Baseball season (my personal favorite) is in full swing now, and Spring seems the ideal time to take a look at the spiritual insights that “our nation’s favorite past time” has to offer.
I have always considered baseball a mystical, even holy, sport. I am not alone. Many people, including baseball’s former Commissioners Fay Vincent and Bart Giamatti, have been fascinated by the game’s more profound dimensions, and countless books have been written which explore the connections between baseball and life’s most salient mysteries. Here’s a sampling:
1) In baseball, as in the journey of life, the object of the game is to leave home in order to return home. There are always dangers lurking in the field and there are risks involved in advancing from base to base, but the player who never manages to leave homeplate never really plays the game. As Christian people, we trust in a loving God who is both our Origin and our final Home. In countless ways throughout our lifetimes we are called to venture forth from the safety of home (and even of figurative “homes” like our comforts, complacencies, and unquestioned assumptions …) so that we can acquire new skills and sensitivities, learn how to confront and conquer dangers, discover what it means to take delight in play, and realize how very important it is to help and support one another in the field. Life is, in other words, the Journey and the Return.
2) Baseball, unlike any other sport, acknowledges error to be an inescapable part of its unique Truth. As Fay Vincent points out, most people learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball. After all, those who hit safely in only one out of three chances are the players who are baseball’s greatest stars. The game of baseball reminds us poignantly that mistakes, errors, injuries, hurts and failures are inescapable facets of life. More than that, they are unavoidable pieces of the glorious — but often pain-filled — truth which is gradually unraveled as we fragile and imperfect human beings try to grow and love and forgive and care for one another in our fragile and imperfect world.
3) Baseball is a timeless game (no clocks running), with boundaries that extend into infinity. Like the mystery of life, it has a magic and a rhythm all of its own. We will never understand it completely, and we can never learn enough about it. If we allow it to, however, the quest itself can become a source of infinite wisdom and boundless joy.
Posted by CCHenry 
