“God, Baseball, and Justice”
A Sermon by Cheryl M. Walker, November 14, 2004
Each Sunday as I drive to church and I past the elementary school on Grove Street I see a group of people playing baseball. I am always tempted to stop and watch for awhile, but it is an indulgence I can't give myself. I don't want to be late for church. But this morning, there was no one playing on the field. That can mean only one thing. The seasons have changed. There are really only two seasons, baseball and no-baseball. I am an unabashed lover of the game. Forget about the wheel, in my mind, baseball is the greatest of human inventions. I absolutely love baseball.
There are few pleasures greater than spending a summer's day at a ball park watching a game. And in some very important ways I have learned many of life's lessons watching baseball. It begins with the ballpark. Each park is different. Unlike many games the dimensions of a baseball field are not standard. A basketball court is the same length no matter the city. A football field is a standard length. In tennis the length and width of the court is always the same. But not a baseball field. No two baseball fields have the exact same dimensions. Oh the distance between the bases is the same in every park. The dimensions at the core of every field are the same, but only the core. In all other ways the fields are unique. Maybe right field is further away then left, or the distance between the field and the stands is closer in one park than another. The dimensions always vary.
But more than just the dimensions of the field, the very look of each park differs too. There are those stately old parks like Wrigley field in Chicago with its ivy covered outfield walls and then there are the brand spanking new parks in San Francisco and Philadelphia with their shiny new technological wonders. And there is the way the grass is mowed into designs and patterns that differ from field to field. And the same type of grass is not used in each park. I can look at the outfield grass and know just which park a game is being played in because they are all different. And that's what makes each of these parks beautiful in their own right, their uniqueness. The core dimensions of the field are mundane and boring, but their differences make them remarkable.
And the ballplayers must respect those differences. They need to know how to play each field. They can't take for granted that just because their home park has a left field that is 410 feet from home plate that all parks have a left field that is 410 feet from home plate. No, they must study and learn and see the differences in each park.
So this is the first lesson that baseball has taught me. We are like ball fields. We are at our core the same. We all have organs that function the same way, blood that courses through our veins. But what makes us beautiful is not what is at our core, but what is different about us. Our dimensions are not the same, some of us are wider and some of us are longer. We are made up of different "grass" that make us look different from one another. And they are grown differently with different patterns and designs and these unique patterns and designs are what make us individuals and also what makes us special.
And like ball players we need to respect these different human ball fields. We must take the time to study and learn and truly see our differences and not expect that we will all be just like our human ball field. Our splendor lays not in what we have in common with all other human ball fields, but in what each of us uniquely brings to the great baseball game of life.
And then there is the game itself. Some people I know who don't like baseball all that much, complain that its too long or that there's not enough action. Or that its too complicated. And there is some truth to that and some fiction as well.
Like life, baseball unfolds. Most of the time it appears very little is going on, there is no action that we can discern. It just all seems pretty mundane. The pitcher throws the ball, gets the ball back and then throws it again. We get up, we do what we do and then we go to sleep only to get up again. But in those seemingly mundane minutes, subtle things are happening. The pitcher didn't just throw the ball, he communicated with the catcher and maybe with the rest of the team. He decided how he was going to throw the ball and where he was going to throw it. The batter is trying to figure out what type of pitch the pitcher will through. Maybe he will look at his coach for a sign or some guidance. Subtle things are going on, changes are happening but they are hard to see. Then in some glorious moment something happens to radically change the game. A home run is hit, or a batter strikes out and the whole tenor of the game is forever changed. It was all the subtleties leading up to that moment that made it happen. And that is the second lesson baseball teaches us. If we will do the small things, then great things will happen.
As for taking so much time, well, baseball has no clock, so it can meander and go on for as long as it takes for a game to be finished. A game may be quick or it may last for what seems like forever. But then again, life has no clock. When we are born we are not told how many minutes we have to play the game of life. We shall play until we are done. What matters is not how many minutes we have but what we do in those minutes and we never know just how many minutes we have. But there is a distinct advantage to a game that has no clock. And it brings me to the third lesson I have learned from baseball, hope. In baseball there is always hope. Until the game is done, there is hope for a victory. There is hope that we may rise above what seems like impossible odds and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. There is always, always hope. Any Boston Red Sox fan can tell you about hope this year. I'll get back to them a little bit later. But while there is hope there is also no guarantee. Sometimes our hopes are fulfilled and sometimes not. Sometimes it seems that we are guaranteed victory but we are brought back to the reality that there are no guarantees. Any Yankees fan can tell you about there not being a guarantee this year. But no matter what happened the game before or the season before, we still maintain hope. There is always the next inning, the next game, the next season. There is always hope.
