Baseball, Ice Cream, and Hope

This summer it has been my privilege to coach my son's 9-10 year old little league baseball team. It's been a long and rough season for the West St. Paul A's, as we started the season 0-14.  Problems at the plate and in the field have plagued our team, but our players have been improving as the season goes along, which is really the most important thing.  But wins have been hard to come by for our team.  

A couple of weeks ago we played our regularly scheduled game, and something strange happened: we took the lead in the first inning.  After the inning was over, we were ahead 3-2.  And then the next inning came and we added on to that lead.  By the last inning of the game, the score was 13-4 in our favor.  As the coach I was excited because I really wanted our team to get a taste of victory, and to be able to celebrate a job well done together, and to finally be able to say that we won a game.  

I had previously told our team that at the time of our first win, I would buy them all ice cream from the snack bar located at the ballpark.  So during this game, before the last inning, I called my wife over to the dugout and told her to get ready to buy the treats for our team at the conclusion of the game.  "But don't buy them yet," I said.  "I don't know yet if we're going to win."  The other team had not yet completed their last turn at bat.  I hoped we were going to win, but I just couldn't be sure.  We had had leads in games before, but the other teams came back and beat us.  Could we hold on to this lead and secure the victory?  I didn't know, but I hoped so. 

Then the opposing team came up for their last at-bats.  They scored a run.  Then another.  Then another.  But finally, we were able to shut them down and came away with the win, 13-7.  Now that our victory was certain, I looked over at my wife and gave her the signal to go buy the ice cream!  There were smiles all around.  

When the Bible talks about hope it does not talk about it in the way that I hoped for our team to win that game.  My hope for winning was uncertain - it was a possibility, but it was never guaranteed.  The Bible talks about hope in a very different way: biblical hope is a confident and eager expectation of something certain.  

The foundation for biblical hope is not the skill of little league baseball players or the law of averages, but the character and nature of God.  If I hope that our baseball team will win the season tournament at the end of the summer, my hope will be founded on the ability of the players to win baseball games (which has not been a firm foundation thus far!).  Or, think about that promotion at work that you are hoping to get.  What is the foundation of your hope?  The approval of your boss, or your sales numbers, or your seniority level, or whatever.  When it comes down to it, those are all very shaky foundations upon which to place your hope. 

Biblical hope is founded on the character and nature of God.  God is always faithful to his promises, and he will always do what is right.  As Christians, we look into the future with hope that is founded upon who God has said he is in his word, and what he has said he will do.  This means that when we are in trouble and hope that God will deliver us, our hope is very secure because God has promised to deliver us, and he is always faithful.  Or if we are unjustly treated we hope that the wrong will be made right, and our hope is very secure because God is a God of justice.  

Psalm 43.5 says, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God."  As the author of these words thinks about the problems in his life, he knows that there is no reason for his soul to be down cast, or for him to suffer inner turmoil if his hope indeed is in God.  Because hope in the one, true, faithful God of the Bible is not "iffy."  It's not a gamble; it's not a 50/50 chance.  Instead, it's a sure thing, because that's the kind of God that God is.  He is a God who keeps his promises and does what he says he is going to do.

It would have been foolish of me to buy the ice cream treats for our team before the game was even played, because my hope of winning would be based on their ability and effort.  But living and walking in hope in God being true to his promises is not foolish - in fact, it's wise and prudent, because God never slumbers nor sleeps.  There is nothing that will keep him from keeping his promises to his people.  We can know that we are hoping in God when our lives begin to take on the characteristics of someone who is looking forward to a future "payoff" of God's faithfulness with eager and confident expectation, whether that happens in this life or the next.  The question is, what should my life look like if I am living with an eager and confident expectation for God to be faithful to his promises?  This is what it means to hope in God, and to live a life that is characterized by hope.  

Some Thoughts About Baseball

It's been no secret on this site that I am a huge baseball fan.  I love the sport.  I played it when I was a kid, and I continue to follow the local nine into my adulthood.  I particularly enjoy listening to baseball games on the radio (which, as it happens, is the only way for me to have access to baseball games, since I don't have cable television).  Today in my Facebook feed the Minnesota Twins posted the above image, noting that Santana's number equaled the amount of days until opening day, and I got excited.  I can't wait for another year of baseball.  Aside from my general excitement about baseball, it seems as though the sport has come up in my life in a few ways over the past week or so, so I thought I'd put fingers to keyboard to keep track of them for posterity.

