February is almost in the rearview mirror, and I am not complaining. Some Big News this week was that the New York Yankees baseball organization has dropped its infamous beard ban, which dated back to legendary owner, the late George Steinbrenner.
This news, of course reminded me of the classic TheSimpsons episode, Homer at the Bat, wherein the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team has a winning season led by Homer. However, Mr. Burns makes a large bet that the team will win the playoff and brings in nine ringers from the “big leagues” to ensure his success. Mr. Burns begins to micro-manage and hilarity ensues. For example. he kicks Don Mattingly off the team for failing to shave off his (non-existent) sideburns.
Which just goes to prove that truly there is nothing that cannot be related back to a Simpsons episode.
Or to the Bible:
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. — 1 Corinthians 9:25
I have had quite a busy 10 days and this week will be pretty busy too. I am home, but the laundry is piling up and I have a lot of furniture to rearrange following DN loading up a truck with stuff! (We drove back to our flyover city together on Saturday and he rented a truck.)
He did it all himself–a twin bed with mattress, a dresser, a large antique cradle, a wing chair, numerous bins, etc…and a dining room set from Facebook Marketplace, which he had to drive to Eureka to pick up! Then he drove it all back to Mahomet and unloaded it. It’s great to be young and fit. (The boy was in Kansas City so unavailable to help.) All this after spending 2 1/2 hours in the car with his mother-in-law! (We can talk for hours.)
I was pooped after all this, but got up and went to church and Sunday School. We had a guest teacher in Sunday School–Dr. Hans Madueme, professor of theological Studies at Covenant College in Georgia. He is an MD, MDiv and PhD. Quite a guy. It was a great class about science and faith, creation and original sin. We also had a good sermon on Psalm 7:
God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; 13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.
(Psalm 7:11-12)
I felt intellectually renewed, stimulated and refreshed!
Well, I sure had fun over the past week with darling daughter #2 and the sweet prairie girls…
…who are learning the art of estate sale-ing (and waiting in line)…
…where the Hibiscus are the size of platters…and the water lilies bloom…
…and Happy Hour popsicles are standard…
But I am glad to be home and back to my old routine.
Our prayers are with the the congregation of the historic First Baptist Dallas which burned down over the weekend. But as their Pastor Robert Jeffress said after fire, “I’m grateful that the church is not bricks or mortar or wood, it’s people. And the people of God will endure. First Baptist Dallas will endure and we thank so many of our friends around the country who are praying for us right now.”
And this was great:
Let us love and sing and wonder, Let us praise the Savior’s Name! He has hushed the law’s loud thunder, He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame. He has washed us with His blood, He has brought us nigh to God.
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Baseball season has commenced and the home team is off to a ho hum start. Not that I really care, but caring about baseball is definitely a thing in our flyover city. Anyway, it is a good excuse to watch Major League (1989), a silly movie that I love.
As games go, baseball is the greatest. This is a thoughtful piece about just that. “Unlike other sports, baseball celebrates the human being over the ball, for in baseball, runs are never tallied by the location of the ball but only when the baserunner makes it home. Scoring does not come through conquest but at the end of a long treacherous journey back home.”
Love of baseball was something that my grandfather and I had in common. As a child, I would write him letters about the Cardinal exploits during the long, boring summers. He was a diehard Red Sox fan and, at the time (the sixties), I was a diehard Cardinal fan. Bunker had played ball growing up and he was on the University of Vermont team. He must have been pretty good as he was traveling with the team as a freshman.
He dropped out of college after his freshman year to scout out his prospects in different branches of the military during WWI. The war ended before he could sign up and he never returned to college. School and Bunker never clicked. As you recall, he was asked to leave several prep schools. I’m not sure he ever actually graduated from high school, but he made it to college anyway and got to play ball while he was there. He was a team player, a Scotsman and, therefore I suppose, clannish. Throughout his life he belonged to a veriety of men’s clubs–the Masons, the North Chester Club, various fishing groups.
Bunker is 2nd from the left.
And he continued to play competitive sports.
Well, I digress. One thought leads to another. And that reminds me, today is our pater’s birthday (1922). He and Bunker got along fine and respected each other although they were very different. They agreed about the basics and shared a gracious manner.
Rejoice in the day. Take a few moments to remember those who came before you.
