First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: John 4:1-30
It has struck me, during this season-long farewell to that venerable old relic at Michigan and Trumbull….which we have begun referring to (in hushed and holy tones) as “The Corner”….that our nostalgia has less to do with architecture or athleticism than with relatives and remembered relationships. I love baseball. My father loved it before me. His father loved it before him. And I have now lived long enough to transmit the disease to both my children.
My father lived just long enough to see ball players become prima donnas and crybabies. Those are not my words, but his. Whenever he would hear of a player failing to give his all, surrendering to a minor injury, or holding out for a bigger contract, he would become extremely irritated. At some point in his irritation he would exclaim: “Doesn’t that so and so know that I would give my right arm to be able to play in the major leagues?” (Let the record show that I cleaned up what my father really said.)
I once pointed out to my dad that he would be better off if he offered something other than his right arm in trade. There has been but one major leaguer in the history of baseball who played the game with one arm. (In fact, I will give a dollar to the first person who can tell me his name, following the service.) But my attempt at humor was lost on my father, who would look at me kind of “weird-like” and then mumble: “Oh, you know what I mean.” And I did….know what he meant, that is. It meant that he loved the game and would have given anything to be able to play it passably.
I suppose that only a baseball lover’s daughter would fly in from Atlanta to see tomorrow’s finale with her old man. And I suppose that only a fanatic like her old man would dare stand before you with a sermon entitled “The Theology of Baseball.” Some of you have questioned my sanity. Others, my seriousness. To you I would say: “Hear me out.” Then, decide for yourselves if I be either, neither or both….“sane” or “serious,” I mean.
Does baseball have a theology? Not implicitly! Does baseball reflect a certain theology? I think so! Was Abner Doubleday a theologian? No, he was a general in the Army! But he invented a game which dramatizes a very human predicament, namely, the predicament of trying to measure up to a demanding standard of perfection, and always falling short. Sometimes, far short.
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.
Well, baseball is a lot like that. 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.
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.
I have to tell you that, 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 side that faces failure, even as it hints of grace.
In other times and places, I have quoted the poet Ugo Betti. Betti writes: “To believe in God is to believe that all the rules will be fair and that, in the end, there may be wonderful surprises.” Well, I’ve given that a lot of thought. And I haven’t figured out if I completely believe it. But a friend of mine says: “Test it out on baseball before you apply it to life.”
In baseball, the rules are eminently fair, probably fairer than in life itself. Everybody has an opportunity to bat. Everybody gets the same number of balls and strikes. Over the course of a season, most injustices will be corrected and most breaks will even out. What’s more, baseball’s fairness is accentuated by the lack of a clock. In baseball, you do not run out of time. On most days, unless it rains, you get your full complement of innings. As baseball’s resident theologian, Yogi Berra, was once heard to remark: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
Now everybody thinks that’s funny. It is. But it’s also a brilliant insight. In games such as football or basketball, sometimes it is over before it’s over, in the sense that if there had been a bit more time, it might have all turned out differently.
Real life is less fair than baseball. One of the sad facts about real life is that, for some, it is over before it’s over. The next time you say about someone, that he or she died before their time, or that they got cheated out of their innings, you’ll know what it means to have it be over before it’s over. But not in baseball. Baseball has no clock. The game goes on until everybody has had a fair chance at winning or, at least, playing heroically. Think of what a wonderful world it would be, and how much closer to God’s will and intention, if the rules were always the same for all, where everyone had more or less an ample opportunity, and where it wasn’t over until it was over.
And think of how wonderful it would be if we could be certain that “the end would contain some marvelous surprises.” I think this means that there will always be a chance for wonderful endings, wherein what isn’t supposed to happen may still happen. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, you haven’t. Just when you think that nothing can happen, it does. Just when you master the law of averages, somebody breaks it. The poet is talking about a world in which there is always room for mystery and surprise.
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 marvelous surprises.”