1. Last week I called the commissioner of the local city baseball league and asked him if there was still time to sign up my son to play baseball this summer (sign ups were in early January - oops).  He said there was, and I should meet him at the local community center to get signed up.  The commissioner of the league also happens to be my coach from my 1993 team, when I played for the White Sox.  I enjoyed getting together with him again - and he even remembered me!  It was fun to see him, and I'm excited that Jamie will get to play in a league that he's running, since he's a great guy and was a great coach for me.  He really helped me grow as a player.  I especially remember one time when I was in a slump (which was odd for me, as I was - in my own humble opinion - the best hitter on the team), he made me practice bunting.  He wouldn't allow me to swing the bat, but just hold it out there to make contact with the ball.  It was incredibly humbling and I felt like such a loser just having to practice bunting instead of swinging away.  But he knew what he was doing, and it got me out of my slump.  If I could go back and relive a year of my life, it would be that year, and it would be for the purpose of playing on that team again.

2. I read an article just today that Challies linked to that gave 10 reasons why parents should have their kids play city ball rather than traveling ball.  Based on my experience as a player when I was a kid, and a bit in high school, and now as a parent, I think he's absolutely right.  City ball is where kids can grow for their love of the game and actually have fun instead of having to perform or to work to the extent that the game isn't fun anymore.  Before my fabled 1993 season I tried out for the West St. Paul traveling team.  I didn't make the cut, and I was told after that there was some discrepancy that was due to the fact that I wanted to play baseball in West St. Paul but actually lived in St. Paul.  Anyway, I was cut from the traveling team and relegated to a city team.  This was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me, for several reasons, some of which I've described in point 1 above.  But also, the city team I played for that year was absolutely phenomenal.  It was coached by John Pelano (the aforementioned current commissioner of the West St. Paul league) and was made up of (presumably) all of the kids that didn't make the traveling team.  For whatever reason, we were an unstoppable force.  We annihilated every other city team.  Coach Pelano even entered our city team into traveling league tournaments around the Twin Cities (this was not part of the city league program, but we were so good that he shopped us around to traveling tournaments), and we won every single game.  We were undefeated in city league play and even in the traveling tournaments.  In hindsight, I'm grateful that I didn't make the traveling team.  If I had, I almost certainly wouldn't have had as good a year as I had with the White Sox.  I hope my son will have a similar experience some time in his childhood.

3. Last week I started reading listening to the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  A movie of the same title was later released.  I realize I'm extremely late to the game when it comes to this book and its subject matter, but I just happened across a copy of the audio book, and I figured that it's about baseball so I would probably enjoy it.  I saw the movie when it came out too.  If you're not aware, the book is about making baseball decisions via an "objective" standard such as statistics rather than on impressions of talent, and how this process played out in the Oakland A's baseball club in the early 2000's.  It's a fascinating read, although I have to admit that I am not totally sold on the idea of saber metrics as being a reliable method for managing baseball teams (in fact, I'm not convinced that an "objective" method for managing baseball teams is even possible, as so much of the game is psychological - even though I know there are many who disagree with that).  I'm also aware that I'm very late to the party when it comes to this discussion, but who cares.  For one, I don't see the formula developed by Billy Bean as having paid off in the long run.  The A's still aren't that great, and haven't been.  And many of the players that Bean drafted as a result of his formulas haven't panned out - not even by a long shot.  I'm sure there are counters to these arguments, and I'd be interested to know them.  Sure, there are some benefits to using saber metrics (such as infield/outfield shifts), but I can't see operating the whole game by them.  There's just too much psychological unpredictability, and that's part of what makes baseball so unique and such a great game.

4. Finally, related to the item above, is this interesting article I read a few weeks ago.  It talks about the decline of the use of pitch-outs, sacrifice bunts, and intentional walks in major league baseball, arguing that, statistically speaking, none of these things is worth doing in the long run - that is, they serve no advantageous purpose to a baseball team.  I read the article, and I understand the statistics, but it seems to me that the statistics fail to take into account (in the case of pitch-outs) the psychological affect it has on the runner: perhaps he's less inclined to run if he knows a pitch-out is possible.  There's only so much statistics can do and predict.  Baseball is a very psychological game (consider, for example, the incredible "mind game" played by the pitcher and the batter over each pitch.)  Also, if teams begin to not us the pitch-out, sacrifice bunt, and intentional walk, soon nobody will sue them, and then using them would become sort of a "trick play," catching the offense/defense off guard, thereby creating an advantage (such as the famous "Eephus Pitch" - it's ridiculous, but nobody expects it, so it works!)  My prediction: pitch-outs, sacrifice bunts, and intentional walks will always be a part of the game even if they aren't statistically advantageous.  They're still part of the incredible mind game that is baseball.

