Base
Your Faith In God
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift
of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 3:23
With the World Series spectacular here, we
are reminded of America’s Great Pastime. Baseball is fascinated with measuring
things against impossible standards. Baseball is a game of numbers. Everything is counted and written down
somewhere. You can open the Sport's Section in the Free Press, and you can read
(with good glasses) an entire page of baseball numbers. You can read how your
team did last night, Friday night, and the night before that. You can read how
your team did over the last ten games. You can read how your team did over the
course of an entire season. Those same numbers will tell you how every player
in baseball is doing. RBI's. ERA's. Batting averages. Fielding percentages.
Everything is measured.
The Apostle Paul
talked a lot about what a burden it was to live with standards of perfection
that were impossible to meet. To Paul, those standards were symbolized by what
he called "the Law." And Paul said that sometimes the Law can be like
a curse, forever reminding you of how poorly you're doing.
What's more, you can tell how each player
stands in relationship to every other player ... those who play on the same
team ... those who play on different teams ... those who play the same
position. In fact, you can
go to the bookstore and find an encyclopedia that will enable you to compare
your favorite present-day player with every other player who ever donned a
uniform. I don't think there is any other field of endeavor where an
individual's contribution is so accurately calculated and recorded.
As if that
weren't enough, that record is available for the entire world to see. Your
batting average is printed every day, announced over the radio, and flashed in
bright lights on the stadium scoreboard. It is even carried out to three
decimal points. They don't say: "He hits pretty good." None of that
vague, imprecise stuff. They say: "He hits .286." They even know if
he hits right handers better than left handers, whether he hits better in May
or September, whether he hits better on grass or astroturf, whether he hits
better by day or by night, whether he performs better in the clutch or only
when there is no one on base.
You can't fake it. It's all in the book. But do you know what is so amazing about
this? Nobody's record is very good. Consider the hitters. The very best ones
are lucky to get three hits out of ten tries. Measure that against your job. If
you delivered three times out of ten, you'd be out on your ear. If I preached
three good sermons out of ten, I'd be out on my ear. But if you go three for
ten in baseball, they give you three or four million dollars. And if you do it
several years in a row, they put you in the Hall of Fame.
Consider the
late Mickey Mantle. I remember seeing Mantle play. In fact, I saw some of the
longest balls Mantle ever hit. I was eleven years old when Mickey came up to
the Yankees. And I was a married man with a child of my own when Mickey Mantle
reached the seats off Denny McLain, late one September afternoon, and bid
farewell (forever) to the people of Detroit. Now Mickey Mantle's dead, Denny
McLain is jailed, and I (alone) am left to tell you what Bill Freehan once
acknowledged to me, that Mantle knew what pitch was coming on the day of his
final blast into the upper deck. Which was one of life's nicer gestures, don't
you think, given that the Tigers had clinched the pennant against the Yankees,
just the night before.
In his earlier days, Mickey Mantle never
impressed me as being one of the great intellects of the world. But, as my German grandfather used to say:
"He got late, smart." In fact, the mature Mantle was well worth
listening to on a variety of subjects, ranging from baseball to life in
general.
One day, Mickey Mantle was reminiscing about
his career. He recalled that he had struck out 1,710 times. He also recalled that he had walked 1,734
times. That's 3,444 times up to bat without ever hitting the ball. Think about
that for a minute. You figure that a healthy, full-time player goes to bat
about 500 times a season. Divide 500 into 3,444. "And," says Mantle,
"you can quickly see that I played seven years without ever hitting the
ball."
Nobody's record is very good when measured
against the absolute standard of 1.000. A good bowler can be 75 percent effective much of the time. But even a
great baseball player can't come anywhere near that.
The first time I ever put any of these
thoughts together, the Tigers were known for their woeful inability to hit left
handers. They still can't
hit left handers. But, in that year, they went out and hired themselves an
antidote ... a lethal right-handed bat which came attached to a third baseman
named Bill Madlock. Madlock supposedly feasted on left handers. But on the
morning I first preached these sentiments, Madlock's average was .219. What's
more, in the week just previous, he had gone 0 for 21. In baseball lingo,
that's a week worth of failure. You can look it up.
What we've got here is one side of a
predicament. A very tough
side. You've got a very high and lofty standard. You've got a very measured
game. And you've got the fact that when measured against the standard, nobody's
very good. But you can also say that baseball has a tender side ... a softer
side ... a si Which brings me to Bob Brenly. You probably never heard of Bob.
But he's a recently retired ball player. His last team was the Giants. They're
in San Francisco now (just in case you missed their move from New York, back in
the 50s). Bob Brenly was a catcher. But, for some strange reason, the Giants
occasionally played him at third base. He played third base ... like a catcher.
One day he set a record with four errors in one game. Then, in his final time
at bat ... in the ninth inning ... he hit a home run and the Giants won, 7-6.
That's grace. Grace means that you'll always have another
chance. It doesn't mean that grace will erase your errors. Just as it doesn't
mean that grace will erase your sins. But it does give you a chance to play
over them. "It's not over 'til it's over." "There is always room
for great surprises."
Terry Risser
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014- Terry Risser
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