First Pitch

Yesterday was opening day and it wasn’t lost on me that the first pitch of the first game of the 2013 baseball season occurred the night before, on Easter Sunday. How appropriate. Easter is the day of hope and renewal. It’s the day we Christians consider “the big one.” It’s the day we know God has final say and nothing is bigger, or more permanent than Him. Simply put, Easter says “God is.” He’s life, love and hope.

            The funny thing is, I see baseball in much the same way. Baseball isn’t merely a game. It’s a metaphor for the ups and downs of life and ultimately for the miracle that is God and what took place on Easter. No matter how bleak and dismal things may appear, when I see that cut diamond and the fielders take their positions, when I watch the pitcher wind up and deliver that very first pitch, I know there is a reason to hope.

            Baseball. I have an aunt who turns sixty-nine this year; she’s eleven years younger than my dad. They are different as can be. Yet, there my dad and I were in 1968, around my ninth birthday, sitting in Shea Stadium with my aunt watching a young New York Mets pitcher named Tom Seaver face Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants. Forty-four years later and I can still smell the grass; I can still see Seaver’s wind up. That night, I became a Mets fan. Not a season has gone by that I haven’t believed on opening day that my Mets would win the World Series.

            It was easy back then. A season later, 1969, the Mets shocked the sports world by winning the World Series over the vaunted Baltimore Orioles. Earlier that season, a famous Chicago politician scoffed at the Mets chances of even catching his beloved Cubs. “A man will walk on the moon before the Mets ever win a pennant.” July, 1969, I sat transfixed in my living room as astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the immortal words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he stepped onto the lunar surface. The mayor of Chicago was never better at predicting the future.

            The Mets won and a ten year old boy had his faith rewarded. There was no heartache, no lost season. There was only joy. I decided then and there that God was a Mets fan.

            Opening days came and went after the miracle of 1969. And there were more lost seasons, more disappointments, than successes. The Mets only made it to the post-season one more time until I was a married man a few years removed from law school. For most of those years – 1970 until the early 1980s, baseball was disappointment and heartache. Great players arrived too late in their careers to lead the Mets to victory, young players didn’t meet expectations; and I saw – as my heroes like Tom Seaver were traded – that baseball was a business, not a passion. Yet every opening day I believed this was the year.

            I vowed when we had children that they too would love baseball. Sure enough, shortly after our older son was born I came home with a Mets sleeper. A dozen pictures were taken of our little man in that orange and blue striped outfit with “Mr. Met” prominently displayed. Nine years later that “onside” was pulled out of a zip-lock bag and put on our second son.

            Dinners were filled with talk of baseball. It was the Mets, always the Mets, in our house. When our younger son was just over three he sat patiently on the couch as I watched the 2000 Mets get first one, then two, and finally three ninth inning outs to beat the Giants and advance in the playoffs. I lofted my young son over my shoulders and ran through the living room yelling “Mets win! Mets win!” His shrieking shouts of glee, “Daddy’s crazy,” rang through the house.

            Baseball mattered in our house. It was a bond between my sons and me. And, it helped define the seasons of our family. Every spring, every opening day, was met with anticipation and hope. Spring turned to summer and trips to games which had been scheduled back in the heady days of spring when we all believed this was “the year” were upon us. Those road trips: to DC or Baltimore, Atlanta or Philadelphia and yes even New York, became part of the family atlas.

            Summer trips to Seattle included a Mariners game. A business trip to Indianapolis included a triple A game. We’d head into Richmond – or Lynchburg – for minor league action. Visits to my folks in Raleigh would mean a Durham Bulls or Zebulon Mud Cats game. Baseball and summer were woven into our family’s DNA.

            Opening day. I began a family tradition with our first son. He was eight and in third grade. I sent a note into his teacher. “I will pick him up at noon;” simple, declarative words. But, it was opening day. We would get hot dogs, popcorn and chips, and set up stadium chairs in the den. We’d rise for the National anthem, baseball hats over our hearts, then watch the first pitch. It would begin, a new season, as we – just father and son – would watch game after game on opening day. Before dark, we’d have a catch.

            Every year, every opening day, ten years through our older son’s teens and then our younger son’s elementary and middle school days, there we were. Opening day was spring. Opening day was family. But opening day couldn’t survive an arrest. I was wrong. I realized, when I told my son baseball mirrors life. Nothing in baseball compares to divorce or imprisonment. Baseball isn’t life. Life is harsh, and unforgiving, and tear filled. Baseball is always about next spring, next opening day.

