BETWEEN THE LINES [Sat, 7-10-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

 

I go to church in person now primarily to bedevil our pastors, who are Cubs fans. Last Sunday I wore not only my Reds tie [one of two] but my Reds socks [two of many], because the Reds had just swept a series with the Cubs. The very first professional baseball team, my team, the Cincinnati Reds team, was winning! One of the greeters at church asked me why I was a Reds fan, as though there were something wrong with that. “Because my Grandma was a Reds fan,” I said. That always ends any argument. How can you fault a man for following his grandmother’s team? My spirits soared!

Then my Reds went and lost a game to the lowly Kansas City Royals, a game they had been winning six to one! My spirits took a nose dive! How could they do that?

I am embarrassed by the amount of time I spend on sports, and how my spirits soar and dive according to the fortunes of my teams. Well, no, I’m not really embarrassed, but I should be, because it borders on obsession.

When we lived in Iron Mountain, MI, I had a dentist who is a MI State U fan. Chris Selden is as sports-obsessed as I. We talked about it. We concluded that there is something wrong with us. His hygienist, Kyra Scott, agrees. When I apologized one day for refusing to let her start scraping on my teeth because Chris and I were talking sports, she sighed and said, “It’s okay. I schedule extra time when I know you are coming in.”

I once cancelled a TV service because it did not have the Big Ten Network. When I was nominated as a “distinguished alum” at Garrett Theological Seminary, my love of baseball was mentioned before my love of theology. I have an honorary contract with The Cincinnati Reds; I didn’t ask for it, Marge Schott, their owner, just sent it because she had heard of my devotion.

When daughter Katie and her husband taught history at Auburn U, and granddaughter Brigid was born there, Perry & Sue Biddle were gracious enough to let us spend the night with them in Nashville on our way from IL to AL. They usually had a party for us, inviting old friends we met in Scotland, Amos & Etta Wilson, with other folks they thought we might enjoy. One man, as he left one night, said, either with admiration or bewilderment, “I’ve never before met a minister who knew so much about sports.”

I don’t know why I have this obsession. I don’t come from an athletic family. I hardly knew sports existed until we moved to Oakland City, IN, when I was 10.

Maybe it was the isolation of the farm. We didn’t have a car. From the last day of school in May until the first day in September, I didn’t have any playmates unless my Uncle Johnny [John H. Pond, my mother’s youngest brother, 15 years older than I] drove over from Francisco, five miles away, after he had closed his hardware store, and hit flies to me. He was single and lived with his mother in a town of 600. There wasn’t much for him to do in the evenings. I so looked forward to those moments with him. He was the best friend of my childhood and the best man at our wedding. To this day, when I am at loose ends, in my mind I go to that field and chase those fly balls through tall weeds.

I could justify my obsession, at least in my own mind, by participating in sports. It’s good exercise. It keeps one healthy. But my sports activity came to a screeching halt, unless you count walking as a sport, when I was 70 and we moved to Iron Mt and there was no softball league for old people, and where the only sport is strapping a couple of sticks to your feet and sliding down a long slope and then hanging in the air, buffeted by blizzard winds, until crashing into the tops of red pines several miles away.

Now, though, I just watch. It’s hard to justify sitting in front of the TV several hours a day, watching field hockey and water polo if there is no football or basketball or baseball, relieved only by Big Bang Theory re-runs, and claim that’s good for one’s health

I think I love baseball because each of us needs a spot “between the lines.” Especially In this time of political turmoil.

When you are “between the lines” on a baseball field, you have to concentrate so hard on the game that you can’t think about anything else. In the chaos of family life as a child, and puberty as an adolescent, and stupidity [mine as well as that of others] as an adult, sports has allowed me to drop all concern except the next pitch, the next snap, the next shot.

Everybody needs a spot “between the lines.” It doesn’t have to be sports, but each of us needs that oasis. You’re never too old to find a spot between the lines. If you don’t have one, the Reds can always use another fan. They’ll break your heart, but you’ll never have time to worry about politics or the virus or the environment. Just sayin’.

John Robert McFarland

To follow up on the column about renaming Jordan Ave in Bloomington, Johnson County, Iowa, home of the U of Iowa, just declared that it is no longer named for former VP and slave owner Richard Mentor Johnson but is now named for Lulu Merle Johnson, the first black woman to get a PhD at the U of Iowa.