Baseball and Religious Faith

Like a lot of other people, I am glued to the television watching the World Series this time of year.  Baseball is something I grew up with.  It has been my favorite sport ever since my brother and I bought, sold and collected baseball cards back in the 1950s when I was barely out of the “toddler” stages of life.  For example, I remember vividly when Don Larson pitched his perfect game in the 1956 World Series (when I was 8 years old).  The scene where Larson struck out Dale Mitchell to end the game and Yogi Berra stood up from his position behind home plate and ran out toward the mound to meet him and jump all over him lives on in my mind.  I’ve been addicted ever since.

Today, I’m thinking of the two books I possess that make a connection between baseball and faith.  One is Baseball as a Road to God:  Seeing Beyond the Game by John Sexton and the other is And God Said, Play Ball:  Amusing and Thought-Provoking Parallels Between the Bible and Baseball by Gary Graff.  Knowing me, as you do, having the modern-day compulsion that I have toward religious faith, now also knowing that I have a modern-day compulsion toward baseball, you can understand why I am interested in books with such titles. 

Here is an example from Graff’s book that makes me proud to have these compulsions.  Graff mentions the last words of Jesus from the cross as a reason for hope in our lives, saying “By listening to Christ’s words from the cross we learn everything we need to know to be saved:  forgive others, take care of one another, thirst for spiritual union, trust in God.  By being blessed by the Lord’s resurrection we are given the one thing we need to see us through our darkest days.”  And the parallel with baseball?  He says this:  “Hope abounds every spring with players, coaches, and fans alike look forward to a new season, with all errors and failed opportunities of the past erased with renewed opportunity to reach the Promised Land.” 

And Sexton, who served as president of New York University from 2002 to 2015, teaches a course on the connection between baseball and religion.  One quote from near the end of the book especially caught my eye.  “In our times, it is fashionable to force a choice between science and religion, of the mind and the soul.  Either/or.  This, in my view, is a false dichotomy – and perhaps this collection of baseball stories analyzed through a lens (and intellectual tradition) usually reserved for a study of what are obviously religious experiences can cause some to see why.  I embrace enthusiastically the joys of intellectual life, but I reject the notion that, as a consequence, I must forfeit the wonders of a deeply transformative religious life.”  In other words, one should never reject religion just because of advances in scientific knowledge. 

Good stuff!  I am so happy I discovered baseball early on in my life, but even happier that as I grew from that day in 1956 to the present day, I have simultaneously discovered my transformative faith.  God is so good!