Bring on opening day!

Baseball Stories

Former Minnesota Twin Dan Gladden is the color commentator for Twins radio broadcasts, which I listen to on a regular basis.  Now that Major League Baseball has completely removed all local baseball from network television, the regular fan who doesn't have a cable subscription service is forced to follow the local nine on radio only.  In truth, this is fine with me, as I actually prefer listening to the games on the radio to watching them on TV.

Gladden has a rather shaky broadcasting reputation when it comes to the opinions of online commentators - the fans who listen to the radio broadcasts.  Some don't think he's good at calling the plays (which he does for four innings per game).  Others don't think he gives the score or the count often enough.  It's true that he's less descriptive than his broadcasting counterpart, Cory Provus, but Gladden still has some great qualities for being a Twins broadcaster, and I'm glad he's here.  

One of the things that  makes Gladden fun to listen to is the fact that he's a former player, and a former Minnesota Twin.  What makes it especially enjoyable for me is that Gladden played on the Twins team of my childhood, with all of my boyhood baseball heroes like Kent Hrbek and Kirby Pucket.  Gladden likes to tell stories during the game broadcasts about these guys, and about his time in the majors.  It's almost as enjoyable to hear Gladden's stories as it is to hear the game.

One story Gladden told on tonight's broadcast caught me as funny.  Danny and Cory were talking about nicknames that the players give one another, and about special handshakes they share with each other after a good play or a home run.  Gladden said that he remembered Kirby Pucket and Al Newman doing what he called the "Nestea Plunge" high five.  Cory asked him if anyone on the team ever gave him a nickname.  He said that many people had nicknames, but the one that stuck most was one that Kent Hrbek gave him: "Wrench."

"Why 'Wrench?'" asked Provus.  "He said that I looked like the dirty kind of guy who was a mechanic who could fix anything," Gladden responded.  He said, "I could fix anything, but I told Hrbek I couldn't fix his swing.  He was 0 for his last 18."

The View from the Champion's Club

Beetz and I will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary this Tuesday, July 26.  That also happens to be the day that we will be leaving for our week long vacation, hindering our ability to celebrate the occasion.  So in an attempt to mark the occasion (and, let's face it, to have fun and be treated like a VIP!) I managed to score two tickets to the Champion's Club at Target field.

The Champion's Club is an elite section of seating at Target field that is not available for single game purchase.  The only way to sit in the Champion's Club is to buy an entire season package of seats, or to know someone who has.  Needless to say, my road to the Champion's Club was through the latter.

My cousin Kirk has a couple sections of seats in the Champion's Club, so a couple months ago I gave him a call and asked if he could hook me up.  Much to my surprise and delight, he was able to do so, and at a huge discount from face value, for which I am eternally grateful.

My dad made a trip to the Champion's Club with Kirk last year, and I heard all about the glories brought about by this section of seats: all-inclusive food, service, cushy seats, valet parking, and more.  So after that, I knew that the Champion's Club was an experience that I had to have.

I decided to ask Kirk for CC tickets for Betsy's and my 8th anniversary, and to surprise her with the tickets.  I made her wear a blindfold in the car on the way to the stadium so she wouldn't know where we were going.  When she took the blindfold off and saw the entrance to the club, she said, "No way!"  Her reaction was exactly what I was hoping for.

Bottom line: the Champion's Club was a great experience.  The food was amazing, the service was second to none (and it was really cool having my car parked by the valet, even if it was a piece of junk compared to the Ferraris and Porches parked nearby), the seats were great (closer than I think I've ever been to the players before), and it was a great time.

Another thing I did for our anniversary was to purchase a score board message, expressing my undying love for the Mrs.  Because we all know that nothing is true unless it's plastered on the jumbo-tron. That was pretty neat too, and Beetz really liked it.

Road to the World Series

Haha. I was putting together the children's bulletin for this week at Riverview and came across this maze. Each week we include a maze in the bulletin which I usually pull off of Google. I trim down any outward components to the maze to make it pretty generic. I got this one, cropped it down, and then realized that there was no solution to the maze. Hence the joke about going through the maze to get the cubs to a world series title. Haha.

A No Hitter!

Got to hear baseball history on the radio tonight. Francisco Liriano tossed a no-hitter against the hated Chicago White Sox.

