We interrupt the usual flow of commentary on this blog for something both baseball and personal . . .
My stepson John Webb is pitcher of the week for the PCL, according to this MiLB.com story. John allowed only three hits in 8 shutout innings while earning the win against the then-division leading Nashville Sounds.
He’s pitching again tonight for the Iowa Cubs against the Albuquerque Isotopes tonight at 7:00 PM.
OK, as the parent of a Chicago Cubs player (John Webb, currently with the AAA Iowa Cubs), I have to link to this great post about baseball, God’s game. (HT to Moderate Christian Blogroll member Come to the waters.)
Of course, pay particular attention to this:
8. It has its Suffering Servant, viz. the Chicago Cubs, the Cubbies, a team annually like a sheep led to the slaughter (and crucial to the game is the play called the sacrifice). But Cub fans love the Cubs, warts and all, no questions asked. This quality is called faith (Peter Glenbock).
Of course my totally objective opinion is that the Cubs will win the world series again when they call John up. (I remind people that as a stepfather I am not subject to the normal failings of parents who have exaggerated opinions of their children’s abilities.) He has some big league time, but that was with the Devil Rays, not the Cubs.
OK folks, I don’t write all that much about baseball, but my stepson John Webb is a pitcher for the Iowa Cubs (AAA), and though I grew up overseas watching soccer and cricket, I’ve learned to love the game.
I recall one game last year when he was playing for the Memphis Redbirds and they were in Nashville playing the Sounds. The umpire kept calling “obvious strikes” as balls, according to the Memphis announcers and all fond stepfathers at least! The catcher was ejected for arguing with the umpire, and finally in a great tangle, John was thrown out along with the coach, and the pitching coach. It was quite a scene! At that moment, one is strongly tempted to go for instant replay, just so you can rub that umpire’s nose in the errors he’s made, make him ‘fess up, and get the game right.
I don’t have a strong opinion, because again I’m somewhat new to baseball, but I do like the human factor of the game, and I fail to see why that shouldn’t extend to umpires as well. In my experience thus far, umpire errors don’t, in the long term, favor any one player or another. They are what they are, and you live with them. I recall one game I watched with the Pensacola Pelicans (home town team) at which an umpire (I believe a minor league strike replacement) truly did not have any clue where the strike zone was. I think I can say that with some confidence because both teams were equally annoyed at him. From where I was sitting in the stands I could make no prediction before his call as to what it would be. But it was still a fun evening, both teams suffered and both benefited.
Mike Celizic has an article on MSNBC.com, titled Baseball needs instant replay, now, with the subtitle MLB must get over its stodgy traditionalism and make the game better. “Better,” of course, means more accurately called. But I’m not sure that the sport would be made better. It would be more accurate, it would be different, but there’s a certain fun in sitting in the ball park watching a tense coach come out to argue with the umpire, observing the interplay of the catcher with the umpire and sometimes with the batter.
Technology will make it possible to be 100% accurate, if it hasn’t already. But I suspect soon we’ll be looking for ways to make our recreation more human. We could have machines to send the balls perfectly over the plate, and hit them with extreme accuracy, but that would be no fun either. I’m not all that excited about replays in other sports. As a relative newcomer to baseball–going on 8 years since I married Jody and inheriting baseball playing sons–I find the possibility of error makes the game more interesting.
Mind you, that won’t make me any less angry when blue calls one of John’s good strikes a ball, but hey, that’s all part of the fun.
Well, not quite. I’ll be driving.
My stepson John Webb is a pitcher for the Iowa Cubs (Chicago Cubs AAA team in the Pacific Coast League) who are in New Orleans for a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs. Last night the Cubs beat the Zephyrs and John put in two good innings in relief. I hope we’ll see him in relief Sunday night or at the day game on Monday when we’ll be at the park watching.
We’ll leave after church Sunday morning and return late Monday evening. I don’t know what blogging will take place during that time, if any. I will, however, be doing some today. 🙂
It’s another early Sunday morning and it should shock nobody to know that I’m thinking about baseball, life, and spiritual matters. It is a little bit odd to me to realize how often I think of baseball metaphors these days. Until I started going out with Jody, now my wife, I never watched or thought about baseball at all. I remember sitting with her and asking silly questions as we watched my step-son John Webb pitching for Manatee Community College. I didn’t know what a strike was at that point. Now John is playing winter ball, and I’m reflecting on the world series. How things change!
