Every Spring, right around Easter time, the baseball season begins with its Opening Day. Like the preparatory season of Lent, the season is preceded by Spring Training. And like Easter, Opening Day brings new hope to baseball fans. “This could be the year!”
I learned to pray by watching — actually, mostly listening in those days — to baseball. It was Ernie Harwell who was the radio voice of the Detroit Tigers, and I listened religiously when I was a boy. Like a good preacher, he gave energy to the game, and made the poignant moments dramatic. My prayers for home runs or winning hits weren’t always answered, but I found that the answer wasn’t always the important thing. The prayers themselves helped to bring me more fully into the moment, and my enjoyment of the game increased. It made it even more special when once in a while — bam! — something amazing happened.
I learned about right and wrong. You don’t slide into second base with your spikes high, like Ty Cobb did. And even if you have the most uncoordinated kid in the school on your team, you let them bat. Little League teams were supposed to shake hands after the game, win or lose.
I loved baseball, and I played with the kids on my block, but as a 10 year old, I was no good on the field. I was gawky and uncoordinated. When I tried out for our local little league team, there were several practices, and then they read the names of the fifteen players who made the team. Until the very last name was read, I knew that my name would be called next. When I realized that I had been cut, I felt the heat of embarrassment and shame rising in my body, and it took everything I had to keep my friends from seeing me cry until I got to the car, when I jumped into the back seat and sobbed uncontrollably. Maybe the worst part of that memory for me was seeing my Dad so sad for me, and at a complete loss for words. I don’t remember what he said, but I understood, and he understood, that he couldn’t fix it. Some kinds of brokenness are beyond us.
That same year, our church had a spot for me on the men’s softball team. I didn’t understand until much later that it was my Dad who had arranged for me to play, that I was probably too young to be on the team, and that it was his way of helping me to improve.
Just as my Dad showed me the rhythm of attending church each week — how to sit quietly and stand and sing at appropriate times; so did he show me the rites of the baseball games — the symbols used for keeping score, the way to watch the warm ups when a reliever was called in, the mysterious signs that the third base coach flashed. We stood at the seventh inning stretch, and we sang the National Anthem and Take Me Out to the Ballgame. I learned that by paying closer attention, just as in church, my time at the ballpark became a richer experience. This was a lesson in worship.
When I moved to Chicago I became a Cubs fan, and I learned that life is a blessing even when things don’t go the way you plan. Being a fan of any team teaches about life’s vicissitudes, but a losing team can also give one a sense of the wideness of God’s mercy and the sudden and unpredictable joy experienced when confronted with God’s grace.
