The Magnificent Giants and All Saints Day

All Saints Day has always been special to me because it was my father's birthday. He would never have thought of himself as a saint -- quite the opposite, I'm sure, since he wasn't religious at all -- but to me he embodied all the necessary traits, including the all-important quality of humility. 

Charlie, as he was fondly known by friends and former students, died in 2006 but would have been 90 today. Were he alive, he could have experienced the surpassing joy of today's World Series triumph by his beloved San Francisco Giants (formerly of New York, which is where he came to adore them as a boy). A college history professor, Charlie was also a writer and a great story-teller,which is what made him such popular professor, despite his strict rule that any paper which bore than three misspellings or grammatical errors received an automatic F.

Charlie knew a lot about defeat. He managed many campaigns during his long career in local politics but never had a winner. Many years ago he put together and gave to friends who cared about such things spiral-bound copies of his own account of two magnificent defeats -- that of Xerxes in the second Persian invasion of Athens in 480 B.C., in which "the greatest armada of ships in history up to the Anglo-American amphibious invasions of World War II" was not enough to overcome the crafty Athenians; and that of the New York Giants, up against the Yankees in the 1936 World Series: "The odds favored the Yankees. After all, they had been shut out only twice during the whole season. Only the skinny left arm of Hubbell stood between them and the world championship." It was not enough. Hubbell won the first game but the Yankees went on to decimate the Giants, 18-4 in one game and 13-2 in another. The Giants finally won a Series in 1954, the year I was born. Then there was today's big win by "a band of self-described castoffs and misfits and their shaggy-haired ace" (espn.com). Charlie would have loved it. I'm sure my brother Brian, also a lifelong Giants fan, was doing Charlie's share of the cheering.

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor,
And one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green:
They were all of them saints of God--and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right, for Jesus' sake,
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier,
And one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
And there's not any reason--no, not the least,
Why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still,
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or
In lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.
              Lesbia Scott, set to the tune "Grand Isle"