I left Greek class at 6:58 tonight and got to my car by the time they announced the starting lineups. The Twins haven't been doing too well this year, and Liriano has been struggling in particular, so needless to say, I wasn't expecting much at the start of the game. After the Twins failed to do anything in the first inning, I remember being disgusted when Liriano walked the first White Sox hitter he faced. "Here we go," I thought to myself, expecting the White Sox to break it open in the first inning (as Liriano has been having a hard time not giving up runs in the first so far this year).

When I got home, the fam was playing out in the yard. I turned on the radio in the garage and left the door open so we could hear the game as we played. Beetz and I played catch while the kids went down the slide and played in the sandbox. By this time, Jason Kubel had hit a solo home run in the fourth inning to make it a 1-0 game. This would turn out to be the winning run.

I took a break from the game to put the kids to bed. We sang some songs and read some books, and then it was bed time. After this, I got my laundry ready and went downstairs to put it in the wash and to take a shower. A couple years ago I bought myself a small radio that I could listen to in the basement while I was working or doing whatever. I brought the radio into the bathroom with me and listened to the game while I showered.

After a shower and a shave, Liriano had made it through 6 innings without allowing a hit. I went upstairs to find the Mrs. watching "The Voice," so I picked up my computer and "watched" the game on mlb.com. One new feature they have on their "gameday" presentation is brief live video looks (which is really cool for those of us who don't have the option of watching the Twins games on TV). With two outs in the 7th inning they gave a live look into the game and I got to see Danny Valencia make an incredible play at third base to save the no-hitter. It was fantastic.

I told the Mrs. that if Liriano kept the no-no on into the ninth, we were turning the TV off and the radio on. She agreed. I called friends and family to make sure they were tuned in to potentially witness history.

The ninth inning came, and mlb.com broke into the video of the game live, so I got to both watch the ninth inning and hear Gordo call it (man, I'm going to miss him when he's gone). Gordo called the third out thusly, "And a liner right to Tolbert at short! He's done it! Liriano has done it! He has a no-hitter!" It was awesome.

The Twins are really stinking it up this year, but that's OK. I just love baseball. And to be able to see this was really cool.

Let's Go, Twins.

As I write this, I'm listening to the Twins getting beat by the Toronto Blue Jays in the second game of the season. Things haven't looked good so far, but that's OK. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Last night (the season opener) the Twins lost 13-3. But there's still 160 games to play.

I like to start each season with a great quote from the Terrance Mann character in the movie Field of Dreams, as played by James Earl Jones: "The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game - It's a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good...and it could be again."

Touch 'Em All, Gordo

It seems as though every day I get some new reminder that I am not a kid anymore. Today's reminder comes in the form of John Gordon's announcement that this will be his last year with the Twins radio broadcasting team. 2011 marks Gordo's 70th year of life, and 25th and last season as the play-by-play announcer for the Twins. He shared the job with Herb Carneal for some time, but when Herb died, Gordo took over the main spot, and Dan Gladden became his partner. For my money, the Gordon-Gladden broadcasting combo is about as good as it gets.

What made/makes Gordon great is that he was/is a legitimate baseball fan (let alone a Twins fan). And his broadcasts were so effective precisely because he was a fan, communicating his excitement and love for baseball and the local nine. If nothing else (even if he weren't broadcasting for my local team), he and I could identify with each other on the basis of our love for the game.

My childhood memories are filled with a variety of life-experiences, but there is a common thread that flows through a lot of them. No matter what I was doing, there was usually a Twins game on in the background. There weren't many Twins games on TV back then (as there aren't now - I'm talking about broadcast television), so my family was automatically relegated to listening to the Twins on the radio. As I grew older and listened to more and more Twins games, I came to realize that listening to the games broadcast on the radio was the more desirable way to experience the game, and a lot of that is due to John Gordon.

It was through Carneal and Gordon that I came to know the game of baseball and the Twins players. Yes, the players were the ones who were playing the game, but it was Gordon who made them larger than life in my estimation. Part of this was accomplished just by the way Gordon called the games. His overly dramatic "Swiiiiing, and a miss!" is fantastic, bringing the potential for excitement to each pitch of the game. And of course, the signature "Touch 'em all!" is the stuff of goosebumps. Gordon's call of Kirby Puckett's game 6, 10th inning home run to force a game 7 of the 1991 World Series is absolutely classic. I recently discovered that this call was the only time he has ever repeated the "Touch 'em all" phrase in a single use. I can't listen to that call without almost getting choked up.

