” on the back. Sometimes, guys come up to chat about their shared affection for Yogi Berra. I know almost nothing about Yogi Berra, but it's been a neat way to make friends. And that's what it's all about.
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John Choi
