Dugout Theologians July 12, 2015 Rev. Jim Magaw This spring my daughter started playing softball. And, for the first time in decades, I found myself with a baseball glove on my hand, playing catch. Throwing the ball with Ella brought back a lot of memories. The smell of the glove, the motion of our bodies, the pop of the ball as it strikes leather--all this took me back to my little league baseball career. I loved playing baseball when I was a kid. I loved everything about it, the sounds and smells, the hopes and dreams it engendered. I even loved the obsession with statistics. During my best season as a little league player, my friend Tim Olson and I kept meticulous track of our personal and team statistics. I was having an incredible year, batting.400 and committing only a few fielding errors. And, because I was a pitcher, I kept track of my earned run average which was so amazingly low that it seemed made up. I was always big for my age, so I was usually 4 or 5 inches taller than most of the other kids, which made for an imposing presence on the pitchers mound. Also, my sister, who was 6 years older than me (and liked to have a little fun with me now and then) had taught me how to scowl on the mound in order to become an even more intimidating figure. 1
You can see my fearsome scowl on the cover of your order of service. I must admit, looking at it now, it appears more cute than it does intimidating, but back then it worked, or I thought it did. At the time I thought I was tough as nails, and that attitude, I'm convinced, made me a pretty effective pitcher. I modeled my pitching technique after Vida Blue, the great Oakland A's player whose wind-up included a really high kick that was both fun and, at least in my mind, distracting to batters. We made it to the finals of our league that year. In the final game of that championship series, I had a no-hitter going, but I wasn't batting well. In fact, nobody on either team was batting well. It was one strike out after another, with a few walks thrown in here and there. In the final inning of that game, both teams finally came alive a little bit. I got on base with a double at the top of the inning, and I scored on a fielding error. So, at the bottom of that inning we were ahead one to nothing. I struck out the first two batters and walked the third batter. That was when Lee Swank came to the plate, with two outs and a runner at first in the last half of the last inning, with his team trailing 1-0. Lee was a big kid, too. Not tall, but big--the kind of kid that wore "husky" sized boys clothing from Sears. We were all a little afraid of Lee. He only rarely managed to make contact with the ball, but when he did, it went a long way. 2
So, when he came to the plate the outfielders backed up toward the fence. On this particular at-bat, Lee came up swinging ferociously. I was sure I would strike him out and the game would be over. But then Lee did something I'd never seen him do, something that he really should not have done, given the situation. He bunted. He bunted with a runner on first and two out in the bottom of the final inning. And it was a great bunt--it just sort of trickled a few feet up the first base line and stopped there. After I recovered from the shock of it, I ran to the ball and threw it to first base. Lee was not a fast runner--he was more of a lumberer than a sprinter--so, even though he had a great head-start on me, I had plenty of time to make the throw to first. I threw the ball and watched as it sailed just over the outstretched hand of the first baseman and went into right field. Our right fielder was Tommy Hoskins. As many of you know, right field is where little league coaches tend to stick the players who may be a little less skilled or less interested than the others, and Tommy was no exception. At the time that my errant throw to first base went into right field, Tommy was a million miles away and he didn't notice as the ball as rolled about a foot away from him and continued rolling all the way to the right field fence. The runner on first base had already scored and Lee Swank was lumbering toward second base as we all screamed at Tommy to get the ball and throw it to second. 3
Finally, he did locate the ball and threw it as hard as he could toward second base. By this time, Lee was thundering toward home plate and our catcher wasn't about to get in his way, so when the throw came to the plate, Lee was safe by a mile. And that was it. Our team had lost the championship game 2-1 because of a fielding error charged to me. It was a long walk off the field to the dugout, and then from the dugout to my parents car. It seemed like none of my great accomplishments of the year mattered. The season had ended in utter, abject failure. But eventually, I was able to come around to this thought--a thought that every disappointed player and fan comes to eventually: "There's always next year." And, in fact, next year, we started with the same energy and enthusiasm that we'd felt the year before. The terrible ending to that game became a mere footnote rather than a defining moment for me and for my team. Whether you are a player or a fan, sports can break your heart. But, perhaps more than any other sport, baseball teaches us that failure is inevitable. The point of the game is to get on base and score runs. "And yet," as Ken Burns pointed out in his "Baseball" documentary series, "the players who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes." 4
