Baseball and time


The days of our life are seventy years,
   or perhaps eighty, if we are strong.... (Psalm 90)

Why is baseball such an enduring part of the American psyche? Not because of gargantuan feats of heroism, death-defying catches or mighty blasts that clear the bases; not because the Red Sox have vaulted from "the working definition of hell" in 2011 and 2012 (ESPN SportsCenter) to world champions in 2013.

Quite the contrary: The sport is intimately familiar to us because it unfolds on a scale that approximates that of our lives. How long will a given game be? No one knows. Nine dull innings, 26 record-setting innings? How long does each inning last? How many pitches? Enough by the third inning to send the starter to the showers, or a masterly demonstration of brevity that will stand forever in the record books (Charley "Red" Barrett in 1944, playing for the Boston Braves, who shut out the Cincinnati Reds 2-0 in a mere 58 pitches)? How long will our lives be--seventy years, perhaps 80 if we are lucky? Unless we are seriously ill or faced with a dire prognosis, there is simply no way to know.

This is why Yogi Berra's truism is so poignant: "It's never over 'till it's over." Some dismiss this as this a typical example of his "mangled" speech, but in fact he was uttering a simple fact of life and of baseball. How refreshing, how life-giving this is to not know when one's end will come, or when the end of the game is imminent. In football, with one team down by two touchdowns with a minute to go, there is no hope. The final seconds tick off the clock innocuously as game-winning celebrations have already begun on the sidelines.

Would we desire this of our own lives? That when our death sentence is pronounced ("you have a month to live") our family and friends wander off to other pursuits? No, we say! Stay with us! And so in baseball we remain faithful until the last out is recorded, bright in the "assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11), knowing that anything is possible as long as we have one last breath to draw. And so we live!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LET CREATION SING

Image
(From Sunday, March 11, 2018) Sometimes I go outside and try to feel how the breezes are blowing not around but through my body. I am a porous thing of the wind, miraculously held in place by skin -- or, as quantum physics might tell us, -- a holistic entanglement of immaterial energy waves, as are all material things. This dissolves the superior view of human-hood over against creation, of which I find myself frequently guilty, and place me in solidarity with all that is around me, animate and inanimate. The experience of being in solidarity with God's creation is a form of prayer. Listen, and you can hear all creation singing. Everywhere there is life, there is song. The Bible tell us that the entire breadth of creation shares equally with human being in actively praising God. "Let the sea roar, and all that fills it” we sing in Psalm 96, "let the field exult, and everything in it" (vv. Ilb-12a; RSV). In Psalm 98, “Let the floods clap th
Read more

The heart of worship

Image
Yesterday we reflected on works righteousness as if affects philanthropic giving. The statistics seem to suggest that large donors give generally not out of genuine concern for the needs of humanity, in particular the poor, but in order to be noticed. We give to see our names on a building, or to be placed in the top 10 list of donors to our university, or to make a lasting impact on the life of some nonprofit institution for which we will be remembered. (James 2:15-16: "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?") This same attitude dominates the life of our congregations, at the expense of what we need most -- the growing awareness within each of us of the light of Christ which burns at the center of our being. In many parishes activity is perceived to be the main sign of life. (We have given up on growt
Read more

Feed My Sheep

Image
Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley, Ohio, which last year merged with Capital University across the street, has a new dean who is widely admired. In a recent edition of her weekly newsletter, Dean Kathryn Kleinhans talked about the state of seminary education across the ELCA: “The numbers are out. This year the seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – together – are graduating a total of 114 students available for call. That’s not even two for each of the ELCA’s 65 synods. Geographical restrictions limit even further the number of candidates available for a call anywhere in the church. Any of our bishops will tell you that the need is much greater than that!" Why are there so few seminary graduates? It's complicated, but the bottom line is that the ELCA itself is struggling. Congregations are closing or merging (and members are always lost in mergers), few are flourishing, and those who are somewhere in between are cutting
Read more