Sports Provide a Needed Diversion

Arizona rules. No, Kentucky’s gonna coast. No way, UConn’s a sleeper. Watch out for Xavier. Marquette’s a great underdog. How about Texas? Or Stanford? Pitt’s the ticket.

Mike Lighty, 60, of Oceanside and Quang X. Pham, 38, of Mission Viejo, would like to remind every athlete concerned about flying, every coach who wonders why anybody might care about the outcome of a ballgame, to just do it. Shoot, score, defend, foul, cry foul, hit a baseball, field a ground ball. Get on a plane, go to your game, do your best.

It matters.

It matters here and, even more, it matters to the troops overseas. It’s the most common thread among men and women, between people of all races and religions. You don’t have to be a sports fan to cheer for Florida if you’re from Florida. That’s what Lighty and Pham say. They should know.

Lighty is a Vietnam War veteran, a former Navy communications specialist who spent five years in the South Pacific. Pham was a Marine lieutenant in the Gulf War.

Lighty and Pham were relieved when it was announced Tuesday that the NCAA basketball tournament would begin today as scheduled and disappointed that Seattle and Oakland would not travel to Tokyo to open the baseball season.

But at least war will not interrupt the chance for UNC Asheville to upset Texas on Friday. Thousands of stunned NCAA pool participants in the desert will be able to say, “Who’s Sam Houston and why does he have a State?”

“As we did our duty and fought the enemy during the day,” Lighty said, “all we talked about and what kept our spirits pretty high were the reports of the sports coming out of ‘back home.’ When people talk about canceling games and cutting back on the reporting, they are doing the soldiers and sailors a great disservice.”

Pham said, “When I was flying helicopter missions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Marines were rooting for their favorite college football teams and watched bowl games in between preparing for war. When the war ended, one of the first things I did was watch Penn State upset a Jim Harrick-led UCLA team with Don MacLean in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

“Life must go on in the U.S. That’s what the servicemen and women want. That was what I wanted 12 years ago.”

It’s easy to dismiss what sports means in this country, to say that caring about the NCAA tournament is silly, that filling out your office pool or sneaking off to watch your team play a noon game on Thursday is somehow disrespectful to what American troops might be doing at the same time.

“But that’s not the case,” Pham said.

Pham’s family fled Vietnam in 1975, shortly before the fall of Saigon. Pham’s father had been an American-trained pilot in the South Vietnamese army. The family ended up in Oxnard, where Pham found his soccer and basketball talents went a long way toward making the boys at school ignore his stumbling English and unfashionable clothes.

“If you could play, you got picked,” Pham said.

Lacking height, Pham said, he became an intramural gym rat at UCLA.

“I love UCLA sports,” Pham said. “All of them.”

He also loved talking about UCLA sports when he was in the Gulf in 1990. He loved arguing football with Florida State fans. He was thrilled when Ken Norris, who worked in the UCLA video department, shipped Pham clips of UCLA football and basketball victories. More bragging rights.

“But even more,” Pham said, “the very idea that sports was going on back home as usual meant that what we were doing was worthwhile. It’s almost as if there’s a bad message if people at home are changing their lives or living in fear.”

Lighty also said to never underestimate how sports resonates around the world.

“Sports was the No. 1, top-dog thing,” Lighty said. “In 1963, I was on a ship in the South China Sea. A Russian cruiser was making a pest of itself -- it did that quite often and we had gotten used to it. But this time, signal lights started going off on the Russian ship. I was down below on the signal deck and people are screaming, ‘What’s he saying?’

“What was he saying? He was asking for scores. It happened to be during the World Series. My signal man said, ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’ I said, ‘Give him the score,’ so we flashed the score back to the Russian guys.

“You think sports doesn’t matter? It matters.”

For Lighty in Vietnam and even Pham in the Gulf War, the Internet was not available. Getting scores was not easy.

As a communications specialist, Lighty became creative in getting radio broadcasts out of, literally, thin air. With the right atmospheric conditions, Lighty said, “Radio signals would bounce off the ionosphere, we could play around, pick up the signals and tape games. Then we’d make copies of the tapes, run them ashore, guys would listen.

“Once, I offered to re-do the tape, clean up the commercials. The guys said, ‘No, don’t clean up the commercials. We love the commercials.’ So the commercials stayed.”

Lighty said any sports results were welcomed, any sports discussion well attended. “Even curling. I mean it, even curling,” he said.

There’s been no word that the curling season is in any danger.

“If you don’t go on with your lives,” Lighty said, “the troops feel as if they might as well come home, stack some sandbags outside of San Diego and do our fighting here. That’s what has always been important. People, just go on with your lives.”

Pham agreed.

“The NCAA tournament, the baseball season, those are part of our lives,” he said. “But they’re an even bigger part of the lives of the guys overseas. It’s the common thread for feeling normal.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.