Baseball, humility and salvation
Yogi Bear might have been named after Yogi Berra, but Yogi Berra got his nickname because he resembled a yogi sitting cross-legged after games. There is much we can learn from this ten-time World Series Champion Yogi.
Humility? Yogi said, “So I’m ugly. So what! I never saw anyone hit with his face.” He also quipped, “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.” Which he had.
About our spiritual struggle in life, we could quote Berra, “You give one hundred percent in the first half of the game, and if that ain’t enough, in the second half you give what’s left.” In addition, Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up someplace else.”
Some of Yogi Berra’s quotes reflect Christian values. “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too.” Evangelization may be tough: “There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell ‘em.”
Susan Sparks said in “What Baseball Can Teach Us About Faith,” “I like to shake things up and approach ideas through an unexpected perspective. Like a billboard in Minnesota, at the top it said, ‘Minnesota Cremation Society.’ In the middle was a photo of a casket, and underneath, it read, ‘Think outside the box.’”
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously called baseball “the faith of fifty million people.” And Susan Sarandon’s opening lines in the movie Bull Durham said, “I believe in the Church of Baseball . . . For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary, and there are 108 stitches in a baseball.”
There is much wisdom in baseball. “Keep your eye on the ball,” for example. Yankees broadcaster Phil Rizzuto used to make a note “WW” on his scorecard. When asked what it meant, he said, “OH, wasn’t watching.”
We can learn from the humility and sacrifice baseball teaches. Even the best batters strike out. Home-run hitter Aaron Judge struck out one-hundred-nine times in ninety-six games. Sometimes you sacrifice bunt to help the team. Sometimes you sacrifice fly to get a run on someone else’s list of achievements.
There is much we learn from the spirituality of baseball players. The game begins with standing at attention, caps off, as the anthem is sung, like the opening hymn at church. The ballpark is like a cathedral of saints and sinners, cursings and blessings, says John Sexton in Baseball as a Road to God. Baseball, Sexton says, has the capacity to “cause human beings, in the context they don’t think of as religious, to break the plane of ordinary existence into the plane of extraordinary existence.”
If you have witnessed a player making the sign of the cross and saluting heaven after hitting a homerun, or kneeling for a moment before a game, or if you have seen football players huddling in prayer after a game, win or lose, you know that they are in touch with the heavenly plane on a regular basis.
Aaron Judge says his relationship with God is more fulfilling than his success in baseball. He says God has given him this platform [baseball]. Judge says, “build a relationship with Him and that’ll solve all your problems.” We can’t all be Aaron Judge, but we can build that relationship with God.
Susan Sparks says, “When… the bases are loaded, and we find ourselves facing curve balls and sliders… remember this: you are not alone, you are part of a team where grace bats last.”
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