BETWEEN THE LINES [R, 3-27-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Confessions of An Old Man—BETWEEN THE LINES [R, 3-27-25]

 

I am excited, far more than I should be. But it’s Opening Day! The very first professional baseball team, my team, the Cincinnati Reds team, is starting the season! They’re still in first place! “In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to… baseball!”

I am embarrassed by the amount of time I spend on sports. Well, no, I’m not really embarrassed, but I should be, because it borders on obsession. In fact, my Rubicon is far back in the rear-view mirror. [1]

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, agreed. 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, owner Marge Schott just sent it.

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 had 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.

I was able to 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.

There is more than one answer to this sports obsession, and I’ll look at some of the others later this week, but right now, in this time of political turmoil, I’m aware that sports provide an oasis. It’s called “between the lines.”

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,” be it knitting or carving or… You name it. You’re never too old to find a spot between the lines.

John Robert McFarland

1] I don’t want to insult anyone by suggesting you don’t already know this, but the Rubicon was the border [river] that Caesar crossed and was thus irrevocably committed to civil war. When you’ve “crossed the Rubicon,” there’s no turning back.