In what other aspects of our lives do we consider a failure rate of 70 percent to be really good? For me this is perhaps the greatest lesson of baseball: as a player-- and as a fan--you will struggle and you will fail, your heart will be broken a thousand times, but you keep showing up anyway. You keep your eye on the ball as each play unfolds, and you do your best. And, as those of you who are long-time Pirates fans know, sometimes you have to keep on showing up for a long time before your team starts winning again. I am reminded of the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, as you may remember, received the ultimate punishment from the gods. He was condemned to push a boulder up a hill over and over again. As soon as the boulder reached the top of the hill, it rolled to the bottom and Sisyphus would have to start again. There are various versions of this myth, explaining what his crime had been. But the bottom line in all versions of the story, was that Sisyphus was filled with hubris, filled with the thought that he was more clever than the god, cleverer even than Zeus himself. And so it was that the gods gave him this lesson in eternal frustration. In a commentary on the Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, the famous French existential philosopher, called Sisyphus the ultimate absurd hero. He wrote: "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought 5
with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor... "If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious [of his tragic situation]. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd... "[But] if the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy... Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks... This universe henceforth... seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night- filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." This Camus piece expresses, perhaps as eloquently as anything written, the experience of grappling with our most difficult challenges--our dark nights of the soul--through attention to the task before us. As he said, The struggle itself is enough to fill [one's] heart. Although Camus refers to this kind of heroism as absurd, it is precisely the kind of absurd heroism that has been an important part of every human struggle and every meaningful human story ever told. 6
The work that we do together as a congregation can be thought of in this same way, especially our work in the area of social justice. It can feel like we're pushing that stone up the hill again and again, can't it? But that's the nature of life. We have a choice. We can be pained and aggrieved stoics, suffering terribly every time the stone descends to the bottom of the hill. Or we can find joy in the work that is ahead of us, in the work that comprises our lives--absurd as it may sometimes seem. In the middle of their 20-year losing streak, the Pittsburgh Pirate organization decided to build a brand-new ballpark, a ballpark that is perhaps the best place to play baseball anywhere in the world. In the middle of a 20-year losing streak! And it really is a beautiful ballpark, a wonderful place to watch a game. This church decided, while it was still reeling a bit from the after-shocks of a terrible conflict, to engage in a new $2.5 million dollar building and renovation project. There's a similarity between those two situations, isn't there. And the fact is that now, the Pirates and Sunnyhill are both still pushing their respective boulders up the hill, but things are looking a good bit brighter in recent years than they have in quite some time. In his 1952 baseball novel The Natural, Bernard Malamud wrote: "We have two lives, Roy, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness." Whether you agree with this sentiment or not, there's no doubt that baseball players, coaches and fans tend to be philosophical. 7
The walk from the batter's box or the pitcher's mound to the dugout can seem dreadfully long. The pace of the game gives everyone involved plenty of time for reflection, for thinking about what might have been, for comparing present struggles with past triumphs. But I don't think it's the suffering itself that brings us toward happiness. I think it's the willingness to keep showing up, to take another swing, to throw another pitch, to find value in the task itself that can bring us toward happiness. And in baseball, as in life, while it might sometimes feel like we're all alone pushing our boulders up that hill, the fact is that there are others right there beside us. There is no burden that we have to shoulder entirely on our own. If nothing else, we can be compassionate listeners and witnesses to each other's sorrows. And when things turn around, we can also hold one another's joys. I still remember that sad and disappointing moment from that little league game more than 40 years ago, but in the fullness of time it has become less significant that it was then. When I put on a glove and started playing catch with my daughter a few months ago, what I remembered--what was stirred up by the smells and sounds and movement--was not the misery of the game but the joy and the aspiration. 8
My hope and my prayer for us as individuals and as friends and members of this church is that we'll keep on swinging, that we'll find promise in the task ahead of us, and we'll build a church and a world where joy is an ever-unfolding possibility. May it be so. Amen! 9