When Kirby Puckett died, I was actually pretty torn up. He was my childhood hero. And, like Gordon, a lot of my childhood memories involve Kirby, so for him to die was kind of a shock. John Gordon is the last remaining link to the baseball days of my childhood. Yes, Dan Gladden was a player then and is a broadcaster now, but it's different. Gladden wasn't a broadcaster when I was a kid. He was a player. Gordon has been there throughout my entire love affair with baseball. It's going to be strange to continue my relationship with baseball without Gordon mediating between the two of us.

Now that I'm a dad, one of my favorite things to do is play out in the yard with the kids. This past spring, summer, and fall, almost every evening was spent in the yard, with the Twins game on in the background, and John Gordon's voice bringing us every play. There's just something about baseball on the radio. It's like comfort food. It brings to mind pleasant memories of family and playing with my kids. And in some weird way, John Gordon has been a part of that throughout my life.

Why I Love Baseball

If I could go back in time, it would be to my tween and early teenage years to go back and play baseball. I love baseball. Some of my fondest and most cherished childhood memories took place on the baseball diamond. If I had a few options for going back in time, my other choices would be to go back to the 1987 and 1991 World Series wins for the Minnesota Twins. A lot of other great childhood memories come from watching and listening to Twins games with my family. We all got into it. We cheered together, and celebrated Twins victories together, and complained about Rick Aguilera together. Those were some great times that I'll always remember. I can't wait to make such memories with my own kids.

Personally, I enjoy listening to Twins games rather than watching them. Just like the Twins players were a huge part of my life when I was a kid, so was the radio announcing crew. Another one of my cherished childhood memories is hearing John Gordon scream "Touch 'em all, Kirby Puckett!" whenever he or any other player hit a home run (game six of the 91 world series is especially sweet, as Gordon screamed "Touch 'em all, Kirby Puckett!" about a half dozen times in a row when Puckett hit a walk off home run to force the series into game seven - I'm getting goosebumps as I write this, just thinking about it).

Last night, I turned the Twins game on while I was doing homework. I specifically bought a small radio that I could plug in in my home office for just that purpose. After the seventh inning, the Twins were getting beat 8-3, and I figured the game was pretty much over, so I shut the radio off and concentrated on my homework. This morning, while I was at my parents' house, I noticed the front page of the sports section sitting on the kitchen table. The banner headline read, "Vicious Cycle." I immediately assumed that meant that the Twins' woes had continued and they fell to the Angels the previous night as I had suspected they would. But something was off: the picture below the headline was of several Twins celebrating around home plate. It didn't make sense that the Twins would be celebrating a loss, so I looked for the final score: Twins 11, Angels 9! I was flabbergasted, and immediately began kicking myself for losing hope and turning the game off before the comeback.

As I continued to read the story, I learned that Jason Kubel hit for the cycle (in other words, he had a single, a double, a triple, and a home run - actually a grand slam). I started to kick myself even harder. It's not everyday that you get to see your team come back from a five-run deficit, let alone to see one of the players hit for the cycle. It's only been done 9 times in Twins history. It's an incredible achievement. Now I was even more mad that I had missed the game. Plus, I was irritated that I wasn't able to hear John Gordon going crazy as he announced the hit (I can just hear him, "Hey! Touch 'em all, Jason Kubel! Touch 'em all, Jason Kubel! Touch 'em all, Jason Kubel!"). Later in the afternoon, I got on the internet to see if I could watch the progression of Kubel's hits. What I really wanted to do though, was hear John Gordon's commentary. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it anywhere. But check out Kubel's cycle if you haven't seen it yet:



I've probably watched this clip a dozen times by now, and I get goose bumps every time I do. I love watching the crowd go wild when Kubel smashes that grand slam into right-center field. I love hearing the excitement in Dick Bremer's voice "A high blast to right field! Up...Back...Gone!" But most of all, I love the two kids at 1:05. Seriously, if you didn't watch the video, check it out, it's worth it. They both have their baseball gloves on, in hope of the off chance a ball would be hit their way (I did the same as a kid, and I was devastated when I didn't catch a ball). The kid on the right is clapping into his glove, celebrating the homer. The kid on the left is awesome: his jaw is literally on the floor. He can't believe he's just witnessed what he has: his home town team, staging a dramatic comeback for the win, achieved by a grand slam home run from a man who has just hit for the cycle. It's a memory I'm sure he won't soon forget, and it will drive his love for the game.

I am that kid.