            Maybe that’s what draws me back each year. Just before Christmas, the reports start filtering in from the mid-winter baseball owners meeting. It’s hot stove league time and trades, contract extensions, and manager hirings run across ESPN’s sports ticker. It’s cold and drizzling outside, the days dreary and gray. But, the sports network breaks into its broadcast with news from Peter Gammons or Buster Olney on a huge signing. The report always begins with “All-star pitcher,” or “MVP runner up …” and I hold my breath and wait, hoping its news on my Mets.

            Even when it’s not (after all, the Mets owner, Fred Wilpon, with millions owed to the Bernie Madoff trustee, has begun the process of cutting salary and rebuilding the franchise with young ball players), I still listen intently calculating the relative merits of the move. I look at my calendar and smile. I know there are only sixty-one days until pitchers and catchers report, only sixty-one days until the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues rebud into existence.

            Five World Series have come and gone since my life unalterably changed that hot August day in 2008. Five opening days followed each winter. And each time, as each opening day approached, I began to feel more hopeful. That’s opening day, that’s the first pitch; I knew it: hope.

            I used to tell my sons baseball was a metaphor for life. I forgot so much of my rationale for that philosophy as I struggled with the heartbreak of separation and divorce, and the daily battles inside prison as I tried to negotiate my way around violence, ignorance, and filth. Then, spring would draw near. Days would lengthen, Lent would begin and somehow each day my thoughts would go back, back to earlier springs, earlier opening days, earlier first pitches. I hear the words from Psalm 27 about waiting, waiting for the Lord, or Micah telling anyone who would listen he would be lifted out of the darkness. In my mind’s eye I smelled it, the fresh grass from the infield.

            I wasn’t so far off when I told my boys that on the seventh day God created baseball. After all, it’s about hope, and miracles, perseverance and faith. And, it’s about renewal every spring.

            I saw the first pitch yesterday and I knew, this is the year.

This is our Year

Last night, the New York Rangers defeated the Washington Capitals in playoff game 7.  It reminded me of an incident years ago, an incident I’ll never forget.

I’m a sports nut and I find many life lessons, shall we say, in sports.  With the exception of football, I am a New York fan through and through.  And that is tough at times; especially when your baseball team (the Mets) can count only two World Series Championships, your basketball team hasn’t won since 1973, and your hockey team, well. . .

Patience.  I think about that word, that virtue a great deal.  I’m not a patient man.  And yet, with my teams, I have the patience of Job.  Every spring I prepare for baseball knowing “this is our year”.  And every year – except for two – my heart is broken by October.  And still, as winter rolls in I say “wait ‘til spring.  We’ll get em next year.”

And then there’s hockey and the New York Rangers.  I discovered hockey as a little boy, eight or nine years old.  Ironically, I can’t even skate.  But watching those guys fly around the ice, I was transfixed.  And the Rangers?  They played at Madison Square Garden; their jerseys were red, white and blue; and they were New York’s team.  It was then I learned of the curse.  “Rangers haven’t won since 1940”, I was told.  It didn’t matter.   I knew they’d win.

And year in and year out they wouldn’t.  Not in the ‘60’s, or the ‘70’s, or the ‘80’s.  Years would come and go and the Rangers wouldn’t win.  Not once in all those years did I give up on the team.  “That’s what a fan does”, I’d tell myself.  And I’d always know there was next year.

Time moved ahead to 1994.  We were living in Virginia.  It was spring and the Rangers had the best record in hockey.  A future hall of famer – Mark Messier – had signed with the Rangers at the beginning of the season and he had promised “the cup” would come to New York.  All season it seemed that way.  The Rangers were unstoppable.

We only had one son at that point.  He turned six during the hockey season and he was a “little Larry”.  Every night, as we sat down to dinner, we’d talk sports.  I’d tell him about memories of baseball, football, basketball and hockey games.  And I’d tell him “this is the year the curse is lifted . . . the Rangers are gonna win.”

The playoffs began and it looked as though once again the Rangers would break my heart.  More than once they faced elimination; more than once Messier would come out and “guarantee” a victory.  Sudden-death overtime games, it didn’t matter.  Somehow the Rangers survived and lived to play one more day.

I would sit up late into the night and watch every second of every game and then the next day replay it for our son who’d sit spellbound as I described yet another improbable win.