“In my soul the afternoon grows wider and I reflect.”
A few weeks ago, after I watched the movie 42 (2013), I started reading up a bit about Jackie Robinson and I came across the book The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn.
It was a bestseller when it was published in 1971. I bought a used copy online and started reading. It is really good! I was a big fan in the mid-sixties when I was a little girl, and although I am not a big baseball fan anymore, I have always contended that it is the best sport. This is because everyone, from little children to old ladies, can understand it. It is not an overly violent game and finesse wins over brute force. Indeed, it is a majestic and heroic game where one man stands up alone against nine players of the other team–sometimes in front of thousands of people.
You may recall that the famous 20th century poet Marianne Moore was a huge fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and wrote poems about them.
Anyway, Roger Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, a hop, skip and a jump from Ebbets Field where the Dodgers played. He lived and breathed the game. After college he went to work as a night copyboy at the New York Herald Tribune. His descriptions of growing up and of being a fledgling newspaper writer are funny, moving and detailed. I am really enjoying it.
As you know, our grandfather, ANC Jr., was a newspaperman who worked on the New York Times as well as the Herald Tribune, so this is especially interesting as a window into mid century journalism, which bears absolutely no similarity to today’s digital scribbling. These writers worked hard and took pride in their work. They were good writers.
So if you are so inclined, I highly recommend The Boys of Summer.
I should mention that Brooks Robinson, the Hall of Famer who played all 23 years of his professional baseball career with the Baltimore Orioles, died last week. He was my favorite non-Cardinal back in the day. He had class. Also Adam Wainwright retired last weekend after quite a career in St. Louis. He has class too. (And look at that wingspan.)
Unlike most, a ball player must confront two deaths. First, between the ages of thirty and forty he perishes as an athlete. Although he looks trim and feels vigorous and retains unusual coordination, the superlative reflexes, the major league reflexes, pass on. At a point when many of his classmates are newly confident and rising in other fields, he finds that he can no longer hit a very good fast ball or reach a grounder four strides to his right. At thirty-five he is is experiencing the truth of finality. As his major league career is ending, all things will end. However he sprang, he was always earthbound. Mortality embraces him. The golden age has passed in a moment. So will all things. So will all moments.
(Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer)
In other news, bears are causing problems in of all places Japan! Indeed, the Japanese have deployed giant robot wolves to intimidate marauding bears. This is not science fiction.
The other night I watched 42 (2013) starring Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play Major League Baseball, and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey. I had seen it before and liked it, but I was really struck by it this time around.
Obviously Jackie Robinson is the heroic figure at the center of the film. He blazed an amazing and courageous trail. But I have to say, I found the character of Branch Rickey, co-owner, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to be equally fascinating. Why did he do what he did? Why did he take it upon himself to integrate the Dodgers and thereby professional baseball? At one point in the film Rickey explains that his inspiration for bringing Robinson on to the team was the ill-treatment he saw received by his black catcher Charles Thomas on the Ohio Wesleyan baseball team, which he coached in 1903 and 1904, and feeling that he hadn’t done enough to help him. Granted, but the movie also seems to suggest that a large part of what motivated him was his Christian faith.
When Rickey decides that Robinson is the man to do the job, one of his main reasons is “He’s a Methodist, I’m a Methodist… And God’s a Methodist; We can’t go wrong.” He is not kidding.
He also tells Robinson after one of many altercations, “I want a player who’s got the guts not to fight back. People aren’t gonna like this. They’re gonna do anything to get you to react. Echo a curse with a curse and, uh, they’ll hear only yours. Follow a blow with a blow and they’ll say, ‘The Negro lost his temper.’ That ‘The Negro does not belong.’ Your enemy will be out in force… and you cannot meet him on his own low ground. We win with hitting, running, fielding. Only that. We win if the world is convinced of two things: That you are a fine gentleman and a great baseball player. Like our Savior… you gotta have the guts… to turn the other cheek. Can you do it?”
I think Martin Luther King would have agreed.
And there is this exchange after the racist manager of the Phillies has bated Robinson mercilessly:
Robinson: Do you know what it’s like, having someone do this to you?
Rickey: No. No. You do. You’re the one living the sermon. In the wilderness. Forty days. All of it. Only you.
Robinson: And not a damn thing I can do about it.