The headline on MSNBC read Cardinals “shocked the world” to clinch Series, or actually just one of the headlines on that and many other news services. Nobody expected the Cardinals to win the series. Nobody expected them to be in the series. A few times, we were thinking they wouldn’t make it to the post-season. As it happened, however, they not only won, but won in a convincing way.
So what happened? Well, I’m no expert, even now, having learned what I know of baseball of the last eight years watching John, and occasionally bugging him with questions on the phone, but I have observed human nature over the years and I think the Tigers got used to winning in the post-season. They said the right things about overconfidence, but I think it slipped in anyhow, and when they went up in that first game against the Cardinals and realized that the reality was not going to be the same as the predictions, that assurance (or over-assurance as it happened) went away, and then desperation set in.
Good players make silly mistakes when they’re shaken, and that’s precisely what Detroit did. Don’t take anything away from the Cardinals who pulled together as a team, worked hard, played well, and clearly kept their mental attitude together. But the Tigers helped them out, and did so with the type of errors they should not have made. Despite all their comments about knowing the Cardinals were a tough team and they would have to work for it, I think deep down they believed the predictions. They thought they were going to walk all over the 83 win upstart team that was tired from a seven game series with the Mets, and then it didn’t happen.
There’s something interesting about assurance or confidence. It has to be in precise balance. Overconfidence is deadly. Underconfidence is deadly. Only confidence will do. Once you’re off to one side or the other, it’s hard to get back in balance. That, I think, was the key element of the Cardinals win, and something for which Tony LaRussa is to be congratulated, along with several of the leaders on the team: They managed to go from underconfidence to precisely the right level of assurance and performance. That’s not easy to do in baseball, or anywhere in your life.
Hebrews 10:35 reads: “35Don’t throw away your boldness {or confidence, assurance}, which has great reward.” Don’t throw it away!
But the secret is that there are two ways to throw it away–under and overconfidence. You can observe this with students in a class. The ones who are very, very confident are often the ones who don’t study and get into trouble. Then there are the ones who are so underconfident that they don’t believe they can get anything done. Somewhere between are those who have the right amount of confidence, so they study as much as is necessary, but don’t kill themselves doing things that are not necessary.
Good confidence, and good boldness and assurance involves three things. Realistic, but not pessimistic goals, realistic estimation of what is necessary to attain those goals, and lastly, reliance on the right things.
In the spiritual life especially, assurance involves the one in whom we place our trust, Jesus, the “pioneer and perfecter” of our faith. But both in our spiritual life and in our day-to-day living, we also need to look at ourselves to see whether we’re moving forward. A pioneer goes before, but no matter how well the pioneer prepares the way, the person behind still has to decide to follow, and still has to count the cost and prepare to pay it. Overconfidence results in underpreparation.
In our spiritual lives, one key way in which we can keep our confidence level in balance is through spiritual disciplines. I don’t have a formula for this. For me, it’s devotional Bible reading and time for prayer primarily. For others there may be other formulas. How do you know? Discover what spiritual disciplines help keep your mind in balance. Pursue those.
Don’t let anyone steal your confidence–in either direction.
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all. — Ecclesiastes 9:11
(The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1996, c1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.)
OK, I don’t do too much personal blogging around here, and even this isn’t truly personal, except that I never watched baseball until I married Jody and starting going to my stepson’s games. John Webb is now a pitcher for the Memphis Redbirds.
But that was simply the reason I was reading baseball stories this morning, and there were the Kansas City Royals, beating the New York Yankees. Now I don’t really hate the Yankees, but with their payroll, I think when they win it should be just what you expect. With that expensive a line-up you winning should be expected. The Royals, on the other hand, have been giving new meaning to losing.
The story, from MSNBC Sports, Royals shock Yanks on road, end 13-game skid, also features Jeter getting his 2,000th hit. But then from the lowly Royals (funny how that sounds, isn’t it?) comes Berroa, with his 4th–get it, 4th home run of the season. The Yankees have 7 players with that many home runs or more this year. Berroa is in second place for home runs, when you include that one.
The verse I quoted at the start is just a little bit cynical. The writer is expressing dismay at how unfair things can be. But in baseball, as in life, the battle is often not won by the strong, nor the race to the swift. Just ask Jason Giambi, the Yankee’s leading home run hitter, who “slipped in the muddy batter’s box as he tried to break for first.” Rather, it comes to the one who keeps on slugging.
PS: Jason Giambi is a good example of “just keeping on slugging” over the last couple of years.