And then it came down to game 7, in the Garden, for the Cup.  Our six year old was fast asleep but I’d promised him “I’ll wake you when we win”.  The clock ticked down, so slowly it seemed.  And then there was just thirty seconds left.  “What are you doing?” my wife asked as I ran up the stairs to lift our sleeping son in my arms.  “I promised him.  He needs to see this,” I said and I held him close as the clock clicked down, “10, 9. . .”  They panned the arena and old men, men from the era of World War II and Korea; large lumbering construction workers, wept with joy.  Fifty four years and the Rangers finally won!

Natalie Merchant’s song “These Are the Days” played on the Garden sound system and Messier and his teammates skated around the rink with the Stanley Cup above their heads and I, I held my son close and whispered over and over “I told you they’d win.  You always have to believe.”

That message resonates with me.  Sometimes it sounds like a tired cliché, but the truth is, you have to be patient and believe.  It’s a sports metaphor, but I’ve come to understand through this experience, it’s also a definition of faith.  “Be patient and believe.”

Last night, the Rangers won another Game 7 playoff game.  I couldn’t help but think of 1994 and wonder, with so much facing me, could this be the year?

Correlations

Webster’s defines correlation as “connections in a systematic way”.  A few things struck me this week that brought that word home.

I was helping “Fitty” with a self-awareness paper for his philosophy class.  “Fitty” (named for the rapper 50 cent) is a 21 year-old kid who earned his GED just last spring.  We were able to get him tested and into the college program.  Nice kid; shy (I wrote his graduation speech and helped him prepare for it); decent.

As I read his paper I was suddenly surprised by what I read.  Fitty, two years into a four-year bid, has five kids by three different women.  Five children?  That I was surprised is in itself surprising.  I am, in more ways than my color, a minority in here.  The simple fact that I was married and only had children with one woman (my then wife) stands out.

There’s “Dre” with seven kids by four women and “7 ½ mile”, four kids, two women.  The biggest?  “Mouse”.  He just turned 36 and is finishing up nine years. He has ten (that’s right, ten) kids by five women.

Want to know the correlations?  Every one of these guys came from single parent homes. Every single guy had half-brothers and half-sisters.  Everyone has uncles, brothers, cousins in prison.  And each guy who has fathered multiple children with multiple women has left these women to get support for their kids from government aid.

Their fathers abandoned them; their mothers ran around; they did the same thing.  It’s a vicious cycle and nothing going on in prison is going to break it.  In fact, prison exacerbates the situation.  I don’t know what the answer is, but I know neither liberals nor conservatives have the solution.

These young guys need to get in committed relationships and support their kids.  If they don’t, their sons will, undoubtedly, end up here as well.

Here’s another correlation I discovered this week:  stupid remarks based on religious ignorance.  Saturday was Yom Kippur, the most somber Holy day of the Jewish faith, a day of fasting and atoning for your sins.  The Jewish community here – real Jews, not “carrot stick eating” Jewish guys (guys who sign up for Jewish services to get on the kosher meal plan) number less than ten.  To have any service you must have 5 percent.  Four were available for Saturday services – service cancelled.  As bad as that was, two guys in the building got upset because our laundry connection – Jewish guy – couldn’t go to laundry Saturday and get new sheets.  “Dumb ass Jew” these two geniuses spouted off.

So I had to explain how Sandy Koufax missed a World Series start because of Yom Kippur.  Guys only know what they know and are ignorant to other religions, other views. 

Which leads me to the genius preacher introducing Rick Perry this past weekend who declared Mormonism a “cult”.  I’m no theologian, but I seem to recall in my Bible reading something about a few thousand people belonging to a group called “the way”.  These folks believed an itinerant preacher was the son of God; they believed He made the lame walk, the blind see.  They bought into some goofy notion about forgiveness and mercy and compassion.  Oh yeah, and they believed this crazy preacher died for their sins and somehow in the greatest miracle ever, was resurrected.

Unfortunately, for too many American Christians, we’ve forgotten our “cult-like” roots.  We’ve forgotten our way.  We condemn other faiths.  We create idols out of National symbols and justify assassinations and war.  We sit in our pews in church while 17 million children in this country go to bed hungry.  We condemn 2.3 million to prison thinking they had it coming, they broke the law, not realizing God’s ordinance requires mercy, forgiveness and compassion.

We are ignorant of our own religious roots.  Perhaps we could all use a day of atonement.