Rickey: Of course there is! You can stand up and hit! You can get on base and you can score! You can win this game for us! We need you! Everyone needs you.
Anyway, I salute Branch Rickey: preach!
Bonus: This movie also stars Lucas Black as Robinson’s teammate Pee Wee Reese. “Maybe tomorrow, we’ll all wear 42, so nobody could tell us apart.”
It is the last day of July. Baseball has (kind of) started and I can’t say I care much. But here’s a throwback from 1966 when our Big Brother was in 9th grade and played on the CODASCO “C” team.
They look so young. Our BB is in the front row, third from the right. His best friend is next to him in the middle of the row. He has at least 7 inches to grow! His other friend Mike is directly behind him (obscured) and had about a foot to grow! Such babes. Our brother played third base.
I remember going to see several Cardinals games at the old Busch Stadium with all three of those boys. It was always so much fun to be around them! Though pushing 70 now (!), they are still nice boys.
Well, besides looking nostalgically backwards, I have been reading more Lovejoy.
“Cheerful adversity is vaguely entertaining, but even friends steer clear of doom.”
(Gold By Gemini)
I also searched high and low for my copy of Knowing God, having read about the passing of J.I. Packer last week. I have yet to find by book, but I have read a lot about Packer and listened to an interesting interview with Packer and John Piper. Packer was an evangelical and a lifelong Anglican, someone with whom I can identify. He spent the first half of his life in England and the second half in Canada but was perhaps most popular in the United States. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential theological popularizers of the twentieth century. Like the Puritans he loved, Packer believed that the Christian faith is based on clear thinking while at the same time engaging the heart. According to Justin Taylor, he saw himself as “a voice that called people back to old paths of truth and wisdom.” His entire life was spent resisting the idea that “the newer is the truer, only what is recent is decent, every shift of ground is a step forward, and every latest word must be hailed as the last word on its subject.”
Knowing God was given to me in 1976 as a Christmas present by a young man at Williams College who was in a Bible study I attended. He was a little older than everyone because he had taken a year or two off to travel in Africa. He was certainly not your typical Williams student. He was the first person outside my family who recognized that I was perhaps spiritually deeper than the flakey chick most people saw. I’m not sure what became of Joe, but I’m pretty sure he was headed to divinity school. It is good to be reminded of such people–the ones who encourage and nudge you along the way.
This is a good song to listen to in the car on the drive to work–I mean who doesn’t like to sing along with all those “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” lines? But it’s especially beneficial when you are bummed out because Mike Matheny got fired.
Matheny leaves the Cardinals after becoming the only manager to lead his team to four playoff appearances in his first four seasons; and he has never had a losing season, even this one in which the team was 47-46 before Sunday’s game. He blames no one but himself for the team’s uninspiring 2018 season. He says he’s anxious “to see where my life is being guided and see what doors are open and what (God) is going to do.”
I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:11-13)
Indeed, Big Mike appears to have taken it all in stride and shown himself once again to be the classy, Christian gentleman he is. The haters can sit on a tack.
I should also point out that today is the OM’s birthday. Bon anniversaire, Pappy!
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16)
So the Cardinals are doing quite well–despite all the nay-sayers. I am not surprised. The Cardinals always pump up their mojo during the end of the season. We are hitting away and without one big star hitter in particular leading the way.
I am not worried about that wild card spot.
And, please, all you Matheny-haters, take a chill pill!
(Okay, we lost last night, but we scored 6 runs and gave them a run for their money.)
So the Cardinals have won the NLDS and move on now to the NLCS against the San Francisco Giants. Gone are the days of just winning the National League pennant. Like everything else, baseball has gotten pretty complicated. Nevertheless, we are, of course, pretty darn excited about it here in flyover country!
And let me just say, you have to love a sport where it isn’t always the superstars who are the heroes. Sometimes it’s a dude like Matt Adams, affectionately know as “Big City”, who saves the day.
It’s a team sport where everyone works together, but at the same time, each guy has to stand up in front of 47,000+ screaming spectators and face off alone against the entire opposing team. Once in awhile he hits what turns out to be a game-winning homerun and that is awesome.
Yes, we love Matt Adams and we love our Cardinals. What’s not to love? Haters gonna hate, but as my mother used to say, “They’re just jealous.”
dual personalities 