Baseball is an interesting game. It is a strange mixture of team sport and individual sport. When players are in the field on defense they must play as a team. No one player can play defense by themselves. But when a batter comes to the plate on offense, he comes only as an individual, no two players can bat at the same time. And to win at the game of baseball there must be both group effort and individual effort. If a team can't play defense it will most probably lose because it will give up too many runs. But if there is no individual effort, the team cannot win because it will not score any runs. In a sport like tennis or golf, the individual plays for individual glory. But in baseball the goal of the batter while playing offense is for the greater good of the team. The goal is to score a run so that the team may win. Barry Bonds who may one day end his career as THE consummate batter has said that he would like nothing more in his career than to have his team win a World Series. While he would like to set individual records of achievement, his wish is for the greater good of the team. And this is the next lesson I have learned from baseball. We as a team must work for the greater good of a just society, but it is the effort of individuals that makes that happens. It is when the individual stands up, sometimes as the lone voice, that change begins to happen for the fate of the entire team.
Perhaps the most interesting and maybe most important lesson I have learned from baseball is about of all things failure. And I have been thinking about this lesson a lot in the last few days. It is the batter who can shape the fate of the team. The batter who leads the team to victory. The batter who is responsible for the winning run. But batting in baseball is mostly an exercise in failure. If a batter hits .300 which means that he succeeded at his task of getting a hit 3 out of every 10 times, he is considered a very good batter. But that also means he has failed 7 out of every 10 times. If he bats .400 which means that he succeeds 4 out of every 10 times then he is a superstar, he only failed 6 out of every 10 times. The last time someone did that was in 1953 when Ted Williams batted just slightly over .400 at .407. Time after time a batter will come to the plate and will fail, then fail again, then again and again and again and fail again; and then in one shining moment he will succeed.
After this last election I heard so many people talk about failure and how they had been thoroughly fed up and were ready to give up. People who had spent months working for a victory for the Democrats in the White House and the Senate, or on specific issues like proportional voting in Colorado or defeating anti-gay measures in several states. And I must admit that I too felt dejected after the results from the election. But I thought about baseball and I imagined what if Babe Ruth had decided after the first time he struck out that he would give up baseball. His home run total would have been zero and his teams might never have won a game or a World Series. Or what if he decided to give up after the third time or the fourth time. The same thing, his teams might never have won a thing. No, the batter comes to the plate time and time again knowing that his chances of success are far outweighed by his chances of failure. But he comes anyway. He comes knowing that while he may fail, will probably fail, unless he actually comes to the plate he will never succeed. And if this time doesn't mean success well may the next time will. Or the time after that. So while we suffer defeats in our quest for creating a beloved community, more defeats that successes it seems, we must always keep batting. Because one day, one glorious day we may come to the plate and hit a home run and then that beloved community of peace and justice that we strove so hard for will become a reality. But we have to keep batting.
Yes, sisters and brothers, I love the game of baseball. Can you tell? And I will tell you now that I am a life long, die hard Yankee fan. I was a Yankee fan when the team finished in last place and a Yankee fan when the team won the World Series. And this year, well this year just broke my little heart. We were up 3 games to none against the Red Sox and it seemed all but assured that we would go to the World Series again. But it was not to be. It was as if some cosmic forces were at work. It was as if the hand of God had decided that this year would be the year the Red Sox finally won a World Series. And I needed a reason why.
The Red Sox had not won a World Series in 86 years. Why now? So, I did a little homework and I came up with a reason that works for me. And the reason has to do with God, baseball and justice. Stay with me. Many people think that the reasons the Red Sox had not won a World Series in that long was because way back in 1920 the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees and that God had exacted a revenge on them for making such a stupid trade. But that didn't make much sense to me. If God was going to punish people that long for being stupid, well we were all in a heap of trouble, because we have all done stupid things at some time. And I didn't recall anybody's Scriptures saying anything about God punishing the stupid. No, something else must have made God so upset. And then I found out just what it was.
In 1945, April 16th to be exact, a young black man was given a tryout for the Boston Red Sox. When the team's owner saw him it has been reported that he said, and you'll forgive my language, "What is that Nigger doing on my field?" That young man was Jackie Robinson. The Red Sox then went on to become the very last team to integrate in 1959, and only after an investigation by the Commission Against Discrimination of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. God may ignore or forgive stupidity but God does not take too kindly to injustice. God don't like ugly.
The Red Sox did appear in four World Series after that and in each they lost in the seventh game. And strange things happened. People talk of the 1946 World Series and the ball that would not get out of Johnny Pesky's glove. I recall the 1986 World Series against the Mets and the ball going under the first baseman's glove and the Mets winning the game and eventually the series. To this day I swear that the earth dipped just a little bit. The hand of God came down once again.
And when you have done such an injustice well God requires more than just an I'm sorry. Atonement must come in a different form. You must do more than just live a good life. To atone for injustice one must be a prophetic voice for justice. One has to take the lead in righting a wrong. And this year the Commonwealth of Massachusetts did just that. They have taken the lead in the struggle for equality for same sex couples. They have become a prophetic voice and God has rewarded that voice by giving the Red Sox a World Series victory.
Okay, well maybe I don't really think that God works that way. If God has nothing better to do than worry about the outcome of a baseball game, well God and I need to have a little conversation. But it would be nice if it did work that way. That injustice was punished not with death and damnation but with consigning a baseball team and its fans to suffer the stings of defeat until they became a righteous and prophetic people. A constant reminder that injustice cannot and will not be tolerated. Its just a thought and if it were true then that would be the last lesson we could learn from baseball, do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God or she will make your team lose.
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