Lessons from a Baseball Team
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Though I’ve been a Royals fan since the team’s inception in 1969, I wasn’t so much impressed by their recent World Series victory as I was by the way they won: Exhibiting qualities that I seek and that I believe are sorely needed by skeptics searching for God.
Some would describe me as a pessimist. I think of myself as a realist. Had I been a member of the Royals team in the deciding game of the World Series against the New York Mets on Nov. 1 – having been shut out for eight innings by the Mets’ excellent pitching and losing 2-0 – I would have said, “Time to go home, boys. Games over. We have two more opportunities to win the series in Kansas City.”
That’s not how the
Royals think. It's a cliché, but they really never give up. And with a combination of errors by the
opposing team and solid hitting on their part, they won the game, 7-2, in 12
innings.
It wasn’t a fluke. It
was their eighth comeback in post-season play and the sixth time they had
overcome a deficit of at least two runs. This post-season, they scored 51 runs
in the eighth inning or later.
How unusual is that? No
other team in major league history has come close. The closest were the 2002
Los Angeles Angels with 36, according to ESPN.
This is the spot in
a sports story where a writer inserts a quote from a player or manager, but as I
wrote at the outset, this is not a sports story. This is about life, skeptics’
search for God and what we can learn from a baseball team.
The first is perseverance, which, according to the
dictionary, means persisting in an enterprise or undertaking “in spite of
counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement.” Those three apparent
obstacles are not lacking in today’s world. Perhaps they never were.
We skeptics are
especially vulnerable to succumbing to them because we question everything and
everybody, including ourselves. Questioning is what humans do to one extent or
another, and our search for God will never be successful without a dogged
determination to continue searching with openness and patience despite not
having all the answers.
Another lesson from
the Royals is the sense of community and
solidarity with others. I can only imagine the rivalry and jealousy that
can occur on a major-league baseball team. Egos, salaries and fame are
enormous. How easily can those egos be bruised and hostilities emerge?
Undoubtedly, the
Royals were not dispensed from such problems, but the commentators and players
have consistently remarked on the team’s sense of community, on their solidarity. This
extended to the Royals’ fans, with whom the team appears to have a passionate love
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The search for God
requires thoughtfulness and self-examination, but not isolation. We are in this
search together, and the more we can relate to others and help each other, the
more successful it will be.
Confidence is another obvious trait of the Royals and everybody who wants
to succeed at anything. It's not a lack of humility. I’ve written before about Christian humility, promoting
the idea that for Christians, humility is not wimpiness but another form of
honesty. It’s a matter of assessing yourself accurately, neither exaggerating
nor minimizing your talent or qualities, and knowing what you’re capable of.
In a skeptic’s search
for God, confidence is related to trust in God, which is hard to develop. True,
it may be a goal of the search for
God but it also must accompany it, even if incrementally.
Finally, I believe
the search for God must be joyful.
One of the characteristics of the Royals that is so noticeable is the
unquenchable fun with which they play. Catcher Salvador Perez, named the World
Series’ most valuable player, epitomizes it. After every winning game, Perez
never failed to dump a barrel of water on the heads of players being
interviewed by the media.
It’s a reminder that
despite the fact that many players are being paid the equivalent of the salary
of the CEO of a medium-sized company, it’s still a game, played by grown kids.
The baseball season is long. The players go through periods of victory and
defeat. They get tired, injured and banged around, no one more so than catchers
like Perez. But I believe most are in it for the fun.
Considering the
payoff, people searching for God should be equally joyful. I can’t help
thinking about Pope Francis, whose first official document as pope wasn’t about
sin or repentance but about the “Joy of the Gospel.”
Timothy Eagan, a
contributor to the New York Times op-ed pages, earlier this year wrote this
about the pope:
“Last year, he was
asked about his secret to happiness. He said, slow down. Take time off. Live
and let live. Don’t proselytize. Work for peace. Work at a job that offers
basic human dignity. Don’t hold on to negative feelings. Move calmly through
life. Enjoy art, books and playfulness.”
If he knew more about baseball, the pope would be a Royals
fan.
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