Steve Christilaw: Stories soar with human element

The question is sitting out there for all of us.

What’s your favorite (fill in the blank)?

I’ve always found that it’s easy to ask the question, whichever it is for the questionee; harder to answer.

As someone who has made a career out of asking questions, I have to admit that I avoid asking that one. Favorites are an absolute – this (whatever) I put above all the rest. Life has so few absolutes – I find it to be much too fluid to have them.

I mean, if someone were to ask you which of your grandkids is your favorite, the one that just trashed the living room is going to slide down the scale, right?

There’s something about being a sportswriter that makes people want to ask you which sport is your favorite. I generally just smile and say something like “depends on what season it is.”

The truth is, it really doesn’t matter. I try to approach every sport with a level of professionalism.

And as a writer, I like to think that it’s less about the sport than it is about the people who play it. Good stories are about human beings and their struggles. The sport is just the hook where you hang the story.

A writing teacher once told me that there are three basic plots to the kind of writing we do. Stories are always about human struggle – either against another human being, against nature or against oneself.

I’ve always liked that framework.

Whether it is a football game, a hydroplane race or a rodeo, those frameworks all work nicely. Boxing fits it better than most – it’s one of the few sports that can occupy all three frameworks at the same time.

Don’t get me wrong. I have never gotten into watching two people pummel each other. And after doing some study on concussions and the growing research on the hazards of traumatic brain injury, the idea of seeing someone knocked unconscious is extremely distasteful.

But the idea of two combatants squaring off against one another is the very essence of what a competition is all about. It’s the kind of competition that reveals character and strips away pretense.

For a storyteller, that’s like striking gold.

On the surface, competition is always about a struggle between two sides. But as with any such battle, it’s also about an internal struggle with the game acting as a mirror reflecting what’s inside an athlete. And on many occasions, it breaks down to a battle against nature – both human and external.

When the game reveals character, the stories become much more than a simple recitation of individual plays and scores.

One of my favorite stories on these pages was about a young soccer player who found a respite from her day-to-day struggle with Tourette’s syndrome while she was on the pitch and playing a game.

It wasn’t a story about soccer. It was a story about the human spirit and how important it is to find a place of peace wherever one presents itself.

Another favorite ended in a boxing ring, but it started in a hotel ballroom.

The challenger, filled with bravado, took the prefight news conference as an opportunity to mercilessly taunt his more seasoned and successful opponent.

Taking his ring name from a famous whiskey, he flamboyantly presented a bottle of the spirit to his opponent, who never said so much as a word through the entire sideshow.

His reply came as a three-punch combination in the ring seconds into the main event.

Three shots and it was done. It was the fastest knockout I have ever witnessed in person.

But the story really wasn’t about boxing at all. It was about what happens when you poke a bear a few times too many.

Perhaps my most favorite moment came long after the sporting event.

Yakima’s Pete Rademacher was an Olympic gold medal-winning heavyweight boxer at the 1956 Games. I grew up hearing stories about his football playing days at Washington State, his dramatic Olympic victory and his professional debut in Seattle against Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight title.

He’s an extremely cordial and gentle spirit, and I chatted with both him and his wife for an extended time. He even handed me his gold medal to hold while we talked (talk about a distraction).

For the record, gold medals are heavier than you think they are.

I asked him a question I’ve always wondered about – what is it like to stand on the medal platform while they play the Star-Spangled Banner?

A half-century after it happened, Pete couldn’t answer.

Instead, his eyes got watery and he visibly choked up. It was as eloquent an answer to my question as I could have ever asked for.

“He’s never been able to talk about it,” his wife said, lovingly.

Where do you file a moment like that?