Consider the Samaritan woman. I’ve preached her story before. Obviously, I like it. There’s so much in it. A preacher can do so much with it. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. Right away, we know that something unusual is going on. A devout Jew….a devout male Jew….would not customarily have this kind of dealing with a woman (an issue of gender) or a Samaritan (an issue of race). He asks her for a drink. She says, “What have you to do with me?” That’s a key question. Don’t lose it. Then they talk for awhile about two different kinds of water (“wet your whistle” water versus “quench your thirst” water).
Suddenly the conversation changes from water to husbands. “Go call your husband,” says Jesus. To which she says: “I have no husband.” And Jesus says: “I know.” In fact, Jesus goes on to tell her that she’s gone through five husbands, and is currently living with another guy without benefit of clergy. I think you could say this lady has had a “checkered” past. Jewish law allowed for no divorce. She has had five husbands. She has struck out five times. She is about to strike out again.
Jesus knows all this. I’ve always wondered how he knew it. Did someone tell him? Or did it show? Perhaps it showed in her face….in her eyes….in her shoulders. Is it possible that it shows in us, I mean the way we’ve lived our lives?
Anyway, he knows. He knows it all. Five strikeouts. A sixth in the making. Then it dawns on her, just who he may be. So she asks: “You aren’t by any chance the Messiah, are you?” And he says: “You better believe it, sweetheart.”
At this point, she should be terrified. She is in the presence the “The Standard.” She is talking to the One who is expected to judge the world, condemning sinners, rewarding the righteous. It is enough that she is striking out. But she is striking out in the presence of One who could be called, “The Keeper of the Scoreboard.”
But what she ends up with is the feeling that she has been given another chance. It’s a story about grace. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. And at the end, there may be marvelous surprises. In her day, she figured to be condemned by the rules. Mess up and you’re out. Strike out and you sit down. Boot four in one game and you sit down. Spell the word incorrectly and you sit down. Go through five husbands and you sit down. It’s over.
But it’s not. Nothing is finished until God gets through with it. No one is finished until God gets through with them.
Which brings me to Dwight Gooden. At this writing, Dwight is more or less in the twilight of his career. He pitches for the Indians. The Cleveland Indians. The World-Series-bound Cleveland Indians. Before that he pitched for the Yankees. But his first major league team was the Mets. He was in the major leagues at 18. He won 24 games his first full year. He struck out everybody in sight. He could throw a fast ball clocked at nearly 100 mph. In three short years, his salary shot up to the then-lofty heights of $1.5 million per year. At 22 years old, with a limitless future in front of him, he ended up in a Manhattan treatment center trying to lick a cocaine addiction….his first treatment center.
Before all of Dwight Gooden’s troubles became public, Bob Feller was asked to comment on this young man’s amazing talent. What Feller said is incredible: “Give him a chance to mess up his life, and then we’ll see how good he is.”
Well, that’s one of the chances we get, isn’t it? The chance to mess up our life. Some of us make little messes. Some of us make bigger messes. Some of us get dirty in the messes that other people make. And Feller’s comment recognizes that the measure of a person is the way they come back. How do they pull themselves out of the mess? “Give him a chance to mess up his life, and we’ll find out how good he is.”
But grace says something else. Something more. “Give him a chance to mess up his life, and we’ll find how good God is.”
Four errors.
Five husbands.
1,700 strikeouts.
0 for 21.
28 days in a rehab center….repeated multiple times.
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
Keep your eye pealed for surprises.
And here’s to you, Denny McLain, Jesus loves you more than you will know.
Note: Let the record show that Mark Trotter (who roots for the Padres in San Diego when he isn’t preaching for the United Methodist church in Mission Valley) first suggested the possibility that baseball had an underlying theology. Let the record further show that the very first person who correctly identified a one-armed outfielder named Pete Gray of the St. Louis Browns, was none other than Colin Kaline, Al’s grandson. Colin received a dollar at the first service. Subsequent winners at 9:30 and 11:00 were David Vandegrift and Skip Neilson. And let it be noted that this entire exercise was inspired by the closing of Tiger Stadium and the final game which was played on the Monday following the preaching of this sermon.
