It has been said of Christianity that it is better “caught”
than “taught” and the same is true of sports fandom. I “caught” the San Francisco Giants from the
kids at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center.
It was during the years when “Humm-baby” was the rallying cry and Barry
Bonds had just joined the team, and there was a pack of middle-schoolers living
there at the same time I was, and they were all Giants fans. The contagion spread, and I must have had a
genetic susceptibility. One day a bunch
of us went to a day game against the Cubs at Candlestick and I’ll never forget jumping
out of my seat when the last out was made, and running down the escalator after
12-year old Jesse Rudnick to beat the gridlock out of the parking lot.
You could describe me as a “casual” fan. In the thirteen seasons since the new downtown
ballpark opened, I’ve attended probably half a dozen games. Half of those have been in the last three
years. Shortly after we moved to
Petaluma I took my daughter to see the Giants for her sixth birthday, and
that’s become an annual tradition. But
mainly I have followed the team over the years by listening to games on the
radio. It’s something I do while I’m
doing something else, driving the car, working in the yard, or, most often,
washing the dishes after dinner. Or I’ll
tune in to the post-game wrap for a few minutes before bed, listening to the
highlights, and the broadcasters’ picks for their players of the game.
Nevertheless, saddened as I am by the devastation in Haiti, and
New Jersey and New York, as troubling as the reports are out of Syria, as tense
as the political scene is with the election two days away, it is hard for me
not to go around smiling at the latest triumph by the Orange and Black. I am happy not just because the Giants are
“my team” and my team won, but because the story of this team is one I feel I can
be proud of. Call me superficial and
shallow. Tell me I’m distracted from the
sober matters of life be a meaningless spectacle. And you’d probably be right. And yet, I, like the other victims of this
mass delusion, can’t help but believe that the 2012 San Francisco Giants stood
for something beautiful.
I could go on at great length about the obstacles that this
year’s Giants overcame to win the National League West division, but if you
follow the team you know the story, and if you don’t I won’t bore you. Suffice it to say, there were all kinds of
reasons why they weren’t supposed to even make it to the playoffs. And this story of overcoming the odds through
courage and determination rose to the level of a fairytale in the post-season
tournament. They battled back from the
brink in historic fashion in the division series in Cincinnati and again
against St. Louis in the National League championship, winning six elimination
games in row to make it to the World Series.
They won the pennant on Monday night and on Wednesday they welcomed a
rested Detroit Tigers team that featured the major leagues’ outstanding batter
and its most dominant pitcher. Four
games later they were world champs.
But if this story of the triumph of the underdog is like a
fan’s dream come true, it is the tales of the individual members of the team
that make it almost too good to be believed.
Professional athletes are heroes because, like the heroes of the great
legends and myths of the past, they are human.
They are vulnerable and flawed, sometimes tragically so, and their
margin between glory and failure is so immediate and so thin. In this we identify with them, and their
dramas in the arena are like a projection of our own long struggles to improve
ourselves, our own devastating setbacks and rare, almost-miraculous moments of
mastery.
There is Buster Posey, the baby-faced catcher with the
beautiful swing whose left ankle was practically destroyed in a collision at
the plate in 2011, who crowned an MVP-type year with a crucial home run in Game
4 of the World Series; there is Marco Scutaro, the 37 year-old journeyman
infielder, who drove in the winning run in the same game; and Ryan Vogelsong, who
resurrected his disappointing career after three years of exile in the Japan League,
and allowed a total of three runs in three post-season starts; there is Barry
Zito, written off as a failure through the first six years of a huge contract, who
saved the season, pitching 7 2/3 shutout innings in St. Louis down three games
to one and with all the momentum of the series against him; when these men rode
down Market Street as world champions, the million people in the streets and
the millions more following on TV and the radio rejoiced with them. And we feel like the triumph is also ours. It is our dreams, our struggles, our desires
for a good life and a better world that are, in some small way, vindicated.
And that is one way to look at the saints. We don’t always identify with them, but
that’s because we don’t really know their stories. If we did we would see that they are human
like us, and struggle like us, experiencing doubt, encountering opposition and
failure, enduring physical illness and emotional pain. The only thing that sets them apart is their
commitment to following Jesus Christ, and it is his grace working in them that overcomes
their obstacles and fulfills God’s unique purpose for their lives. Their stories of hard-won transformation can uplift,
and inspire, and challenge us. And I
say, “challenge” because there is a crucial difference between the communion of
saints and the relationship that a sports team has with its fans. We may take great pleasure in watching or
listening to the San Francisco Giants play baseball, and cheer them on fervently
and feel joy and pride at their success.
But while none of us will ever play Major League baseball, all of us are
called to holiness.
Holiness is not a spectator sport. The saints may offer examples for us to
follow but in their own lives they do see not themselves as “role models.” Even Jesus did not ask people to identify
with him in his greatness, but only in his servitude. Because it is he who identifies with us.
In John’s Gospel, the invitation “come and see” is a recurring motif,
and usually it is “come and see Jesus.”
But in the story of the crowning miracle of Jesus’ ministry, it is an
invitation to him—“Come and see the
tomb of your friend. Come and see Lazarus.”
And he goes, not as an exemplar of prowess and power, but as one stricken
with grief and full of compassion.
Jesus identifies with us,
with our struggles, our need, our tenuous hold on the preciousness of life. He identifies with our death. And saints are people who follow Jesus in
precisely that way, not by setting out to give the world an example of heroic
achievement, but by heroically loving the world as it is. To be a member of their communion is not just
to be a fan of Jesus, to rejoice vicariously in his victory, but also to carry
that victory through our own lives to the places where it is still denied.
And it is denied every day.
It is denied in violence and hatred, and carelessness, and greed. It is denied in loneliness,cynicism, and
despair. It is denied in random little acts,
and in vast, organized crimes. But the
message of All Saints’ Day is that the underdogs may be down but they’re not
out. They may have their backs against
the wall, but that is when they are at their best. They may not have the best players, but they
play best as a team, and their victory will be the victory of the whole world. That is the secret of their success. The saints are those who know that the victory
of Jesus Christ is the victory of the whole world, and when it is won at last
it will finally be apparent to everyone that there is no losing team. Impossible come-from-behind victory. The whole world. No losing team. Imagine that
tickertape parade.
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